The late medieval origin of the fairy tradition

      "It may be argued, therefore, that the concept of fairies which prevailed in early modern Britain formed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the fourteenth representing the decisive period in its gestation.  By 1400 it had become a stock component of most types of literature, across the island, and was also an established feature of popular belief, certainly in England and probably elsewhere.  Although it drew on older images and ideas, its appearance was a distinctively late medieval phenomenon. . . .
     "If these suggestions are correct, then the fairy kingdom was as much a late medieval development as the concept of the satanic conspiracy of witches, and may (almost certainly) join the wandering nocturnal hosts of the dead and (possibly) the nocturnal retinue of the Lady, as products of the Middle Ages rather than survivals from the ancient world.  In this case, Carlo Ginzberg’s idea that the British fairy queen and the Continental Lady and wandering dead were all surviving fragments of the same prehistoric ‘substratum’ of pagan shamanism is no longer tenable."

     Ronald Hutton, The witch:  a history of fear, from ancient times to the present (New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2017), chap. 8, subsection "Where do fairies come from?"
     Cf. Francis Young, Twilight of the godlings:  the shadowy origins of Britain's supernatural beings (Cambridge University Press, ), as reviewed by George Morris in "Fairies," Times literary supplement no. 6275 (July 7, 2023):  24, underscoring mine:

"the fairies are not survivals from a pagan pantheon, but something more complex.
     "The pre-Christian religions of Britain had a clear role for 'godlings', but their place in the Christian cosmos of angels, demons and a single deity was ambiguous.  Not being the objects of worship, they usually didn't need to be demoted or demonized, so often escaped the direct condemnation of Christian authorities.  Far from being in conflict with Christianity, . . . fairies were 'non-Christian artefacts of a Christian culture', filling the same cultural niche as the minor deities of paganism without being direct survivals of the old religion.  Ideas about Roman religion were interpreted through Christian authorities, and the place of godlings in a Christian world was worked out through scriptural references to giants, fallen angels and monstrous beings.
     "Rather than thinking about fairies as survivals, . . . we might consider them as being more like the ship of Theseus, changing over time, but accruing layers of cultural and historical meaning."