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.

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.