I regularly knock on wood, avoid stepping under ladders and would never open and umbrella inside, yet I don’t consider myself superstitious and I certainly don’t believe in fairies. But my 6-year-old absolutely believes fairies exist and that if she can attract fairies to our garden, they’ll bring good luck too. I wanted to look into this a little more and find out where the idea that fairy gardens bring good luck comes from and whether or not it’s true.
There are many examples in folklore of fairies bringing good luck, but they can also bring misfortune. In British folklore it’s believed that angering a fairy brings bad luck and leaving food, milk and water out to appease the fairies brings good luck. Up until recently, fairies were believed to be malevolent creatures that would wreck havoc on households and even steal children. Making a fairy garden is the perfect way to keep potentially mischievous fairies happy and outside of your home.
Where does the link between fairies and luck come from?
For the past century fairies have largely been seen as benevolent creatures – from bringing money in exchange for teeth, to depictions in media such as the whimsical Flower Fairies books by Cicely Mary Barker to JM Barrie’s Tinker Bell (and her more recent Disney Fairies’ friends) and the delightful baking fairies from the Butterbean Cafe TV show.
Look a little further back though, and fairies were not so nice. It wasn’t so much a case of fairies bringing good luck, but fairies being indifferent to humans, unless they crossed them, then the fairies would unleash all kinds of misfortune.
If you’d grown up in the countryside even a century ago, your impressionable young mind would have been filled with tales of fairy danger. To keep you from venturing out at night, your parents could tell you that the fairies might carry you off. If your family tended livestock, any sickness in your cattle might be explained by their being ‘fairy-struck’ or ‘elf-shot’.
Richard Sugg, author of A Century of Supernatural Stories
Whether fairies are depicted as good or bad is heavily tied to religion. Writing in History Today magazine, Abigail Sparkes from the University of Birmingham, explains, “The Protestant understanding that fairies could enter the mind to corrupt the soul had certainly permeated popular belief by the 17th century, drawing parallels between medieval folk tales and contemporary fears of the devil.”
She goes onto write, “Fairies were evil creatures with the capability to harm thanks to their collusion with the devil and a diabolical remnant of the Catholic past, but they could also bring good fortune to those they encountered and bestow gifts of healing, food and magic.”
Giving gifts to fairies will bring good fortune
Often in these folktales, people give gifts to fairies and the fairies then grant good luck to them in return. It was customary for families living in the countryside to leave milk or food out to fairies, even if the families were short on food. Leaving milk out for fairies would help protect a farmer’s herd of cows for example. In some folklore, the fairies would exchange the milk for coins or fairies would leave coins as a reward to families with particularly clean homes.
The most obvious case of leaving an offering to fairies still continues today – many children still tuck their milk teeth under their pillows in the hope that the tooth fairy will leave them some money in exchange for their tooth.
In the case of fairy gardens, if you genuinely believe in fairies, a flower-filled, neat and tidy fairy garden with some regular offerings of food and drink should attract fairies keen to reward you with good fortune.
Interestingly, I asked on a fairy garden Facebook group whether people thought fairies brought good luck or not and one answer made me want to head out and give my fairy garden a good tidy and leave some offerings – “Fairy gardens are to keep the fairies happy and outside so they won’t steal children in the night”!
5 Ways to attract real fairies
If you feel like you need some good luck, and you believe in fairies, then attracting fairies could be one way to turn your fortune around.
1. Leave gifts of bread, milk and water in your fairy garden
In traditional folklore, fairies are known to love bread, as well as baking their own fairy bread, they will happily accept offerings of bread baked by humans as well. This idea goes back to when some farmers believed that small hard-working pixie-like creatures called ‘brownies’ liked to be paid in bread for helping out around the farm.
Having a small fairy pond or river in your fairy garden will give fairies something to drink and somewhere to bathe. If you don’t have the space to have a real pond, you could make a pretend pond or river for the fairies to enjoy.
2. Keep your fairy garden out of the shadows
In one Welsh folktale, a farmer removed a rooks’ nest which was casting a shadow over a fairy ring, the fairies rewarded him for his good deed.
3. Don’t throw dirty water in your fairy garden at night (or any time!)
According to Irish folklore, as well as leaving food and drink out for the fairies at night, you should never throw dirty water out at night, just in case you drench a passing fairy with dirty water! If you were to soak a fairy in dirty water then according to one Irish account, “Then they will be angry, and disaster will follow” – read more about the fascinating history for fairies in Irish folklore on the Yale Human Relations Area Files website.
3. Leave fairies offerings of shiny things in your fairy garden
Shiny offerings such as beads, glistening stones and gems all attract fairies, you could even make the fairies a beautiful river or pond out of sparkling stones. You can find out more about what sparkling items you can use in your fairy garden in my blog 10 Easy DIY Fairy Garden Ponds, Streams And Rivers To Try Yourself.
4. Plant flowers and herbs that fairies love in your garden
According to one gardening website, primroses, roses, wildflowers and different types of thyme, such as elfin thyme and lemon thyme, will all help attract fairy visitors to your garden. Let nature take the lead and don’t plant anything in a uniform way, instead try and recreate a natural environment, whilst keeping things neat and tidy.
5. Keep your fairy garden neat and tidy
Although your fairy garden should look natural, if you want to attract fairies it should also be neat and tidy. Water, weed and feed the plants in your fairy garden regularly and remove dead leaves or any other debris. You can find out more about ensuring your fairy garden remains fit for your mystical visitors in my blog post Fairy Garden Maintenance: How to look after a mini garden.
The best gifts for fairy loving kids (and fairies!)
If you know a child who is desperate to attract real fairies to their fairy garden, then treat them to one of these gifts and you never know, they may get to see a real life fairy! This section contains affiliate links, so if you do buy anything, I’ll get a little bit of money so I can buy more fairy treats for my fairy garden!
This fairy garden kit contains everything a discerning fairy would need, including various cute houses, a table and chairs (to leave their offerings on), little fences, a bridge and much more. You can buy it now from Amazon.
Fairies like things to be neat and tidy, so why not give them the tools to help you keep their fairy garden spotless? This adorable kit of miniature garden tools would look lovely in any fairy garden and will keep the fairies nice and busy.
Treat the fairies to a handpainted home with this delightful wooden paint-your-own fairy house. Your child can choose how they paint the house in the design they think will be most appealing to fairies. You can buy this pack of two wooden houses from Amazon.
Let fairies know whose garden they’re visiting and who is leaving them treats with this gorgeous fairy garden sign by Honeymellows on Etsy. You can have it personalised with your own text, so you could have your child’s name on it, or maybe add a welcoming message to visiting fairies instead?
Fairies will need somewhere to sit and eat their bread, and this beautiful table and chair set by WhimsicalWhispersArt on Etsy would be just perfect. This adorable set also includes a teapot, side plates, forks and spoons so your fairies will have everything they need for some fine fairy dining. It also comes with a tiny jar of fairy glitter which will help attract sparkling-loving fairies to your fairy garden.
