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Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome welcome to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit,

the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs,

from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise,

relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft.

Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Clap your hands if you believe in fairies. In the early modern period, pretty much everyone would have clapped.

But Peter Pan also tells us that every time a child says,

I don't believe in fairies, a fairy somewhere falls down dead.

And no one in early modern Britain would have thought that a bad thing.

But they wouldn't have said it all the same,

because they believed in a reverse danger, saying the word fairy cost the sayer a year of life. Well, my guest and I are

going to endanger our longevity today, as we're going to be saying it a lot. And much of what we have

to say concerns the ways in which fairies have been tamed, but were historically very dangerous indeed.

I'm joined by the brilliant Diane Perkis, professor of English literature and a tutorial fellow at Keeble College, Oxford.

Her books include The Witch in History, Magical Tales, and the one we'll be drawing on especially today, troublesome things,

a history of fairies and fairy stories. Professor Perkins joined me in February 24 to explore

the multi-fussed symbolism of fairies, to examine their role as gatekeepers of identity transitions,

...