The Tooth Fairy: A History of Fact and Fiction

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Tooth Fairy a history of fact & fiction

Who is the tooth fairy?

The tooth fairy is a common household name for many American families, especially around the time when kids start losing their baby teeth. Like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman, the tooth fairy plays a myth-filled role in American culture; a character used by parents to guide good behavior or add intrigue to reoccurring events growing up.

What’s so mysterious about this American cultural icon is the lack of historical record of where they came from. From writings about fairies to dentistry journals

alike, the tooth fairy and her origin is one element constantly lacking. This creates a cultural mystery in itself: why is there so little known about the beginnings and development of the tooth fairy in their integration into American culture, when they are so well known anyone could casually reference them without a sideways glance their direction? In this article, we’ll investigate some possible historical connections to the tooth fairy’s cultural origins.

“[The] tooth fairy is so obviously present and so almost universally ignored[.]”

Rosemary S. Wells, “The Tooth Fairy”

Encyclopedias fairy noun ( fâr ē) plural: fairies

“a term loosely used to denote a type of supernatural being, usually invisible, sometimes just mischievous and whimsical, dwelling on the earth in close contact with man.”

From the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend

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The first step in determining the origins of the tooth fairy is to look at the beginnings of their name.

An intuitive starting point would be to look them up in say, the “Encyclopedia of Fairies.” By Katharine Briggs, which is exactly what Dr. Rosemary S. Wells did on her search for record of the tooth fairy in (year).

This Encyclopedia’s 481page compilation of fairies includes almost every mythical creature you could

name from elves to hobgoblins—but no tooth fairy in sight. Wells didn’t give up her search so easily, though, and continued to look more broadly, researching the origin on the word “fairy” itself --which she hoped would lead her back to the tooth fairy. What she found on this etymological journey was an interesting, twisting history that brings some context into our story.

Etymology There are scattered records of the roots to the word fairy throughout history, the first coming from the late Latin Fata. Fata comes from factum (fate), which in middle English had three general meanings: 1. Enchantment 2. The place/land enchanted beings lived.

3. The beings that lived on this enchanted land (which were sometimes referred to on their own as fays)

Fata

Factum

Fate

Morgan le Fey

The terms fairy and fay weren’t used commonly before medieval times, though one well known record can be seen in the character Morgan le Fay in the Legend of King Arthur. Morgan le Fay had a different meaning to what we’d imagine fay to mean now, instead representing a female enchantress who was born human with magical powers (similar to a witch).

Italian took from the Latin factum too, using the term fatae

Fata

Factum

to refer to fairy women who would visit at a child’s birth to announce that child’s future (similar to the legend of the 3 fates in Greek Mythology) From the Italian came the French fai as they term spread through languages, and gradually the existence of fairies as mythical, magical beings popped up in folk lore from all over the world, but most commonly in the area of the British isles.

Fatae

Fai

from ‘The Story of King Arthur and his Knights', 1903

kappa of japan

kobolds of germany

When the American dental association was asked to comment on the history and information about the tooth fairySedi intibusciae. Namus re sin nonsedit moluptati volestem nem nonsed et aut erchii

What did the encyclopedias miss?

tooth fairy of US

menehune of hawaii

goblins of france

“We went out of our minds. We should have at our fingertips answers to all dentally related questions. But in this area we have nothing.”

The encyclopedias being written on folklore and creatures like that by Briggs date hundreds of years after the tooth fairy’s appearance in American childhood stories, and still, they are omitted from these collections.

Fairy Origins:

From Larkin’s “The Book of Revelation a study of the last prophetic book of Holy Scripture”, 1919

People originally native to a region would move away from conquered land to live in mountains and caves, and with time stories would be told about these people by the new society below. These stories would be embellished with magical feats, and eventually people groups displaced from their homes and mysterious to the newcomers, would be described as fairies.

Once again, changing society could have played a role, this time in religion. As religions of a region changed, fairies could have acted as explanation for where the previous gods and goddesses went—reduced in power but still containing magic, they were now fairies.

Fairies could be shift when referring to past beliefs. Old pagan spirits of nature like the tree spirit or water sprite would change in name to a fairy dryad or undine.

“

In an idea like the modern vampire, fairies could have represented spirits of the dead. For example: after eating fairy food one would turn into a fairy forever (following similar logic as that of a vampire bite)

Finally, with an increase in Christianity in medieval society comes the theory that fairies were fallen angels who had gotten stuck on earth in their decent from heaven to hell.

The Proud Angel fomented a rebellion among the angels of heaven, where he had been a leading light. He declared that he would go and found a kingdom for himself. When going out at the door of heaven the Proud Angel brought prickly lightning and biting lightning out of the doorstep with his heels.

Many Angels followed him—so many that at last the son called out “Father! Father! The city is being emptied!”

Whereupon the Father

ordered that the gates of heaven and the gates of hell should be closed.

This was instantly done.

And those who were in were in, and those who were out were out; while the hosts who had left heaven and had not reached hell flew into the holes in the earth, like the stormy petrels.

These are the Fairy Folk - ever since doomed to live under the ground, and only allowed to emerge where and when the King permits.

Story from the Scottish Highlands, quoted from ‘Ruaraidh mac Dhomhuil’

”

Teeth & Beliefs Still, we have only a hint of history to follow in our search. But despite a lack or direct stories tying back to the tooth fairy, we’ve been able to establish a knowledge on the origins of fairies, let’s take a look at the latter part of the tooth fairy’s name, and see what practices may have led to the American tradition.

(1) the tooth was thrown into the sun.

(2) thrown into the fire.

(3) thrown between the legs.

(4) thrown onto or over the roof of the house, often with an invocation to some animal or individual; (5) placed in a mouse hole near the stove or hearth or offered to som e other animal.

(6) buried.

(7) hidden where animals coul d not get it; (8) placed in a tree or on a wall ; and (9) swallowed by the mother, child , or animal.

First recorded in written record in old Norse, there was a Tand Fé, which translated to “tooth fee”.

This was a tradition where in essence, the children were paid a tooth fee for the first tooth they lost. In addition, children’s teeth were viewed as good luck in battle. Many Norse and Scandinavian warriors wore necklaces of children’s when they went to battle. In Middle Ages England, an opposite stance was taken on the luckiness of children’s lost teeth. Baby teeth were viewed as so unlucky; children would have to spend eternity looking for them in the afterlife if they didn’t dispose of them properly in their life on earth.

Some families fed the

teeth to rodents (with the added hope that in doing so, the teeth that grew in their place would be extra strong and healthy) while others burned them. Another reason to get rid of one’s baby teeth in Medieval Europe was to ensure witches couldn’t get ahold of them and use them for spells. It was a common belief that if a witch took your baby teeth, they would have total power over you. There were many ways to dispose of baby teeth properly and effectively to stop witches or eternal damnation before it was too late. In the 1991 essay “the making of an icon” by Dr. Rosemary S. Wells, she lists the 9 most common ways of tooth disposal of the past, listed above.

Similarities & Differences While exact origins might still be a mystery, there are other tooth fairy-like myths from many other countries that could have influenced the American culture’s version today. For French children, this is La Petite Souris, who appears in French fairytales as early as the 17th century. Building on the medieval tradition in trusting a mouse to take the old tooth away and replace it with a new, stronger one, this tradition morphed naturally into a mouse taking the tooth and leaving a gift in its place in French mythology. Similarly, many Spanish speaking nations had “Ratóncito Pérez”, another tooth collecting mouse that researchers see as the most influential legend on the American Tooth Fairy there is to find.

Despite the lack in concrete evidence for where the American tooth fairy came from, there’s a rich history to investigate surrounding the myth, with winding rabbit holes of discovery almost never-ending. The lack of clarity on the search for Tooth Fairy proof doesn’t negate from its influence at all, as Dr Wells summarizes:

“No one can dispute the existence of the tooth fairy. She is an acknowledged device used by sympathetic parents to aid little children in accepting the loss of a very important part of their anatomy.”

Sources: Don’t tell the kids: The real history of the tooth fairy Michael Hingston The Tooth Fairy Rosemary S. Wells Legends of lost teeth: A word on European mice with sharp teeth, Dr. Rosemary S. Wells and Tooth Fairy Barbie Benco Dental