What are Fairies? Who are the Faery Folk?

I am indebted to Mr R.J. Stewart for granting permission to quote from his book “The Living World of Faery“. While putting this blog together I was looking for a definition, an explanation of who and what Faeries are and there’s one in his book which I think sums them up very succinctly:

“The faery races are our natural allies between the outer realm of manifest nature and the inner realm of ever-becoming, of transformation, of boundless potential. They are our cousins in the art of perfection and health of the land and the planet. We have abandoned them and polluted the world, which means that we have abandoned and polluted ourselves, for the human and faery races mirror and complete one another.”