In Western European folklore, fairies cannot touch cold iron. I have a hypothesis about that: These “fairies” are distant cultural memories of Bronze Age peoples of Europe who were conquered by other peoples who had learned to forge superior iron weapons, thus, iron was their bane. Is this plausible? Has it ever been floated before?
Not likely unless you lump witches, demons, ghosts, and other things that go bump in the night into the broad classification of “faerie.” Even in the Wikipedia cite you provide, it’s pretty clear that the wee folk aren’t the only one with the allergy.
If you were to reframe the question something more along the lines of “Is it possible that cold iron derives its mystical properties of protection from iron weaponry’s general superiority to bronze or copper weaponry?” then you might have some case for a theory involving historical basis for the superstition, but, then again, you might not. The origin of folklore is notoriously difficult to verify. This cite seems to support the thesis that cold iron was magical just because it was easy to come by.
Imaginary Fiend, just so you know, this message board doesn’t support HTML. Instead, we use BB code, with the square brackets instead of chevrons.
Back to the subject at hand…I’ve read somewhere (my primary source for all knowledge) that bronze actually makes superior weaponry, and iron came into use because it’s more common. It’s easy, too, to come by a scrap of iron. Old horseshoes, old nails, odd bits of hardware are common and can be placed above a door or on a windowsill, and the people inside can feel safe from supernatural beasties. More malevolent critters need the more magically powerful silver, which is expensive enough to be a sacrifice, but not so expensive that people can’t spare it when they fear that a vampire is lurking in the neighborhood.
They’re called ‘less than’ and ‘greater than’ signs. Humph.
I thought they were called carets.
Because fairies are wood spirits, and iron chops into wood, it cuts their plant off from it’s root thus severing the wood spirit from its connection to the Earth. 
Chevrons is a much more elegant term.
Ah yes, and the wood is then turned into paper, which covers stone…
And I thought the caret was the symbol over the 6 key. Or is that a hat? What covers stone again?
Lizard, I think.
And lets not drag Vulcans and/or reptiles into this…
ETA: /me shakes fist at JayJay
Lest the OP think we’re not taking his thesis seriously, I think that the reason we’re not taking his thesis seriously is because it seems pretty unlikely to be correct. It’s hard to mistake a bronze-weilding human warrior for a brownie or a fairy.
It crosses my mind to propose an alternate theory, based on the fact it’s usually not just “iron” that’s the fairybane, it’s “cold iron”. Perhaps iron had a higher thermal conductivity than most other things around, and thus (even at room temperature) seemed to ‘suck the heat away’ when touched…perhaps leading to the belief it was draining away ‘life force’? And if fairies were considered to be less anchored in the mortal plane than a mortal, that might be a problem for them.
Nyah-nyah!
“Cold iron” doesn’t mean “iron of a low ambient temperature”. It means “iron that was shaped without forging”.
Really? I have never heard that - and I have never heard of anybody being picky about the history of their iron object before they used it to ward off evil.
(And what can you make with iron without using a forge of some kind? Blacksmiths had forges, didn’t they?)
I always though that iron protected against the supernatural because it represents humanity’s mastery over world. While faeries, demons, etc rely on primal emotions and simple magic for power, humans work their will via knowledge* and hard work. A worked piece of iron embodies both of these principles. Note that it’s always wrought iron that is protective. A lump of raw iron ore is a part of nature, not of the world of humans.
I’m not sure what the cold part of “cold iron” refers to. I don’t think it means cold-wrought, because iron is too brittle to work when cold. When it refers to a finished iron product, called “cold” because it’s no longer at the forge. Forges have their own magic, and so maybe the qualifier is needed to distinguish the magic of a finished iron work versus that one still being worked.
I prefer the term “angle bracket”, but the Wikipedia entry also supports “chevron”, and others.
*Edit: I forgot to add: This principle can be seen in the magic of names. A unnamed thing is unknown and frightening. Once it is named (that is, the first step to adding it to the domain of human understanding), it becomes known and subject to a human’s power.
You can work iron or steel stock cold on an anvil. It’s more effort than working hot metal, but it can be a fair trade-off for not being tied to a forge (or in these modern times, having to schlep a forge around).
Of course, if we’re going to be pedantic, someone had to to heat that metal to make that stock so you could work it cold, but we wouldn’t be pedantic here on the SD, would we?
Fair enough - though I bet that most of the nails, horseshoes, etc that were used as protection weren’t “cold iron” by that definition. Wouldn’t you think?
Maybe so, but as I understand it, in Irish folklore the fairies are more or less identified with the peoples who lived in Ireland before the Celtic Milesians came – the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha de Danaan.
See also here:
That’s what I thought as well.
I recall a novel called The Logical Magician that had an interesting take on this. In it, it’s a plot point that a few centuries ago iron stopped working on faeries - because, it turns out iron become too common and was no longer symbolic of humanity’s mastery over nature.