Today’s fairy is one of the most famous in English literature, but you might not have known who she really was. Pop culture says Morgan Le Fay was the evil sorceress of Arthurian legend. But that was the Middle Ages revival version. The oldest text depict her as something else. It should be obvious given her name. Le Fay literally means “the faerie”. It wasn’t a surname, it was a description! By twelfth to thirteenth century, French resurgence of the stories, several changes had been made to the cast and events. Where as Morgan was originally a depiction of the pagan fae or possibly deities of 6th century Britain, she had shifted to a human sorceress and occasionally half sister of King Arthur himself. While generally considered an antagonist, there are also still depictions of her as a healer and helper. This side of her combined with her strange magics and schemes, giving her a moral compass unrecognizable by mortals being the hallmark of the fair folk for a long time.
