There are various accounts of fairy food. The small, homely fairies, such as that in the Worcestershire story of the broken ped and its variants, bake small, delicious cakes which they give to their benefactors. Those fairies about whom tales of fairy borrowing are told often beg for loans of grain, and return it honestly. According to J.G.Campbell in his Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (p.22), they often borrow oatmeal and return double measure, but always of barley meal, for barley seems to be their natural grain.

The fairies also steal the essential good out of human food, and leave an unnourishing substance behind them, Kirk speaks of their stealing away the 'foyson' of human food, and Campbell uses the Gaelic 'toradh'. The tale of The Tacksman of Auchriachan illustrates this trait. Otherwise their food, though it appears by glamour to be rich and elegant, consists of weeds. St Collen, in the tale of St Collen and the Fairy King, scornfully dismisses the fairy banquet as 'the leaves of a tree'. According to Campbell (p.21) it consists of brisgein (that is, the roots of silverweed), stalks of heather, milk of red deer and goats, and barley meal.

Herrick's minute fairy king has a banquet fitted to his small size, but not very appetizing to the ordinary mortal:

A little mushroome table spred,

After short prayers, they set on bread;

A Moon-parcht grain of purest wheat,

With some small glit'ring gritt, to eate

His choyce bitts with; then in a trice

They make a feast lesse great then nice.

And now, we must imagine first,

The Elves present to quench his thirst

A pure seed-Pearle of Infant dew,

Brought and besweetned in a blew

And pregnant violet; which done,

His kitling eyes begin to runne

Quite through the table, where he spies

The hornes of paperie Butterflies,

Of which he eates, and tastes a little

Of that we call the Cuckoes spittle.

A little Fuz-ball-pudding stands

By, yet not blessed by his hands,

That was to coorse; but then forthwith

He ventuers boldly on the pith

Of sugred Rush, and eates the sagge

And well bestrutted Bees sweet bagge:

Gladding his pallat with some store

Of Emits eggs; what wo’d he more?

But Beards of Mice, a Newt's stew'd thigh,

A bloated Earewig, and a Flie;

With the Red-capt worme, that's shut

Within the concave of a Nut,

Browne as his Tooth. A little Moth,

Late fatned in a piece of cloth:

With withered cherries; Mandrakes eares;

Moles eyes; to these, the slain-Stags teares:

The unctuous dewlaps of a Snaile;

The broke-heart of a Nightingale

Ore-come in musicke; with a wine,

Ne're ravisht from the flattering Vine,

But gently prest from the soft side

Of the most sweet and dainty Bride,

Brought in a dainty daizie, which

He fully quaffs up to bewitch

His blood to height; this done, commended

Grace by his Priest; The feast is ended.

It is doubtful if this diet has any folk foundation.
It may well be the product of Herrick's own fancy.

In one of Lady Wilde's more gruesome tales, the rich banquet served up to the fairy court had appeared to a mortal visitor in the kitchen to be the body of an old hag.

It is certain that all the food served in Fairyland was spiced and transformed by glamour.

[Motifs: F243; F243.1]