The truth of faeries and names according to folklore:

The Internet has lead to many people thinking that faeries stealing names has always been a part of the lore. It’s actually not that common at all except in recent pop culture. The popularization of the idea of faeries wanting to steal names partly came about because of the same cross-pollination of lore that lead to the memes that perpetuate the idea. Anime like Spirited Away and modern fantasy literature stewed together with meme culture to perpetuate this idea.

In traditional Gaelic lore faeries don’t usually want to steal your name. They’re not out to get a credit card in your name while you sit there trying to remember your own birth certificate name but are drawing a blank. What they want, in most of the stories, is to *learn* your True Name. Not necessarily your given name, nickname, or even what everyone calls you. It’s not necessarily your legal name or what’s on your birth certificate. (But it can be any of those things). What they want is your TRUE name with a capital T. Your True name is NOT necessarily your legal name though that is a possibility. And no, it’s not necessarily the name you take during confirmation if you are Catholic. It’s the name that you carry deep inside. It might even be a secret name that no one knows but it IS the name you identify as deep inside, a name you associate with who and what you truly are. Everyone has a true name, whether they realize it or not.

I’ll give an example from pop culture. In Batman Beyond you see Bruce Wayne beint tornented by the villain, Vertigo. Vertigo tries to pass himself off as Brue’s subconscious but Bruce figures out it’s not his own mind because Vertigo is not calling him by his TRUE name. And in his mind Bruce’s True name, even in old age, is Batman. Terry tries telling Bruce later “You know you’re not Batman anymore, right?” and Bruce responds with “Tell that to my subconsicous.”

Bruce sees himself utterly as Batman, not as Bruce Wayne. In The Sandman: The Wake Clark Kent (Superman), and Martian Manhunter appear at The Wake but Bruce Wayne is there as Batman because that’s who he sees himself as deep down inside.

In the 1985 film Fright Night we meet has-been horror actor and TV horror host, Peter Vincent. The character Charlie Brewster has discovered that his neighbor is a real vampire and he seeks Peter’s help. When Peter finally comes to realize that Charlie is actually right and that Jerry Dandridge is, in fact, a vampire, he’s terrified. He protests that Peter Vincent is only a character and not even his real name. However, after some soul searching and character growth, and circumstances force Peter Vicent to kill a boy who recently was turned into a vampire, Peter Vincent comes to embrace his persona. He realizes that Peter Vincent isn’t merely a character. He is the hero he always secretly wanted to be, the hero he NEEDS to be. And so he repeats to himself “I am Peter Vincent, the Great vampire Killer!” until he finally accepts that yes, this is who he is. This is who he must be now. He finally becomes the character he had played, the persona of who he had always secretly longed to be but was afraid of. By the end of the film he was, indeed, Peter Vincent. You never even learn his “real” name in the movie because that does not matter. It’s not who he truly is. He IS Peter Vincent.

In Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman the main character (who is the living embodiment of dreams) is over ten-billion-years-old but he seems to consider the relatively recent (only a few thousand years old) name of Morpheus to be his true name. He can be summoned by calling out this name. This is why it annoyed me that G. Willow Wilson (In The Dreaming: Waking Hours comic) depicted Heather After (who is trans) as having her deadname being her true name and the story tried to make it empowering that she determined that true names have no real power. I think it would have been more satisfying if her chosen name of Heather After turned out to be her true name. Heather is a great character but that was a terrible plot point. Her Deadname should NEVER be perceived as her true name even if true names hold no power in the story. Heather After (her chosen name) should have been her True Name and it would have been a confirmation of this if there was power in it. A True Name is not necessarily a legal name or birth name or even the most well known name that you answer to though it can be any of those things. What matters is that it is the name you consider yourself. Sometimes you, yourself, may not even know your own true name but if someone calls it, you’ll know it, your very soul will feel it. One could even surmise that the historic Vlad (Vladislaus) the Third of Wallachia AKA Vlad Tepes (The impaler), known as Kazıklı Bey by the Ottomans, had chosen his own true name when he chose the patronymic of Dracula (with various archaic spellings) to honor his father and his membership to the Order of the Dragon (Dracul). Dracula means Son of the Dragon.

And yes, a True Name can change over time but it is not common and does not happen often. Some people take years trying to find out their own True Name.

So why do faeries want to learn someone’s true name? Well, it’s simple. Knowledge has power and this is a particular type of power. In occult practices if you know a magical entity’s true name you can invoke them, summon them to you, banish them or bind and enslave them. This is why faeries want to know your true name. It’s much more potent than stealing the knowledge of a legal name. It is to gain utter power of you by knowing your truest self, the name by which you could be conjured and can pull at your essence.

To me this is far more interesting than the idea of a faery stealing your name. They can, through knowing your true name, lay claim to YOU!

(Faerie art by Brian Froud from his book Good Faeries / Bad Faeries).

“Is the word ‘Fae’ offensive?” The sort answer is No. No, it is not.

There is a strange debate on if the term fae would be considered a slur to the entities this term is in regard to. The Internet, in its “infinite wisdom” collectively decided that fae is incorrect because it is “new” and then someone made the logic-leap that the entities it refers to would find the term offensive, or slur-like. I have it on good authority that they would not find it offensive. Think of all the mischief that would mysteriously befall many works of fantasy literature if this was the case. It is true that the etymology of fae and fairy are from French and in turn from Latin meaning Fates however the usage of Fae by other cultures has a bit of a twisting, Labyrinthine, history. These beings, in Norse lore, were known as Alfir, Alfie, or Alfr and from this we get the word “elf.” In Gaelic lore these entities were called the sidhe (pronounced as “She”). The Banshee comes from the Gaelic Bean Sidhe (Woman fairy). However not all female faeries are the banshee. You may notice there’s an overlap with ghost stories and faery lore in old folk legends. The reason for this is in some lore a human or a human’s ghost could become a faery. The banshee was usually, formerly, a deceased mortal woman. Washington Irving even referred to The Headless Horseman, in his Legend of Sleepy Hollow, as a goblin. This may come from the Irish having a specific term for the souls of men who lost their heads in battle becoming a type of dangerous faerie known as a Dullahan. Despite The Legend of Sleepy Hollow being set in a Dutch New York colony, I can’t help but think there was some Irish influence here. Faeries are not always the tiny pixies like Tinkerbell. You get powerful and sometimes harmful beings like the Dullahan (headless Horsemen), Red Caps (Goblin-like creatures that soak their caps in the blood of those those kill), goblins, trolls, The Erlking, and many scary entities – some of which literally feed on fear. For this reason the Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and English were afraid to offend them. And they came up with euphemisms like The Good Neighbors, The Beautiful People, and The Fair Folk. When the word Fairy came to the English language it was tied to The Beautiful People euphemism and evolved into “The Fair Folk” before reverting back to Fairy, Faery (Older speller), and Fae. A winding path but the word found two passages into modern language. So no, these entities would probably not find the word fae offensive, especially if those using it are using it with the intention of flattery like with “Fair folk.” It’s similar to how The Greeks sometimes called The Furies (Erinyes) is The Kindly Ones, because you want them to act kindly. Calling the faeries by The Beautiful People or Fair Folk was to flatter them into not doing harm. And calling them The Good Neighbors was in the hope that they would behave as such. In works of fiction actual slurs for these sort of beings include “knife ears’ and in the now canceled TV show, Carnival Row, the word Critch, which is derived from “Creature” and sounds a little like a certain B word. Side Note: Count Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel was supposed to have pointed ears. Imagine how he would react to a slur targeting his anatomy like that. You probably would not survive the night. Now, what you probably should worry about is how virtually identical powerful entities exist in cultures all over Europe and parts of North America. Immortal or near-immortal entities that might pass for human but not quite. My own sources – The book Dark Faeries by Dr. Robert Curran, as well as many works of fantasy literature and folklore. Image by Brian Froud from the book Good Faeries / Bad Faeries.

Happy Vernal Equinox / Happy Ostara!

Venting about a pretentious fan of Irish folklore

I'm going to vent a little here. Yesterday in my Facebook group dedicated to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman we started on a conversation about Irish folklore. It was a fine enough conversation which, almost predictably drifted to Banshees. I mentioned how the original word was the Gaelic "Bean Sidhe" (still pronounced like the modern Banshee) so it's almost like just saying "Woman faery." Somehow this earned a very pretentious and condescending response from someone who was insistent that Sidhe are not faeries. She said "Obviously you're not Irish." and then went on to tell me that Sidhe aren't "Fluttery little things with wings" and how they are "Not Tinkerbell" and that they are "More like Titania and Oberon from Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream. Two things had me seeing red with this. The first is the "Obviously you're not Irish." It was very condescending and dismissive. I think she had seen my American location on my Facebook account and then decided that I must not know folklore no matter what I said.

The second issue is how wrong she was. For starters, I never once claimed that sidhe are "Tiny fluttering things with wings." and ironically we (others in the group and myself) had discussed Titania and Oberon previously in that very thread. The Fae Court turn up quite a few times in Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. Also it was kind of baffling that she felt the need to imply that Titania and Oberon are not faeries. "My Fairy Lord, this must be done with haste" is literally something Robin Goodfellow (Puck) says in Shakespeare's a Midsummer Night's Dream.

I think she, herself, was confusing the word faery and pixie. For though pixies are faeries not all faeries are pixies. Faery is a blanket term for many entities of Irish folklore including the Sidhe, and even the Dullahan (headless Horsemen). She felt the need to lecture me about how dangerous faeries can be. Ma'am, this is a Sandman group. Neil Gaiman's The Sandman features a homocidal hobgoblin version of The Puck. Most of us are well-aware of how dangerous these beings are in traditional folklore.

What made it even more infuriating was in her effort to "correct" me even though there was nothing to correct, she had somehow earned eight likes and loves on the comment. I pride myself on my knowledge of folklore. I have read Dark Faeries by Dr. Robert Curran, An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures by Katherine Briggs, Irish Fairy and Folktales (leatherbound Barnes and Noble edition). And several others but those are the titles that come to mind.

What made this extra baffling is I said nothing that contradicts anything she said here about the Sidhe being dangerous, and closer to Oberon and Titania than Tinkerbell.

I think she, herself, was confusing the word faery and Pixie.

On a final note, I understand the frustration of those that think faeries are all tiny pixies but that's not what I had said at all and. And ironically, Tinkerbell isn't all that nice, herself. In the original story she tried to have Wendy killed out of jealousy.

I’m so tired of the posts talking about fae “stealing” names. Fae don't actually "steal" your name.   They gain power over you by knowing your true name.  Honestly, I'm not sure how this lore got so mixed up recently and suspiciously mostly on Tumblr... Do all of you just read the memes and never the actual folklore?!

Happy Walpurgisnacht!

Happy Walpurgisnacht! April 30th is the Night of Saint Walpurgis, a Germanic holiday that was the medieval spring equivalent of Halloween, celebrated roughly at the half-way point to Halloween. It is a night when witches supposedly gather and hold festivals in the woods with goblins, fae and the like to trade spells and potions.   The night gets mentioned in Goethe's Faust and in Dracula's Guest by Bram Stoker.  

So I just found out there is a breed of snail called the  scaly-foot snail (which some people online are calling the "Volcano Snail.")  Anyway, it turns out this snail's shell is made of iron sulfide.  That's right.   His shell is iron.   That means there is a snail out there, whose shell can kill a faerie.  

For the hundredth time for people who THINK they know faerie lore!

Fae don't "take the name" as in "steal" the name and leave you nameless.  That's something some confused folkloric newbie got from an anime and brutally misunderstood.   Names have power.  A fae KNOWING your true name gives them power over you, the ability to possibly summon you if you're a magick user.   This isn't just true with fae.  It's true with sorcerers.  It's why late nineteenth century and early twentieth century occultists always used names that they wanted to be called instead of their "true" name.  True names aren't necessarily the name you are born to, by the way.  It's the name you most associate with yourself. It was common in fantasy fiction for years.  It's even common in fairy tales.  It's why the Queen knowing Rumpelstiltskin's name enabled her to banish him.   Honestly, it's like some idiots saw Spirited Away and got "confused" and started to think fae simply leave you nameless or some bullshit and as someone who has actually read folklore it's REALLY annoying.

I love Gaslight fantasy

I love Gaslight fantasy.  Gaslight fantasy is also known as Gaslamp fantasy.  And before I go any further, no I am not “Confusing” the terms.   Gaslighting as a term comes from a 1940s film called “Gaslight” where a man tricks a woman into doubting her perceptions of reality.   The concept of “gaslighting” as a verb to mean this didn’t exist until that film.   The title of the film was named for the object, “gaslights” which were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This has nothing to do with “gaslighting.”   I should not have had to explain this but... Tumblr...  

There is a new genre of fantasy / Gothic horror fiction called Gaslight fantasy.   This genre can be compared to High Fantasy, Gothic Horror, and Steampunk in many aspects and yet it is wholly it’s own entity.   

Gaslight Fantasy is a genre where a fantasy world resembles our world’s Victorian era but the supernatural such as monsters and magick are known to be real.  It bears a lot of elements of Gothic Horror and many examples of Gaslight Fantasy also fit the genre of Gothic Horror but unlike the term “Gothic Fantasy” which feels like an attempt to circumvent acknowledging that Gothic Horror is a form of Horror, Gaslight Fantasy can exist in tandem with Gothic Horror as descriptors for the same property.  As a result it is a new sub-genre I welcome as opposed to “Gothic Fantasy” which feels like a term invented by those embarrassed of liking horror.  

Example: Barnes and Noble slapping “Gothic Fantasy” across the cover of their leather bound versions of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft, as well as Dracula, and Frankenstein.  Those are all Gothic Horror and the use of “Gothic Fantasy” feels like a term for those ashamed of the horror aspect or don’t realize horror can be more than just gore and jump scares. 

Further note: Frankenstein is often considered the first science fiction novel but Victor found the secret of life while reading the works of Agrippa and Paracelsus, a self-proclaimed alchemist and sorcerer.  Also Victor was studying metaphysics, not biology.  The Frankenstein monster is often considered (in fantasy-loving circles) to be a “Flesh golem with a soul.”  Psuedo-intellectualists seem to chafe at the idea that Frankenstein is a horror story and prefer to call it science fiction because there is still this incorrect ant antiquated notion that horror is low brow and cannot contain romanticism or emotional, spiritual, and moral explorations. 

Even The Shape of Water, which can easily be mistaken as a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of The Creature (But with a happy ending for The Creature) is often called “Supernatural romance” instead of Horror even though there are scary moments, atmosphere, violence, death, supernatural elements, and other things usually associated with the horror genre. 

The same thing happened with Silence of the Lambs, which was branded “Thriller” when it got its Oscar nomination.   It seems the Oscar nomination might be why The Shape of Water isn’t classified as horror either.

Director Guillermo del Toro (though a clear lover of Gothic Horror) seems reluctant to classify his own films as Gothic Horror even though Crimson Peak is clearly paying homage to Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath and Hammer Horror films.       

It’s the cultural resentment of Gothic Horror that makes me dislike the term “Gothic Fantasy” but I am willing to embrace the new idea of Gaslight Fantasy that can exist within Gothic Horror or side by side with it, in the same story. 

Though it’s still a relatively new genre I do love the refreshingly new concept of Gaslight Fantasy as a reimagined Victorian era that isn’t just full of zeppelins, steam engines and gears (like the typical superficial Steampunk tropes) but also supernatural creatures and or magick being common place.   Not to mention so many fantasy stories are set in a pseudo-Middle ages Europe-esque land like in Game of Thrones and The Witcher, that it’s clever and different that the fantasy world doesn’t look like the late dark ages but instead the late nineteenth century, just to give it a different aesthetic and atmosphere while retaining a sense of wonder and historical nostalgia, though blatantly and deliberately inaccurate.    

  Examples of Gaslight Fantasy include: Amazon Prime’s Carnival Row - Set in a nineteenth century style city where humans, faeries, werewolves, Franeknstein-style monsters, trolls, fauns, and centaurs co-exist.   This is probably the first true, mainstream, gaslight fantasy and the best example of the genre.  It deals with Jack the Ripper style murders in a slum inhabited by magical creatures.  It’s a lot like Penny Dreadful but Penny Dreadful pretends to be set in our world where most people do not know the supernatural exists whereas Carnival Row is not quite our world and people know about most of the supernatural creatures who reside there.  

Dolls of New Albion - Dolls of New Albion is described as a steampunk musical, is set in a world where human souls can be summoned from Elysium (Greek Heaven) and inserted into semi-mechanical dolls.  The fact that the afterlife is treated as a common knowledge fact in a world that just resembles ours in the Victorian era, and human souls can be inserted into doll-like bodies indicates to me that this actually drifts into Gaslight fantasy.     

The movie Van Helsing- Though this film is what I would call Goth Action (Gothic Horror merged with action) the film Van Helsing is very much what I would consider Gaslight fantasy. Set in what looks like our world’s Victorian era and even using real-world place names there are distinct differences, such as The Vatican behaving as a secret monster hunting organization instead of just the Capital of the Catholic Church.  Similar can be said about the setting of Castlevania that is distinctly another world even though it resembles ours and has our European place names though that one is set in the fifteenth century.

Howl’s moving Castle - Though bearing Steampunk elements, the common knowledge of magick, in a setting that is not quite our world, and reminiscent of the Victorian era of our world, or even the Edwardian era, makes Howl’s Moving Castle very much a Gaslight fantasy.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - Though easily considered Steampunk or Gothic Horror, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen bears some fantasy elements mixed with the horror and the resemblance to our world is dubious at best. 

Stardust - The film and novel by Neil Gaiman deal with a wall that separates the human world from the realm of Faerie and a young man’s journey where he meets a fallen star in humanoid form, and his own long lost mother.  In this world the barrier between the human world and the realm of magick is a known and tangible fact.

Discworld - The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett are set in a fantasy world known as.. the Disworld, supported by four elephants riding on the back of a giant turtle, the Discworld pays homage to and parodies fantasy tropes in a pseudo-Victorian / Edwardian setting.  The setting includes witches, wizards, Death incarnate, ghosts, golems, faeries, and so on.

His Dark Materials - His Dark Materials (i.e. The Golden Compass) is set in a fantasy version of the Edwardian and provides a stark commentary about religion and society.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - A very odd British mini-series and novel about two competing men who work with magick in what looks like late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century England but it’s really its own fantasy setting.  The subplot deals with a dark faery known as The Gentleman and his schemes.

A study in Emerald - Another one by Neil Gaiman, this is an alternate universe version of Sherlock Holmes’ story A Study in Scarlet, but a version of late Victorian England where Lovecraftian Old Ones have taken over and nothing is quite what it seems.  Anno Dracula - Anno Dracula is an alternate universe version of Victorian England set after the events of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker but if Dracula had won and married Queen Victoria.

Beauty and the Beast - The 1740 novel by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Though nearly a century before the Victorian era this does fit much of the criteria of the Gaslight Fantasy.  There’s political intrigue with faeries, and unlike the Disney film, the novel is not set in France. It’s a fictional land that just resembles eighteenth century France.  And there are other fictional kingdoms such as “The Summer Isle.”  

Pinocchio -  The original novel by Carlo Collodi was set in a surreal, fictionalized version of early 1880s Europe and featured anthropomorphic animals, faeries, self-aware tree bark, and heavy handed human to animal transformations to represent the metaphor of becoming a jackass.   

Ravenloft - The Gothic Horror portion of Dungeons and dragons.  Where Dungeons and dragons already featured elves, dwarves, and wizards Ravenloft contains vampires, Flesh Golems (Frankenstein-style monsters) and werewolves.

Castlevania - Not so much the Netflix Castlevania series... yet but parts of the Castlevania video games franchise count as Gaslight fantasy.  Castlevania begins in a fantastical version of fifteenth century Wallachia (Romania) where vampires, demons and various other monsters are known to be real.   Later installments in the game are set in that world’s version of the nineteenth century.  Though place names match our own it is very clearly not our world as teleporting castles, vampire warlords, and entire towns being wiped out by vampire armies never made it into our own history books.   There are also some steampunk-esque historical inaccuracies in technology and science.  Castlevania is most assuredly a horror themed franchise but it also fits the criteria of Gaslight fantasy.

Scientific hypotheses about Faeries based on folklore and pop culture. 

1.   To enable flight, much like bats and birds, faeries likely have hollow and smaller bones.  This would account for the physical descriptions of faeries as being delicate.  This idea is used in the fantasy TV series Carnival Row.

  2. Most faeries have a hypersensitivity or severe allergy to iron which can be fatal.  This could mean that if injured by iron the iron then contaminates the blood stream, causing difficulty or a slowing down in the healing process, while other fae might experience a burning sensation and reddening of the skin from merely touching iron.  This lore has been used in Disney’s Gargoyles, and the Maleficent film franchise.   It has its roots in Gaelic folklore as well as nordic.

3.  Faeries are likely not very virile or fertile.  Though there are natural births in most faery folklore they appear to be few and far between.   This would account for why faeries are so (often obsessively) incline to turn humans into fae through external means such as enchanted faery food / fruit which enables a bio-chemical metamorphosis on the human and making them a faery as well.   This might only be possible because human seem to be closest genetic cousin to sidhe.

4.   Much like the Turritopsis dohrnii (immortal Jelly fish) faeries are likely biologically immortal.  To date humans only know of only one real biologically immortal lifeform and that is a jelly fish that can revert to its Larvae stage, much like a mythological phoenix rising from the ashes and restored to youth.  The Disney film Maleficent: Mistress of Evil claims that the dark fae of that lore are directly descended from the phoenix.  It is possible that fae have very slowed aging but as biological immortality has been discovered as being probable within the realms of science, it is also possible that their aging halts at some point in their prime and at that point the fae may only die from violence (likely iron related.

5.  Faeries likely have varying levels of psychic potential from empathy and moderate levels of telepathy, to close range telekinesis or even pyrokinesis, hydrokenesis, or transvection (self-levitation). This increases a distinct difference in the potential brain activity of the faery. Where personality and emotions might be comparable to human certain instincts and inclinations, along with abilities, might seem utterly alien to a neurotypical human being.  They may even experience emotions more intensely than most human beings.    

6.  Faeries are emotionally and physiologically codependent on humans. The mild level of psychic potential also seems to allow the faery to sustain some energy, or power, from the beliefs or thoughts of others. If humans think of them- or better yet believe in them, this helps them to retain perpetual existence, using that belief as a fuel, more so than any physical food.  The constant “feed” of psychic energy might also account for why “true names” have so much power over a faery, if the person using the true name believes in it strongly enough the result is a psychosomatic compulsion to acknowledge that belief in kind.  

7.    Based on popular culture (especially of the twentieth and early twenty first century) with such things as Disney films and TV shows like Once Upon a Time and toy manufacturers making dolls and figures predominantly of female faeries, if faeries are sustained by belief, than there is a very high chance the culture would be matriarchal.      

8.  Much like how vampires are often depicted in Eastern European folklore there is a very high chance that faeries express some form of Obsessive compulsive behavior, such as the compulsive desire to make bargains with humans.  

9.   Faeries might be prone to Hypoglycemia and actually require a much higher amount of carbohydrates to function properly and to feel satisfied.  This could be because they require the high concentration of carbohydrates for the energy required in things such as flight.  Much like human children who are still growing they are often depicted craving sweets or sweet substances such as honey on bread, biscuits, pastries, milk, cream, fruit, and other foods high in sugar.  10.   Though there are plenty of stories of half-faery and half-human children in pop culture (i.e. Philo in Carnival Row or Fox in Disney’s Gargoyles) it seems more likely, based on the other traits of faerism, that faeries are a sort of entity where if you are “half” faery you are a faery, period.   Much like being diabetic or a mutant in Marvel comics.  You either are one or you are not, there is no true half.  It’s likely the faery DNA is more prone to overriding the physiology in the womb, and “over write” the human DNA, though certain superficial traits such as eye or hair color from the human parent might remain in tact.   “Faerism” just seem a more dominant trait as faeries are (based on ability alone and possible mental capabilities) more genetically advanced than human beings. 

One origin story for Robin Goodfellow AKA The Puck (Yes, same character in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) is that he was the child of Oberon born of a human and when he reached a certain age he became a faerie. As he was not born from wedlock to the faerie queen Titania, Oberon took Puck as his servant (read: slave).  No one ever said faerie culture was nice.

Happy Midsummer!