The book’s epilogue summarises the book’s argument that Britain’s godlings have a long history, arising from a mingling and interplay of learned and popular traditions. The epilogue looks ahead to the development of fairy belief into its recognisable, modern form in the early modern period and pays particular attention to the survival or revival of Classical (and classicising) elements in the portrayal of small gods. The epilogue concludes with a reflection on why people yearn to believe in godlings of nature, arguing that it arises from a human desire to connect with a real or imagined realm of the ‘almost human’.

The book’s final chapter argues that the various elements of fairy belief as we might recognise it, including belief in an underground otherworld inhabited by sometimes pygmy-sized otherworlders, the connection between fairies and fate, and the sexual aspects of fairy activity, were brought together as a direct result of the Norman Conquest. The key role played in the Conquest by Breton nobles who felt a cultural affinity with the Cornish and Welsh, combined with the Normans’ desire to escape the English past, resulted in the crafting of a new ‘British’ identity for the whole island of Great Britain by authors with a Brittonic cultural background such as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald of Wales and Walter Map. These authors united elements of English and Brittonic folklore to fashion a new fairy world that was subsequently adopted as the setting for literary romances and became the background to late medieval popular belief.

Chapter 4 examines in detail the early medieval evidence for godlings in Britain, from both Brittonic and Old English sources, dealing in turn with the main categories of folkloric beings such as fauns, elves, the various categories of supernatural women, pygmies and giants. The chapter stresses the interaction between folk belief and learned commentary, identifying biblical commentary and the work of Church Fathers such as Isidore of Seville as the main source of discussions about godlings and, perhaps, as the source of much of the folklore itself. It is the argument of the chapter that by the time of the Norman Conquest, the various elements of fairy lore were present in British popular belief but had yet to be brought together into a single synthesis. These elements included a belief in wild ‘men of the woods’ gifted with prophetic powers; belief in elves; belief in supernatural women, often in a triad, governing the fates of human beings; belief in diminutive otherworlders, sometimes living beneath the earth and belief in heroes who have somehow become supernatural beings.

The first chapter addresses the question of how folkloric beings, or godlings, ought to be defined, examining historic definitions of divine beings of a status lower than the greater gods, from Classical literature to contemporary anthropology. Turning to the British context, the chapter then discusses the evidence for the character of pre-Roman Iron Age religion, and assesses whether there is any evidence that elements of pre-Roman religion such as ‘animism’, therianthropic deities and ‘shamanism’ contributed to the distinctive character of godlings and popular religion in Roman Britain and thereafter. The chapter isolates certain characteristic (though not exclusive) features of godlings, including their identity as chthonic, non-human entities; their status as a multiple group rather than a single personality (in many cases); their status as objects of popular rather than official cults and their links with features of the natural landscape such as forests, groves and water sources.

The introduction articulates the problem of the origins of Britain’s folkloric beings and traces the various ways in which scholars have tackled (or sidestepped) the problem, from John Aubrey to the present day. The introduction seeks to explain why scholars became wary of engaging with folkloric origins as a historical question, critiques previous approaches to the history of folkloric beings, and presents the book’s new approach in the context of current methodologies in the study of the history of popular religion. The introduction then outlines the structure of the book

There is a great deal of archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the ‘menagerie of the divine’ that was Roman Britain, yet this evidence is often accompanied with little context that helps us to understand exactly what the significance of such cults was. The chapter introduces the character of Roman popular religion and analyses the evidence for the main categories of godlings in Roman Britain, including genii, the Parcae and mother goddesses and deities of nature such as nymphs and fauns, arguing that such cults became much more significant during the fourth-century ‘pagan revival’ that followed the accession of the pagan emperor Julian in 361. In particular, the extraordinary cult of Faunus revealed by the Thetford Treasure – along with other ecstatic nature cults apparently testified by the archaeological record – suggests that the fourth century was an important time for the development of distinctive and inventive Romano-British interpretations of Roman pagan religion, which may form the cultural background to the strong traditions of otherworldly beings found in later British culture.

Christianity was a growing religion in Britain from the 330s onwards, and Chapter 3 tackles the difficult question of the relationship between Christianity, Christianisation and godlings. The chapter examines the phenomenon of Christian demonisation of pagan cults, arguing that it was a more complex process than mere condemnation and suppression, which inadvertently produced the potential for the survival (and even reinvention) of some of the beings it targeted. Through comparisons with the better evidenced Christianisation of other cultures in Europe and further afield, the chapter develops an interpretative framework for the likely changes undergone by popular religion in Britain’s lengthy conversion period. The framework includes the likely ‘undemonisation’ of formerly demonised entities and the creative ‘re-personification’ of supernatural forces to account for the survival and reinvention of godlings in a Christianised society – where godlings should not be seen so much as ‘pagan survivals’ but rather as non-Christian artefacts of Christianisation.