Auberon to Elves.
	Fawns to Mumpoker.
	Nessie to Rumplestiltskin.
	Sea Monsters to Yallery Brown.

Auberon - The King of the Fairies. As you will learn, whilst reading this list, this job is not as great as it might seem because Fairies: A) Live in really boring places such as marl pits, cupboards, orchards & under bridges; B) Like to kill & eat people; C) Constantly lie, break stuff & sing songs about their own names; D) Have been completely homogenised by popular literature & film during the 20th centuary; E) Can't take a dose of their own medicine & get huffy if you treat them with the same disrespect they show you; & F) Hire out Hell to make a permanent home in & thus owe Satan big time. You might think that humans are responsable for a lot of unreasonable & destructive behaviour (& they are) but Fairies! Bah! Fairies stink!

Awd Goggie - A Boggart with nothing better to do but hide in orchards & eat kids who go oggie raiding.

Baba Yaga - A Russian/Slavic version of Black Annis but more of a witch that lived in a hut with chicken legs. If the hut proved too slow a form of transport she could fly about in her huge pestle & mortar. A lady of resource. Ate kids.

Banshee - If you ever see one of these spirits, wailing away next to a loch somewhere, get her to do your washing for you. It's meant to be lucky.

Black Annis - A hag with a blue face, iron claws & one eye. She devoured lambs & ate kids. Believed by some to be a derivative of the Goddess Dana, or Anu. Can't recall which.

Black Dogs - Commonly sighted spirit with various manifestations throughout Britain and further afield (in fact the recent Chupacubras phenomenon from Mexico has traits in common). Black Dogs are thought to be death portents; they are large (the size of a calf) & have shining red eyes. The Skriker has been rumoured to often take the form of a Black Dog.

Blix - Coolest Goblin ever on film. Possessed of many classic gobliny traits: Huge curvy nose; Rode about on a big shaggy Black Dog; Demonstrated interest in eating kids; Spoke in rhymes but was intelligent enough not to go on about own name; Best mates with a pig-like Goblin (a sort of pygmy Jimmy Squarefoot) & an undercover Gnome in a big suit of armour who spoke in a Mexican accent. Shot a Unicorn with a poisonous dart in Legend & never got any form of come-uppance, not from Tom Cruise or anyone. Even when his demonic master Tim Curry gets killed we never see what happens to Blix. Utterly cool.

Blue Men - They are like bitchy Merpeople, & are blue all over. They try to wreck ships that enter their strait of water. They are easily humiliated, however, & will swim off & cry if you take the mickey out of them (just like bitchy people everywhere - they can't stand it if beaten at their own game).

Boggart - Berated Brownies become badly behaved Boggarts. These are messy spirits who like to smash crockery, chip nicely varnished woodwork, muddy the carpet, tip the cat's litter tray, leave chocolate down the cracks in the furniture & use the last of the loo roll just before you have to take a dump. Really nasty ones eat kids.

Brownie - The Hobgoblin untouchable caste. Brownies are stunty, shaggy & have noses so small they're hardly more than nostrils. They're willing to do all odd jobs about a house, but sometimes mess up what he has been left tidy. Bread & milk can be left unobtrusively as a reward to an industrious Brownie, but they must not be openly offered or the Brownie will take a huff & refuse to work again. Killimous are Brownies who do not have small noses but instead have a face mostly made up of nose, they feed by stuffing bits of bread up their huge nostrils.

Caryl Churchill - Beautiful & benevolent spirit of wild creativity. Accepts tributes in the spirit that they are given & never takes people to court for copywrite infringment.

Changelings - Hire Hell out & you have to pay a yearly tithe of seven fair souls, which is just what Auberon & Titania did. Now being immoral types the Fairies don't fling their own into Satan's clutches but aquire unwilling subjects from humans by stealing their babies & leaving Changelings in their places. Changelings are either old worn-out Fairies or bits of wood carved to look like babies. Changeling stays with human family, baby goes to Hell. A kind of supernatural French exchange trip.

City Hobgoblin - Manchester thug from Collyhurst in the 70's. Second name likely to be Perry. Ate Morrisseys & Smiths.

Cluricane - What Leprechauns are known as when they decide to get rat-arsed.

Djinn - Cool alternate spelling of Genie. Arabian spirits of terrible power & intelligence who are nevertheless easily fooled into trapping themselves into bottles.

Dragon - You know what a bloomin' Dragon is!

Drowe - Nasty Elves with loose morals, black skin & silver hair. They always call themselves silly names like Niathillian Doomblade, Thorne Aspidrall or Dorian Darkone. Readers of unimaginative fantasy novels love them & aspire to be them.

Duregar - Dwarves who haunt scottish mountains & lure travellers off cliff faces & into ravines. Suffer much the same kind of PR problem that afflicts Drowe Elves in that pitiful players of substandard roleplaying games view them as some kind of be & end of all that is evil. Perhaps this is why they are so pissed off.

Dwarves - Originally Dwarves were Scandinavian Dark Elves who lived in the mountains as miners & craftsmen. They were a greedy & selfish folk who asked extortionate prices for items as simple as "a fine yet unbreakable chain with which to bind Fenris, the largest, strongest & most malicious of the wolves who ever existed & who one day will swallow the sun & usher in Ragnarok". Then Tolkien came along & homogenised them for today's bearded-wee-viking-hungry audience. Not that I think that this is Tolkien's fault, more so the horde of Gary Gygax/David Gemmel/Terry Pratchett type noideasofmyown who followed him. Not that I'm any better mind you ... & Walt Disney didn't help either.

Elves - Tiny Scandinavian spirits who look after flowers or Tolkienesque badasses who live forever, wield terrible magical powers, rule Middle Earth, never get sick & are dead handy with a sword? You tell me.

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Fawns - The Roman version of Satyrs, men with goat's legs and features. Their appearance was akin to the great God Pan. They like their wine & their women. Song seems to be more optional.

Flibbertigibbet - A frightening & mischievious spirit. Possessed of cool name &, unlike the Rumplestiltskins of this world, modest enough to keep schtum about it.

Giant - A very big kid-eating Fairy.

Gnomes - Small elemental spirits made of earth. Occasionally fired hard & placed into the gardens of very tasteless people.

Goblins - A general name given to any fairy or spirit whom mankind has found malicious & grotesque. Jim Henson had a great crack at Goblins in the film Labyrinthe but made them sort of lovable & slapstick. Kev Adams also did this for his range of Citadel figures, great minatures but far too benign to be truely Goblin. Then along came Brian Nelson & BAM! Citadel Goblins were nasty. The film of the Lord of the Rings made Goblins look nasty too, but robbed them of any character or prowess. The best Goblin put to film is therefore Blix from Legend, who both looks nasty & achieves nasty things.

Gorgon - What your ex-girlfriend turned into the minute she left you. You wish.

Green Women - An English derivative of Nymphs I reckon.

Gremlins - Wee sprits that fart about with technical devices. So blame them & not me for any broken links & bad spelling you find on this site.

Grendal - You know when your friends want to have a party & you don't feel like joining in? Or when some pranny blasts techno out of his Capri on the road outside your house when you've been working all week & fancy a nice lie in? Or your neighbour mows his lawn at 8AM on a Sunday? Grendal felt like all of that & more all of the time. Basically he was a personification of people's huffy boyfriends. Beowulf (an early raver) killed him for it.

Hobgoblins - Similar to Goblins but of slightly better tempers (as a soft & slow rule). Brownies are a type of Hobgoblin. So are yobs in Manchester.

Jack-in-Irons - A Giant who would waylay lone travellers whilst dressed only in iron chains. How on earth did a Giant dressed in chains make such a good ambusher? I don't know.

Jenny Greenteeth - A nasty water Fairy. She drags people (kids mostly) down into the water & drowns them. Then she waits for the bodies to go rotten & soft. Then she eats them.

Jimmy Squarefoot - A stone-throwing Giant who rode about on the back of a pig & haunted the Isle of Man. His appearance later became that of a huge pig-like man (maybe some medeival genetic splicing went on) & in this guise he was a lot less threatening.

Kelpie - Another nasty piece of work (yeah, Fairies aren't as nice as they were when portrayed in that book about flowers you owned as a wee 'un). This spirit is a water horse who likes to change into a man & seduce girls (look for the wet shirt tails & sand in his hair ladies, & if they are present find a new date for the evening). If the seduction is a success he then changes back into a horse, drags them underneath the waters of a loch & eats them.

Kit-A-Can-Stick - A Boggart who likes to hide in people's houses & make their lives a misery. Holds the Boggart record for the most marriages broken. A bullroot.

Knockers - These are the cave & mine Goblins. They are said to be the spirits of the Jews who once worked the tin mines. They are usually friendly to miners, and knock to warn them of disaster, and also show what seams are most profitable.

Kobolds - A German spirit with traits in common with Knockers. But not as nice.

Lamia - Reptillian monster with the face & breasts of a fair maiden. Much like my ex-girlfriend.

Leprechauns - Fairy shoemakers & guardians of large hoardes of treasure. Miserly little grumps at that. Their hidden pot of gold at the end of the rainbow has been located by Irish souvenir shops & now Leprechauns are their slaves. Off duty Leprechauns enjoy a drink & become Cluricanes.

Manticore - Persian beastie with a barbed poisonous tail, a lion's body, a man's head with three rows of teeth & with the power to jump higher than any other animal (even the flea). "Manticore" means "kideater" or something.

Merpeople - Fairies that have adapted to life in the sea by substituting their legs for a fishy tail. Usually underfed due to the relative lack of available food. They enjoy the summer holidays immensly.

Merrows - The Merrows are Irish Merpeople. Their women are said to be beautiful but their menfolk are a grotesque merger of man & fish. They can only live underwater due to their red caps & they can be bargained with if this headgear is taken from them.

Mumpoker - I am not even going to start to explain the hideous habits of this aptly named Goblin. Doesn't eat kids, just mentally scars them for life.

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Nessie - See Monster. Sorry, I mean Sea Monster. So see Sea Monster.

Nixies - Water spirits who like to beguile people & then drown them in rivers & lakes. Fishy.

Nucklavee - Homicidal Orkney centaur with huge head, no skin, large mouth set in torso, carnivorous appetite & allergy to running fresh water. Eats lots of kids. If someone made a Top Trumps set out of Fairies then the Nucklavee would have the biggest Kid Eating score.

Nymphs - Female woodland spirits. Often associated with the life of a particular tree. Particularly beloved of male fantasy artists who want an excuse to draw curvy ladies in skimpy costumes & then claim they are doing so in order to reference a classic mythology rather than meter out some teenage kicks.

Ogres - Big flesh-eating Giants. The biggest & most flesh-eating of all Giants ever, in fact. They like to live in caves & are often cyclopean (meaning one-eyed, not that wierd term that HP Lovecraft kept using in relation to architecture, but never actually defined). Blow good ambushes by shouting "Fee Fi Foe Fum" at potential prey.

Orcs - Tolkien's name for Goblins. Thank God he gave them a different name & therefore saved them from the homogenisation suffered by Dragons, Trolls, Elves & Dwarves in the wake of his omnipresent, albeit smashing, books. They eat kids, & Hobbits.

Ouph - The noise an Elf makes when winded.

Ouuurrrrrphh! - The noise a Troll makes 30 minutes after eating a kid.

Padfoot - A demon dog with glowing eyes that haunts lonely lanes near Leeds (& boy, are the lanes near Leeds lonely). A probable alias of The Skriker.

Pegasus - The white winged horse from Greek myth. Dead ones fall from cliffs heavy & bulky. Splat.

Pixies - Proto-grunge combo from Boston MA. Early work considered a classic period, though in my opinion the Trompe Le Monde LP is vastly underrated. Post break-up solo efforts have been mostly disapointing, save for a few decent singles here & there. Oh well, they were never as good as The Fall anyway. Lead singer Black Francis probably never ate a kid, but once claimed to have gobbled up a man who stood on his face.

Pooka or Phooka - "The Irish Puck" is in appearance like a wild, shaggy pony. He can also change into a giant eagle & gives rides to people on his back. Quite a decent sort, for a Fairy.

Puck - "The merry wanderer of the night" or "that homicidal maniac" depending in which source you believe. Knowing what the average Fairy is like I would have to agree with the latter.

Rawhead&BloodyBones - An evil spirit who dragged kids down into old marl pits (where he liked to live for some undisclosed reason) & drown & eat them. Do you see a pattern forming? Yes, Fairies are a lot of bleedin' psychos.

Redcap - Many Goblins are stupid but Redcaps take the biscuit. They haunt old Peel Towers; (Have you seen one of these? There's no way in or out for a start! How are you meant to terrorise folk if they can't come in to see you?) use a pikestaff; (A twelve foot weapon? In the room of a Peel Tower? At close quarters?) & dye their clothes in human blood (Urgh - think of the smell!). Twerps & kideaters, every single one of them.

Robin Goodfellow - See Puck.

Rumplestiltskin - A German Fairy who offered to help out a girl. She had foolishly boasted about being able to spin straw into gold & he saved her bacon by doing it for her in return for her firstborn child. When it came round to paying the Fairy back the girl grieved so much that he offered to let her out of her contract if she could guess his name within three days (more than fair if you ask me). She was having a hard time of it until the third day when a friend of her's overheard him singing a song about his own name in a wood. The girl was told of this & said to Rumplestiltskin "Your name is Rumplestiltskin", thus getting out of giving him her child. Fortunately for the Fairies not many of them are this stupid.

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Sea Monsters - The Wedding Present's best LP (thanks mainly to a searing combination of classic songwriting by David Gedge & Steve Albini's vinegar-clatter recording technique). Sean Hughes' favourite record.

Selkies - If you ever hear a grey seal cry you will understand why medeival people thought they were Fairies who could take human form. I've heard them & they scared the shit out of me. Sounds like a baby in pain. Brrrr! Horny vixens also make the same sort of sound. They're regarded as Fairy animals too.

Skriker - Another unpleasant Goblin & the focus of the tale. The Skriker is a shape-shifter who often adopts the form of a Black Dog with glowing red saucer eyes. It is known to be a death portent, those who see it either die or have someone close to them die a short time later. The Skriker is sometimes known as Padfoot & may also be Brash or Black Shuck.

Spriggans - The Spriggans are the ghosts of Giants. They are small but can swell to enormous size. They are the guardians of fairy treasure (when a Leprechaun can't be found to do the job).

Titania - The Queen of the Fairies. As you will learn, whilst reading this list, this job is not as wild as it sounds because Fairies: A) Live in really out-of-the-way places such as old mushroom rings, abandoned Celtic barrows, the Orkneys, the bottom of the ocean & Leeds; B) Serve wierdo food at parties which only they like; C) Demonstrate shocking ego problems by constantly changing their size & shape; D) Appear in groups of 20 in order to give a petty party of adventurers 40 experience points & 3D6 gold pieces; E) Get killed in droves by teenage American girls; & F) Tear all their hair out just because you overheard them singing songs about their own names. You might think that humans are partial to some pathetic & desperate behaviour (& they are) but Fairies! Huh! Fairies suck!

Thrumpins - Tiny spirits who would hover over a person with the power to take their life. The opposite of a guardian angel. Warning: Fly swatter of no avail; use Wasp-Eze.

Tom Bombadil - The most annoying character in a book ever.

Tom Tit Tot - A British Fairy who offered to help out a girl. Her mother had foolishly boasted about her being able to spin five skeins of flax a day & he saved her bacon by doing it for her in return for her hand in marriage. When it came round to paying the Fairy back the girl grieved so much that he offered to let her out of her contract if she could guess his name within three days (more than fair if you ask me). She was having a hard time of it until the third day when a friend of her's overheard him singing a song about his own name in a wood. The girl was told of this & said to Tom Tit Tot "Your name is Tom Tit Tot", thus getting out of their wedding. Fortunately for the Fairies not many of them are this stupid.

Trolls - Carnivorous Scandinavian Giants who turn to stone in the sunlight & often enjoy lurking under bridges (yet another supernatural creature with nothing better to do other than lurk somewhere dingy & kill & frighten people!). They don't have much in common, name aside, with the tacky plastic toys that were so in vogue during the early-mid 90's except for the fact that the plastic toys, in a depressing & metaphorical manner, ate kids.

Trowes - Shetland equivalent of Elves.

Unicorn - Everyone always goes on about these creatures being killed cause they forgot to get on the Ark. So how come they populate medeival romances? Huh? Have reputation for being rather wussy supernatural creatures but are in fact bastard-hard due to being heavilly-built horses with a sharp, long horn pointing out of their heads.

Vampire™ - White Wolf™ cash cow. Games of this could be brilliant experiences if the majority of players weren't such a bunch of Boggarts, Trolls & Goblins.

Werewolves - Humans who turn into wolves every full moon. Many films have been made about these. The best of which is Angela Carter's effort In Company of Wolves. American Werewolf in London is also good but the sequal got such bad reviews that I never watched it. Some of the old hammer horror films feature werewolves & they can be good at times. Hit & miss though, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying all hammer horror is good (I would've hated seeing them do The Skriker for example) but some of their Werewolf films are cool enough. The Werewolf™ game, by White Wolf™, is a poor substitute for a good session of Vampire™. Changeling™ gets Fairies all wrong & should be avoided or rewritten.

Whuppity Stoorie - A Scottish Fairy who offered to help out a woman with a sick pig. The Fairy cured it for her in return for her firstborn child. When it came round to paying the Fairy back the woman grieved so much that she offered to let her out of her contract if the woman could guess her name in three days time (more than fair if you ask me). She was having a hard time of it until the third day when she overheard the Fairy singing a song about her own name behind her house. When the fairy came for the child the woman said to Whuppity Stoorie "Your name is Whuppity Stoorie", thus getting out of giving the Fairy her child. Fortunately for the Fairies not many of them are this stupid. Oh, hang on...

Wights - Can Blue Men sing them?

Will o' the Wisp - This is the commonest of the many popular names for Kenneth Williams.

Wraiths - People who are so arsey in life & then prove too annoying for Hell that they come back & act arsey after death. Your ex-partners will number among them.

Wyrm - Dragon with no legs or wings. Result of Dragon inbreeding.

Wyvern - Not as inbred as a Wyrm. Has wings & two legs.

Yallery Brown - An evil Hobgoblin covered in golden hair. He is known to punish those who offer him assistance or thank him for favours because he is a petulant wee arse.

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This site was last updated on:
15 November, 2008