elven jewelry
Little documentation exists on English rustic beliefs and terminology before the nineteenth century, but it seems that the term elf was used, at least on some occasions or in some places, for various kinds of uncanny wights, either human-sized or smaller. But other terms were also used.Elves were imported into Britain with the Anglo-Saxons.Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1958), became astoundingly popular and was much imitated. In the 1960s and afterwards, elves similar to those in Tolkien's novels became staple non-human characters in high fantasy works and in fantasy role-playing games (RPGs).
English folktales of the early modern period typically portray elves as small, elusive people with mischievous personalities (see illustration). They are not evil but might annoy humans or interfere in their affairs. They are sometimes said to be invisible. In this tradition, elves became more or less synonymous with the fairies that originated from native British mythology, for example, the Welsh Ellyll (plural Ellyllon) and Y Dynon Bach Tg.
The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett feature extradimensional creatures called elves, that go back to the old myths of cradle-robbing fairies. The book Lords and Ladies is about an encounter with "the fair folk".However, in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare imagined elves as little people. He apparently considered elves and fairies to be the same race. In Henry IV, Part 1, i. 4, he has Falstaff call Prince Henry, "you starveling, you elfskin!", and in his Midsummer Night's Dream, his elves are almost as small as insects. On the other hand, Edmund Spenser applies elf to full-sized beings in The Faerie Queene.