LOST: Why the Others steal children

[stefanie_bean]

The Others act a lot like the fairies of English and Irish folklore - not the gauzy Victorian "Tinker Bell" types, but the older more scary types who are human sized and wild. They take children (and human brides) because among themselves they find it difficult to have children of their own. They also become very annoyed with humans who set out to find them. Time doesn't flow the same way in their country; people can be gone only a few moments and find that years have passed outside; or they can think little time has passed and find that centuries have gone by.

They are also associated with magical islands (the most well-known one being Avalon.)

There are also English legends of fairy horses which lure people into fairyland if they try to ride them, as well as other fairy animals (the "pooka" of old Ireland.)

From Sacred Texts:

There is a country called Tír-na-n-Og, which means the Country of the Young, for age and death have not found it; neither tears nor loud laughter have gone near it. The shadiest boskage [foliage] covers it perpetually. One man has gone there and returned. The bard, Oisin, who wandered away on a white horse, moving on the surface of the foam with his fairy Niamh, lived there three hundred years, and then returned looking for his comrades. The moment his foot touched the earth his three hundred years fell on him, and he was bowed double, and his beard swept the ground. He described his sojourn in the Land of Youth to Patrick before he died.

Since then many have seen it in many places; some in the depths of lakes, and have heard rising therefrom a vague sound of bells; more have seen it far off on the horizon, as they peered out from the western cliffs. Not three years ago a fisherman imagined that he saw it. It never appears unless to announce some national trouble.

There are many kindred beliefs. A Dutch pilot, settled in Dublin, told M. De La Boullage Le Cong, who travelled in Ireland in 1614, that round the poles were many islands; some hard to be approached because of the witches who inhabit them and destroy by storms those who seek to land. He had once, off the coast of Greenland, in sixty-one degrees of latitude, seen and approached such an island only to see it vanish. Sailing in an opposite direction, they met with the same island, and sailing near, were almost destroyed by a furious tempest.

According to many stories, Tír-na-n-Og: is the favourite dwelling of the fairies. Some say it is triple- the island of the living, the island of victories, and an underwater land.

Fairies also disguise themselves as human beings, but usually have some weakness or something that gives them away (The Others sound kind of vacant and "blank," like the scenes with "Henry Gale" telling his balloon story.)

They also have their own partiality to people - either really tormenting some (Jack, Kate, Sawyer), or letting others go about pretty much unmolested (Hurley.) Usually the degree of provocation (like wanting to make war on them) is related to the vehemence of their response.