The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries is W. Y. Evans-Wentz’s pioneering study of fairy belief across Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, and the Isle of Man. Combining fieldwork interviews with folklore, history, and comparative religion, the author records living traditions about fairies, the dead, and the otherworld among rural Celtic communities.
Evans-Wentz treats the fairy-faith seriously as a subject of anthropology and psychical research, weighing naturalistic, mythological, and psychological explanations. The result is both a rich archive of testimony and an early attempt to understand folk belief on its own terms. It remains a foundational work in Celtic folklore studies and a fascinating document of vanishing oral traditions, valued by anthropologists, folklorists, and readers of myth alike.