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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wicht" data-source="post: 6723169" data-attributes="member: 221">I don't know that it's difficult, you just have to know where to look. Probably the best place to start would be Lang's Fairy Books (The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book, etc). These twelve books were published between 1889 and 1910 and, while edited somewhat for children, do reflect the general gist of the originals. All of these are widely available though, and I got e-versions a couple years back from Amazon prime for free.  Likewise a decent unabridged copy of Grimm's will reflect the folktales they collected in the early 19th century. And the Brothers Grimm did not edit their content, instead encouraging parents to monitor what they kids were reading. Its worth noting that the collecting of Folktales didn't really start until the 19th century and that censorship of the tales for children began almost immediately. Its not a new phenomena. But you aren't going to find many collections predating the 19th century. Likewise, the use of fey in the stories is a bit eclectic and not at all consistent, as the tales were adapted from oral traditions, which changed from region to region.If you are really interested in the subject of 19th century (and earlier) beliefs on the fey, I would direct you to the wonderful "An Encyclopedia of Fairies," by Katherine Briggs, published in 1976. I would quibble with the word "similar." "Exactly the same," would be closer to the mark. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> (And they didn't all live in the forests either.) While precise usage would vary from region to region, the elf of folklore was a fairy and the fairy was an elf. And sometimes a dwarf. The word has Scandinavian origins, and there were dark elves and light elves in that country, though the description varied from region to region. The huldre, for instance, had cow tails, while the Danes thought they were hollow from behind. In Scotland, they tended to use elf to refer to larger, human size fey, but in England, it was more common to call the smaller fairies, males in particular, elves. Better to say that the name, "Jack" appears in several stories, the characters are often quite different. Jack was a common diminutive of the name John, and John was a pretty common name, as it still is today.</blockquote>

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