Dragons:
There are no cave paintings of Dragons. They seem to have first appeared in China around 6000-7000 BC. They appear in India around 4000 BC.
Babylon
The dragon in Babylonian traditions appears first in Tiamat, a Goddess with the form of a dragon. One of her children, Marduk, decides that Tiamat must die, so he tears her body apart and she becomes the earth and the sky.
Greece
In Greece, all the dragons were the offspring of Gaia, and are generally considered either evil or anti-Olympian.
Typhon is the first of them. He had one hundred heads, serpents for legs, and hundreds of legs. None of the Olympians except for Zeus could beat him, and eventually Zeus killed him. Zeus beat Typhon by burying him under Mt. Aetna.
Pythia is another famous dragon, slain by Apollo at Delphi (the place of the dolphins). Apollo cast Pythia down into the earth after killing him, and the rotting corpse gave off fumes which the oracle at Delphi would inhale before making predictions.
The Goddess Demeter, when depicted in an urban setting, would always be shown in a chariot drawn by two dragons. We know nothing else about the dragons, though.
A Greek writer, Aelian, mentions a history of dragons at one point in De Natura Animalium, The Nature of Animals.
Rome
In Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, it is claimed that India produces the dragon, and they fight constantly with elephants. They are not considered good in Rome.
Norse
The Norse saw dragons as wise creatures.
_____________ could see into the future, and even predicted his own death.
Celts
Holf and Hellenous (from the Mabinogion) encountered a pair of fighting dragons.
The Arthurian legends make prominent mention of Merlin and his divining from the fighting of a red dragon and white dragon that the Saxons would overrun Briton.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, in both the Canterbury MSS and the ___________ MSS, mention that in the year 793 AD dragons fought in the skies and were followed by a great famine. According to Skip, this cannot be a wistful description of a comet, since the MSS both make a clear distinction between comets and whatever this was.
The best place to find out about modern dragons is through Sci-Fi, according to Skip.
Theories about Dragons:
The First Fossil Hunters, a book about discovering dinosaur fossils and trying to explain what they were. The dragons come from that explanation.
A remnant population of dinosaurs, such as Nessie, could be the cause of such a myth. But remember that there are no cave paintings of these dinos.
It may be an actual species that was misinterpreted. If a 50 ft. crocodile washed up on the shores of Greece, what would the people say? It happens all the time (how do you think life gets to islands in the middle of an ocean?)
Dragons are real, and exist as described. They’ve just gone elsewhere.
Dragons are archetypes for Magic and ritual. Whether they exist or ever existed in our reality is moot. They do exist as archetypes.
A tie-in with the last theory is that the dragons were used to explain Magic, and to show how it was used.
The word Fey comes from the old French for Fairy: fée (to enchant)
The word fairy tends to encompass not only the being itself, but also the world it lives in.
Modern usage of Fey mainly means the being, usually not the word.
The word Fey or Fairy replaced the word Elf, which originally meant the same thing in English. The change occurred in the Elizabethan Period, when such people as Shakespeare made it more fashionable to call them Fey. The word Elf does not refer to a subset of Fairies, then, but to the Fair Folk themselves.
Location of the Fairy
Usually depicted as on an island. The Irish had it to the west, and it was usually represented as “across the sea” by most cultures. It is called by many names, including:
Tir Na Nog
The Isle of Glass
The Otherworld (Middleworld)
The Isle of Man
The Sea House
What the Fey are called
It is often considered unlucky to call the Fey “fairies,” and they are thus often referred to by a different name. Common names include (but are by no means limited to):
The Good Folk
The Fair Folk
People of Peace
The Still Moving Folk
The Beautiful People
The Irish divided their fey into two, the solitary Fey and the Fey who would troupe or march together. The solitary Fey are sometimes seen as the peasants on the social structure of the Fey, while the Fey who belong to some sort of a group are among the royalty in terms of placement.
Solitary Fey:
The Solitary Fey tend to have the ability to shapeshift and become invisible. They rarely harm humans, unless the humans are unkind. They also try to stay away from most humans, unless they’re out for some fun.
Pooka (Pookah)
A sort of Irish goblin, Pookas are not usually destructive. They like to have fun at the expense of Mortals’ sanity, however. The most common example is that of the horse Pooka, who, if you are foolish enough to get on, will run and run all night, not letting you off. Eventually, most riders are dumped into a muddy ditch, and they hear the Pooka laughing into the night.
A mischievous spirit that looks very much like a lantern flickering though the trees. It guides people off the trails in forests, or else down the wrong trail. By the time you realise what has happened, you are either hopelessly lost or miles off course.
Bean Sidhe (banshee)
Not a malevolent spirit, but one that heralds the death of a (usually) noble person. She is often seen washing the dying person’s bloody clothes by a river or creek.
Not mentioned by Skip, but what collection of Irish Fey is complete without them?
The Scottish developed what we call the Trouping Fairy. They divided their Fey into two courts, the Seelie and the Unseelie. Examples of the two Courts are as follows:
Seelie:
The “good” fairies. These Fey didn’t go around shooting people with elf shot, but they tended to protect children and animals, as well as keeping houses in good order.
Described as small, brown, wrinkled men (and sometimes women), the Brownies often will help around the house if treated kindly. If the Brownies are not treated kindly, they have a tendency to make things disappear from houses or break down.
The Scottish version of the Pooka, the Bwca is a generally benign spirit who rarely engages in activities which might be considered mischievous.
Unseelie:
The “bad” fairies. These Fey don’t much care if you are nice to them or not. The pretty much just like being mischievous. They will rarely help humans, and instead tend to laugh at humans who need help.
A kelpie is a horse-looking spirit who lives in the water and whose sole purpose in life is to try and drown humans. If anyone gets on the kelpie’s back, the kelpie will immediately break into a run, not allowing the person off. The kelpie enters the water and drowns the person.
Often the Fey are called “The Beautiful People” here, and are generally well respected. A good resource for this tradition is the Mabinogion, which details several aspects of the Otherworld.
The Norse had both Dark and Light elves, similar to the Seelie and Unseelie Courts of Scotland.
Giants:
The best place to start looking for Giants is in the Bible, oddly enough. This helps to show how old the myths and stories about such creatures are. The following passages refer directly to giants or “men of greater than normal stature:”
Numbers 13:33
2 Samuel 21:20
Genesis 6:4
Enoch (The entire book)
In Greek myths, Giants are the children of Gaia, created when the blood from the castration of Uranus strikes the ground. Also, the Titans are of Giant status, and the Myth of Orion is one of the classic Giant myths.
In Celtic mythology, nearly all the heroes are Giants. Fionn MacCumhil and the Fianna were all Giants, as were their adversaries, the Fomorians. Balor One-Eye was a Giant whose eye was so large it took numerous men with sticks to open his eye.
Giants also figure heavily into Norse myths.
An interesting note is that Giants are defined by modern medical dictionaries as “anyone who is greater than a foot and a half taller than the average size of a man during his time.” That makes anyone over 7’4” a Giant, by definition. Most of our basketball players and sports stars qualify as real-life Giants.