From lumbering giants and fearsome trolls to impish satyrs and magical elves, mythical creatures have captured imaginations since the dawn of time. Cultures worldwide have passed down tales through the generations and created untold volumes of lore.
Even today, legendary beasts and beings continue to captivate us as stories of old receive contemporary updates in books, movies and on television. In the case of Amazon Prime Video’s fantasy noir series Carnival Row, for example, viewers are introduced to a world in which fabled beings like faeries and fauns live as “immigrants” amongst humans in a war-torn land. In the show, these creatures are feared – and humans restrict their freedoms because of it.
The mythical creatures found in folklore do a lot of different jobs, says Simon Young, a British historian of folklore and co-editor/co-author of the book Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies, 500 AD to the Present. “[They] uphold morality, enforce taboos, connect to divinity, warn against dangers and, most importantly, entertain,” Young says. “If I had to sum it up, though, I’d say they teach us modesty. There are things that are bigger than us that we glimpse and things that we cannot even conceive: things that are, in any case, beyond our control. They are the unknown. The darkness under the stairs or off the path in the forest or in our neighbor’s heart.”
Trolls, fairies and centaurs, oh, my!
A primer on three of the most recognizable creatures of legend
Every culture has its own gaggle of monsters and beings residing in traditional tales. Versions of some creatures, such as the prolific fairy, populate stories across multiple cultures and countries. Others, meanwhile, are born to a single region.
“Places get the monsters they deserve. It is that simple,” Young says. “A hunter-gatherer community will have bogies connected to the chase. An agricultural community will have monsters on the edge of the village, near the fields. An industrial community will have horrors in abandoned factories, etc … There is a vast range. What always amazes me is how they change not just from country to country, but from valley to valley.”
Here's a closer look at three of the most storied creatures found in myth and lore.