Fair"y (?), n.; pl. Fairies (#). [OE. fairie, faierie, enchantment, fairy folk, fairy, OF. faerie enchantment, F. féer, fr. LL. Fata one of the goddesses of fate. See Fate, and cf. Fay a fairy.] [Written also faëry.] 1. Enchantment; illusion. [Obs.] Chaucer.

The God of her has made an end,
And fro this worlde's fairy
Hath taken her into company.

Gower.

2. The country of the fays; land of illusions. [Obs.]

He [Arthur] is a king y-crowned in Fairy.

Lydgate.

3. An imaginary supernatural being or spirit, supposed to assume a human form (usually diminutive), either male or female, and to meddle for good or evil in the affairs of mankind; a fay. See Elf, and Demon.

The fourth kind of spirit [is] called the Fairy.

K. James.

And now about the caldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring.

Shak.

5. An enchantress. [Obs.] Shak.

Fairy of the mine, an imaginary being supposed to inhabit mines, etc. German folklore tells of two species; one fierce and malevolent, the other gentle, See Kobold.

No goblin or swart fairy of the mine
Hath hurtful power over true virginity.

Milton.

Fair"y, a. 1. Of or pertaining to fairies.

2. Given by fairies; as, fairy money. Dryden.

Fairy bird(Zoöl.), the Euoropean little tern (Sterna minuta); -- called also sea swallow, and hooded tern. -- Fairy bluebird. (Zoöl.)See under Bluebird. -- Fairy martin(Zoöl.), a European swallow (Hirrundo ariel) that builds flask-shaped nests of mud on overhanging cliffs. -- Fairyrings or circles, the circles formed in grassy lawns by certain fungi (as Marasmius Oreades), formerly supposed to be caused by fairies in their midnight dances. -- Fairy shrimp(Zoöl.), a European fresh-water phyllopod crustacean (Chirocephalus diaphanus); -- so called from its delicate colors, transparency, and graceful motions. The name is sometimes applied to similar American species. -- Fairy stone(Paleon.), an echinite.

FAIRY, n. A creature, variously fashioned and endowed, that formerly
inhabited the meadows and forests. It was nocturnal in its habits,
and somewhat addicted to dancing and the theft of children. The
fairies are now believed by naturalist to be extinct, though a
clergyman of the Church of England saw three near Colchester as lately
as 1855, while passing through a park after dining with the lord of
the manor. The sight greatly staggered him, and he was so affected
that his account of it was incoherent. In the year 1807 a troop of
fairies visited a wood near Aix and carried off the daughter of a
peasant, who had been seen to enter it with a bundle of clothing. The
son of a wealthy bourgeois disappeared about the same time, but
afterward returned. He had seen the abduction been in pursuit of the
fairies. Justinian Gaux, a writer of the fourteenth century, avers
that so great is the fairies' power of transformation that he saw one
change itself into two opposing armies and fight a battle with great
slaughter, and that the next day, after it had resumed its original
shape and gone away, there were seven hundred bodies of the slain
which the villagers had to bury. He does not say if any of the
wounded recovered. In the time of Henry III, of England, a law was
made which prescribed the death penalty for "Kyllynge, wowndynge, or
mamynge" a fairy, and it was universally respected.