Simon Young & Davide Ermacora. The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and Other Social Supernatural Beings. University of Exeter Press, 2024. ISBN: 978-1-80413-104-6. 274 pp.

Simon Young and Davide Ermacora put together this compendium of European folklore through their own insight and the impeccable contributions of sixteen other scholars via fourteen independent studies.All eighteen of them attempt -and, quite frankly, succeed-to weave the supernatural phenomena across Europe and throughout the past two millennia, shedding new light onto the similarities and differences between beings pertaining to legends, stories and myths, and their social nature mirroring human societies.Chapter 1 "Introducing the Social Supernatural" serves as a guide to comprehend this volume and the aim of the authors.By coining the term "supernatural society", Young and Ermacora strive to prove that European folklore entities mostly reflect human societies and do so by means of a combination of the following attributes: choral actions or group activities, discernible hierarchies, shared homes either in nature or in human settlements, symbiosis between the earthly and the otherworldly and distinct personalities of these entities.While some beings may pertain to a collective rather than a supernatural society, Young and Ermacora propose to look at it in terms of a social spectrum, given the apparent threefold division of the continent with regards to this trait: all-female collectives tend to thrive in Eastern Europe, supernatural societies in the north-west and a richer and more varied supernatural ensemble in the south.In Chapter 2 "Ireland: The Tribes Of the Gods and the People of the Hills", John Carey describes these two groups as supernatural societies heavily linked to the human world, making most aspects of daily life dependent on them.Their social mechanics seem to parallel that of a human society, with a distinct hierarchy and specific roles (kings, druids, cooks, musicians).Also, most accounts confer them magical powers with spiritual or god-like statuses, even regarding these supernatural societies as having been bonded to the first Gaelic settlers, thus making every human subservient to them, as they personified the land they lived in and their prerogative to grant rule over the territories.Chapter 3 "The Isle of Man: They Call Them the Good People" brings us closer to the Manx fairylore, the first written evidence of which dates back to the 17 th century.Stephen Miller helps us to understand their fairies, those that could be anyplace at any given time and differed from other beings like water horses, mermaid-like entities or even ghosts.Fairies coexisted with humans in their households, were addressed by many names, and were responsible for every inexplicable circumstance (sudden illnesses, abductions, death) or fantastic occurrence.They are portrayed as neither benevolent nor malicious and humans needed to abide by their rules and offer them gifts, otherwise they would face severe consequences.Their place in society was clear: they passed judgement and placed morals and standards upon humans.According to Miller, as Manx language went extinct in the 20 th century, so did the belief and the presence of fairies on the island.Jeremy Harte puts together a corpus of legends and stories in Chapter 4 "England: Small Fairies Are Beautiful Fairies" where he analyses the themes contained in them and powers displayed by the English fairies.These tales survived thanks to the storytellers -often fairy fixers and scammers-who had either experienced firsthand or heard of their wonders (bestowing health, causing harm, gifting treasures).The English fairies, as Harte puts it, liked to be hidden and were linked to common places so as to make them more relatable to listeners.Modernity came with a dwindling in fairy belief, and so did their powers and wealth, as they became more proletarian.No longer did they feature as wealthy and trickster-like spirits but as common household ones that were once their moral compass.Chapter 5 "Iceland: The Elves of Strandir" introduces us to the traditional conceptualisation of elves by the hands of Matthias Egeler, who strays from the modern concept of fairy and elf that has permeated society Amaltea.