Reason Number One: Unauthorised Human Testing

• Cybernetics, time travel, deep sleep, coma—it’s not clear exactly what sciences the fair folk are investigating, but the regular reports of “lost time” by their human subjects make it clear that something is happening. We have very little information but it is clear that the results of these tests varied. Many stories abound of a person waking from a prolonged sleep to take a single step and then crumble in the dust. And there are at least two reported incidents of the subject returning to consciousness (and to their long dead families) a hundred years later, to the general confusion of the populace. You may think this is the stuff of ancient myths and legends, but there’s plenty of evidence that it still happens today. There are many locations—including Florida, Costa del Sol, Ibiza and Tiajuana—where previously normal young people converge for spring equinox (also known as “spring break”) to dance and sing (see also: fairy rings). Many of these supplicants then experience lost time, an oft repeated experience described as “only gone out for a few drinks” when the victim then wakes up on a grass verge or park bench, with no recollection as to where the night went.

Reason Number Two: Fair Folk Coming Over Here, Stealing Our Children

• Changelings have been recorded since… well, since recorded time. There’s a few theories as to why the fair folk may want human babies, but none of them are particularly cheering. In Wales, the Tylwyth Teg were known to kidnap human children for sport. Now we have direct evidence that the swapping of fae and human can happen as late as puberty. Many parents have reported putting their pre-pubescent teenager to bed one evening and woke the next morning to find a vacant-eye’d slack-jawed phone-poking shadow, apparently unable to function without at least one bud attached to ear. The traditional cure is to lock the changeling in a hot oven, although there does not appear to be any guarantee that you will receive your stolen child back.

Reason Number Three: Wire Sex

• The Fair Folk are well known for tangling hair (or mane, one thing the fair folk are not is speciest) in the night.

“She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate stone……. That plaits the manes of horses in the night And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs, Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.”

— Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare

• Maybe that doesn’t sound all that bad, but by all accounts, the tangles caused by the Fair Folk are personal. If one has turned his or her attention to your hair, you’ll find a comb will not help, you’ll have to cut the knot out. But it gets worse: modern-day wee ones do not settle for tangling hair but instead amuse themselves with cables, chargers and especially, in my personal experience, headsets. Urban Dictionary defines the conglomerate of many wires tangled together as “wire sex” but rather peculiarly, the site does not list the cause. The maliciously meticulous knotting of cables is clear sign of a visitation by the Fair Folk …and they are not pleased with you.

Reason Number Four: Fair Folk Don’t Use Sustainable Resources

• You’ve seen the pictures: miniature beings in lovely little red caps prancing through the meadows, an elfin face peering cheekily at you from underneath a toadstool. These are the Powrie and their caps must be kept red: If the hat dries out, it will die. They do not, however, use sustainable dyes nor even cochineal which they could harvest directly from the ants. No, they use blood. Human blood. It’s apparently a matter of principle.
• Now I concede, there’s currently plenty of us to supply enough red blood for a million tiny little caps but (1) the powrie kill one person per hat, rather than banding together for efficiency, and (2) the dye needs to be reapplied regularly to keep the caps bright red. It’s not hard to figure out that over time we will become an endangered resource.

Reason Number Five: Fair Folk Support Slates

• It’s absolutely true. The Fair Folk have always been found in mines and quarries, ranging from Germany to Spain to Wales. They may not abide iron, but the coblynau and the knockers surely approve of slate and coal and copper, based on the tales told of their support of the miners and help given to find the ore and rock. Indeed, the largest slate quarry in Cornwall is home to dozens of stories about the piskies and the nath. So if you wish to stop slates, you must first control the fair folk and ensure they don’t get a vote.