Tolkien modestly refers to himself as more of “a wandering explorer (or trespasser)” in the study of fantasy and narrative art. But those familiar with his epic The Lord of the Rings know he’s a master of fantasy in his own right.

What are fairy stories? Dictionary definitions are not helpful here. To call them “falsehoods” or “incredible, unreal stories” is too broad. To call them “tales about fairies” doesn’t get us very far either. The word “fairy” itself is misleading, if we, like the lexicographer, consider a fairy “a supernatural being of diminutive size, in popular belief supposed to possess magical powers and influence the affairs of men.”

This is misleading at almost every point. Fairies need not be diminutive nor supernatural. The small size is partially a product of our era’s hyperrationality which rejects the possibility of men and elves existing. This has become an increasingly common assumption since humans began to take voyages across seas—where at the edge dwelled monsters and wonders. Such creatures become not just ineffable nor mysterious, but invisible and unreal in the clutches of modernity.

In such a realm, it is not fairies (or elves, we could say) who are supernatural; they are the most natural things imaginable: it is the humans entering into such realms who are supernatural, in the sense that they are beyond what is natural.

Moreover, “fairy stories” are rarely about fairies exclusively—and those that are, almost invariably, are bland. It is the fairy stories of men entering unknown perilous worlds which fairies inhabit that we usually find to be gripping tales. The goals and lives of each race occasionally intersect, but these are chance meetings.

To come up with a definition for “fairy stories” is difficult. It resists a neat encapsulation and spoils under the analyst’s scalpel. There is an experiential component to them. The adventurer returns breathless with tales he cannot describe.

Denotation and analysis kill magic like nothing else. Whether the fairy story takes the form of fantasy, adventure, or satire, the story must not decry the magic itself. To balk at or explain away the magic is to ruin the story. But it is worth mentioning that fairy stories have far less to do with a fairy than with “Faerie” as a realm in which exist fairies. But this fairy realm is far more than the beings: it is sun, moon, and stars, streams and seas, earth and sky, bread and wine.

Fairy-stories are as old as language itself. Archeologists and comparative philologists (those who study different languages) debate the independent invention, inheritance, and diffusion of these stories.

Like many debates, they tend to devolve into oversimplifications. But what can we say about the origin of fairy stories? We can confidently say that it’s complicated: as complicated as the origins of language and perhaps more complex than physical human history itself. Only the elves could elucidate secrets that, for us mere mortals, remain shrouded in mystery.

Diffusion of stories involves borrowing across space, and inheritance involves borrowing across time. Both of these ultimately refer to the most mysterious of the three questions: the inventor, the original story-maker. There must be some utterly ancient inventor from whom the stories emanated, a point to which written and oral tradition can be traced back. To talk about diffusion and inheritance only postpones the question of whom we have to thank for the gift of story.

Philologist Max Müller famously called mythology a “disease of language.” A bold and  inaccurate assertion. Mythology is not a disease, but, like anything touched by humanity, it can become diseased. It would be like arguing that thought is the disease of the mind: thought is not categorically flawed, but it can become so. 

One could make the case that language, particularly modern European languages, is a plague on mythology. Still, language cannot be thrown out, as mind, language, and story exist together and interact with one another in a manner that defies their being split apart. Think about the invention of the adjective. It’s as powerful as any magic from mythology: the mind, which has the ability to abstract and categorize, sees not only green grass, but green and grass. The mind creates categories like light and heavy, stationary and moving; it can make heavy things light or stationary objects move. A world where the green can be removed from grass, red from blood, or blue from the sea is an enchanted world, indeed, and the mind that can wield adjectives to such earth-shattering effect is enchanted, too.

This is the potency of Fantasy: that a new form can be made. It allows the moon to turn to blood, a woman to have snakes for hair, a man to be tall as a tree with one eye, or skin as blue as the sky with three eyes. It’s in these new shapes, that the Faerie realm comes forward. This power is not always wielded in ways that are helpful or uplifting, but this is to be expected if man’s imagination is fallen like the rest of him. Still, this ability to imitate and alter through playing with descriptors makes us sub-creators. People tend to speak of mythology in terms of symbolism, but we have largely overlooked this facet of sub-creation.

Critics often find it noteworthy when a fairy-story is compelling enough to entice an adult to read it. It’s managed to bridge some glaring gap between childhood and adulthood. But does such a gap exist? Is there a fundamental link between fairy stories and children? Why should it be strange that a grown man or woman would choose to read such tales?

For a number of reasons (perhaps childlessness among them), there’s a growing number of people who tend to view children as a different breed or race altogether than adults. But they are born into families, and the human family more generally.

The connection between fairy tales and children is an outcome of local history. In a land so “modern,” so “rational,” the mystical and magical are old worn-out ideas that only children would be credulous enough to take seriously or merely find captivating. 

But fairy stories are not illogical; you can’t write good Fantasy without a good grasp of logic. It’s a natural human activity by which adults and children alike are enriched. It doesn’t ruin or offend Reason. It does not detract from scientific truths or obstruct our comprehension thereof. One must have a keen-eyed sense of what his Primary World is like in order to produce a convincing Secondary one. He recognizes how things are under the sun we all know, without being enslaved to that understanding. The story of the frog prince would not have been an interesting story without an understanding that men and frogs are, in fact, very different.

Fairy stories have been stored away and forgotten in the attic of Europe’s cultural heritage. They are certainly for children, but not simply because they are children but because they are human.

Imagination involves exercising freedom to move beyond the dictates of empirical “facts.” It moves us into the realm of the fantastic. (To the delight of the author, “fantastic” and “fantasy” come from the same root.) The things imagined do not exist in this world—or are at least not considered a feature of our world. 

Fantasy, when done well, is a high form of Art: both pure and potent. Some people loathe Fantasy for the same reason: they can be taken in by a story, captivated by its intriguing unfamiliarity. In their intense (and unnecessary) aversion to tinkering with their stable, familiar Primary World, they deride and scorn the fantastic path that’s taken them from what they’ve always known. They make Fantasy tantamount to irrational dreams and loony bin tomfoolery.

The discomfort and resulting dislike that a Secondary World creates is not the only reason people misunderstand Fantasy. Another difficulty is that Fantasy is extremely difficult to achieve. Realistic fiction, which adopts recognizable elements from the world we live in, is far easier.

The more daring act of sub-creation is to create a new world with unexpected combinations of nouns and rearranged adjectives that still retains a compelling inner-consistency. The problem is when the fantastic becomes merely fanciful. Anyone who knows how to use an adjective can utter the words yellow sky or blue sun, but it takes real thought and effort to weave those things into a world in such a way that the reader or listener would suspend their belief and adopt the new Secondary Beliefs. Few are the attempts at Fantasy that truly succeed, but those stories that do are incredibly powerful.

Fantasy offers recovery (or a regaining or renewal, if you like) to the one who will explore its paths that are so different and yet oddly relatable. By bringing us to a Secondary World, we find elements of it in our own, and those points of connection hit us with a freshness that overfamiliarity can obscure. There is no face like that of your spouse or closest friend; each is utterly unique, and yet it can be lost to us, acquired and forgotten as we continue hunting for new things to acquire. Fantasy recovers clarity of vision by removing the smudges from our windows and enabling us to see things as they were intended to be seen.

 Discovering a new world helps us to rediscover the wonder in the world we know: in stones and trees and skies and seas; in wind and wood and water.

 Escape is another critical function of Fantasy. The word must be emancipated from popular usage—which is generally pejorative. Many criticize escape as weak and cowardly, for people who can’t manage “Real Life.” These are the same people who attribute realness to modern advancements, which are to be embraced because they exist. Combustion engines and factories have somehow been given a quality of realness beyond maple trees and songbirds.

If a man is wrongfully imprisoned, is he wrong for seeking a way out? And should he fail to escape, is he wrong for imagining a world beyond the walls of his cell or contemplating things other than shackles, guards, and gruel? Clearly, there are some escapes that are reasonable and right and good. But still, the escape of a prisoner is treated with the same contempt and anger as a deserting soldier.

 It’s not uncommon that people seek to escape from life’s hardships: famine, plague, suffering, poverty, injustice, and death. There are ancient dreams and desires, like overcoming primeval limitations placed on the human race. What would it be like to swim like a fish or soar across the sky like a bird?  More profound is the desire to speak with animals, to repair what feels like a rupture in our relationship to them. It’s a yearning made real in countless fairy stories and mythologies. Then there is the greatest escape of all: the escape from death itself.

The third aspect of Fantasy which the human spirit finds deeply satisfying is consolation, the Happy Ending. At the moment when all seems hopeless, there’s an unexpected “turn” that evokes great joy in the person who could not see how the end (if there is such a thing as an “end”) could be anything but dark and sad. It’s tempting to venture the argument that a fairy tale is incomplete without it.

The idea of consolation deserves further comment than merely acknowledging the yearning we have for a Happy Ending, and that the fairy tale is lacking without it. Drama and Fantasy are opposites. If the highest form of Tragedy is Drama, the highest form of Fantasy is what we can call the “Eucatastrophe.” It’s the poignant joy at the heart of the Happy Ending. 

Eucatastrophic tales are not escapist in the pejorative sense:  they accept suffering and tragedy. These aspects of pain and doubt and hardship make the “turn” all the more joyous. It’s a joy that pierces, because the turn sends its glowing magnificence backwards on all the gloom that came before. It’s the deepest desire of the heart.

Every person who participates in the act of sub-creation by writing a fairy story hopes to make something that rings true. To the extent that it rings true, it draws from Reality. Another indication that the story has connected with deep underlying truths is that its “turn” evokes joy. In the exhilarating Eucatastrophe, there’s a glimpse of glory in the Secondary World that shines with a realness impossible to ignore.

This is dangerous territory because it approaches something hallowed. But however presumptuous this foray must be, the author—mindful of his finitude, feels compelled to put forward this scrap of a Truth that is unfathomably full: the Christian Story is the point where Fantasy and History meet. It’s the Ultimate Eucatastrophe because it’s a Happy Ending that is true. The Story of the Incarnation and Resurrection is the Story of Stories, in which all other stories find their meaning. Far from nullifying them, the story of Christ’s entering history and creating the Great Escape from Death hallows all other legends and tales that contain similar themes and evoke similar sentiments. There is no other story that people wish were true more than this Ultimate Eucatastrophe.