HUMAN-SIDH INTERBREEDING

There is an item in Simon Young's Fairy Census which has interesting implications.  Item 153, in Ireland, tells of a woman who encountered some of the Sidh. as the Irish fairies are called.  The woman informs us that her family and the Sidh have had interactions in the past and some of these interactions had resulted in children.  In short, fairies and human s can interbreed.

In biology, it is held that interbreeding cannot take place between different genera.  This would indicate that somehow humans and at least human-like fairies have the same genes.  How has this happened?  Are they descended from common ancestors?  Have identical genes evolved separately?  What other explanation can there be?  It transpires that the woman who gave the account believes herself descended from the Sidh. 

 

The "same genus" argument has had at least one exception: two elephants at Manchester Zoo, one African, one Asian, produced an offspring, but unhappily it didn't live long.  This is the only exception to the "same genus" rule of which I am aware.

The word Sidh, in the Irish language, is pronounced "shee". It previously meant a mound in which Fairies were thought to dwell and before that it may have meant the Fairy Otherworld to  which the mound was a gateway.