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Abstract
Legends, fables, and myth have contributed to a collectively-imagined Faërie, a place defined both by its environment and inhabitants as magical, mysterious, and perilous. Tolkien 1947 contends that it is impossible to describe the essence of the Faërie; this thesis evaluates Indo-European and specifically Germanic lexemes and storytelling traditions within a linguistic “cauldron of story” which helps trace the development of modern Faërie and its “peculiar mood and power” in fairy-story language and theme. This comparison results in an understanding of Faërie language development from early Germanic to Early Modern English as a tracing of tradition from the visionary in ancient shamanism to the diminution of fairies and elves in Shakespeare and up to the practice of tabletop role-playing games and -core universe creation today, alongside development of pre-historic word forms such as Proto Indo-European *bhā- (bheh2-)1/2 to modern outcomes such as fairy and fantasy.