The Sidhe Add Magic to History
If you were born into the Sidhe, you would be born with magical abilities – no need to attend wizard school. Sometimes referred to as fairies, the Sidhe (pronounced shee) are an enchanted race of people from Irish folklore. The Sidhe are a combination of fact and folklore that the Irish added to the history of Ireland. We Americans have Pecos Bill and Paul Bunyan making our history more colorful. The tales of the Sidhe color Irish history with many shades, some bright and some dark.
The origin of the Sidhe starts with a race of people called the Tuatha De Danann. Some people think the Tuatha are just as much fantasy as the Sidhe. Many others believe they actually existed around 1300-1200 BC. People think they were Greek and they came from an area in or around Athens, Greece.
Stories say they were people who traveled on the sea. When they found Ireland they burned their ships. Then they couldn’t return to the sea. A mist covered their arrival on Ireland’s shores. The mist stopped the native Fir Bolg people from noticing them until a few days later. Since the Fir Bolg saw no ships, it looked like the Tuatha arrived by magic.
The Tuatha lived in Ireland for about 220 years. Then the Milesians, the first Gaels (Irish ancestors), defeated the Tuatha and scattered their people. The legends say they then fled underground and set up their kingdom in the Otherworld. They made their new homes inside mounds of earth. People then called them the Sidhe, a word that means earth mound.
The people in the land started to tell fantastic stories. They told tales about fairy people, enchanted animals, and mysterious creatures able to be an animal or a person. You may have heard of the Banshee who wails when someone dies. There is also the Sluagh Sidhe (sidhe host) who travel through the air at night terrorizing people on their wild hunt. Their Cu Sidhe, dark hounds of the hunt, howl in the night. Yes, there are good Sidhe, but the bad ones seem to get more attention.
Unlike Tinkerbell, The Sidhe are tall and handsome. They have kings, queens, and a royal court that enjoy banquets, hunting, and other royal pastimes. The good Sidhe occupy the Seelie court and bad Sidhe live in the UnSeelie court. There are many small courts of Sidhe that care for the Irish people in their area. Sometimes this care is good and sometimes it is bad, depending on the type of Sidhe. As you may guess, all this courtly nobility mixed with magic can engender some terrific stories.