The fairy is erotically unpredictable and often remarkably promiscuous. Charm, youth, beauty are not cogent considerations; above all the fairy craves novelty. His attachments are seldom lasting, in common with all his moodsT He quickly shifts from joy to woe; from wrath through hysteria to laughter, or any of a dozen other affections unknown to the more stolid human race.
Fairies love tricks. Woe to the giant or ogre the fairies decide to molest! They give him no peace; his own magic is of a gross sort, easily evaded. The fairies torment him with cruel glee until he hides in his den, or castle.
Fairies are great musicians and use a hundred quaint instruments, some of which, like fiddles, bagpipes and flutes have been adopted by men. Sometimes they play jigs and knockabouts to put wings on the heels; sometimes mournful tunes by moonlight, which once heard may never be forgotten. For processions and investitures the musicians play noble harmonies of great complexity, using themes beyond the human understanding.
Fairies are jealous and impatient, and intolerant of intrusion. A boy or girl innocently trespassing upon a fairy meadow might be cruelly whipped with hazel twigs. On the Sther hand, if the fairies were somnolent the child might be ignored, or even showered with a rain of gold coins, since the fairies enjoy confounding men and women with sudden fortune, no less than with sudden disaster.
GLOSSARY III:
THE SKA
For ten thousand years or longer the Ska maintained racial purity and continuity of tradition, using the same language so conservatively that the most ancient chronicles, both oral and written, were intelligible at all times across the years without archaic flavor. Their myths recalled migrations north behind the Wurm glaciers; their oldest bestiaries included mastodons, cave bears and dire wolves. Their sagas celebrated battles with cannibal Neanderthals, with a culminating victory of extermination where the red blood ran deep over the ice of Lake Ko (in Denmark). They followed the glaciers north into the virgin wilderness of Scandinavia, which they claimed as their homeland. Here they learned to smelt bog-iron, forge tools, weapons, and structural pieces; they built seagoing boats and guided themselves by the compass.
About 2500 B.C. an Aryan horde, the Ur-Goths, migrated north into Scandinavia, driving the relatively civilized Ska west, to the fringes of Norway and eventually into the sea.
The remnants of the Ska descended upon Ireland and entered Irish myth as "Nemedians": the Sons of Nemed. The Ur-Goths adopted the Ska folkways, and became ancestors to the various Gothic peoples, most notably the Germans and the Vikings.
From Fomoiry (North Ulfland) the Fomoire migrated into Ireland, and engaged the Ska in three great battles, forcing them to depart Ireland. This time the Ska moved south to Skaghane, which they vowed never to leave. Molded by bitter adversity, they had become a race of aristocratic warriors and considered themselves actively at war with all the rest of the world. All other peoples they deemed subhuman and only marginally superior to animals. With each other they were fair, mild and reasonable; with others they were dispassionately pitiless: this philosophy became their tool for survival.