Editing Tinker Bell (section)

==In original play and novel==
Barrie described Tinker Bell as a fairy who mended pots and kettles, an actual [[tinsmith|tinker]] of the fairy folk.<ref>''Peter Pan'' (play), Act I/''Peter and Wendy'' (novel), Chapter III</ref> Her speech consists of the sounds of a tinkling bell, which is understandable only to those familiar with the language of the fairies.

Though sometimes ill-tempered, jealous, vindictive and inquisitive, she is also helpful and kind to Peter.<ref>{{cite book|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26654?msg=welcome_stranger|title=Peter and Wendy by J. M. Barrie|via=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref> The extremes in her personality are explained in the story by the fact that a fairy's size prevents her from holding more than one feeling at a time, so when she is angry she has no counterbalancing [[compassion]]. At the end of the novel, when Peter flies back to find an older Wendy, "when she expressed a doubtful hope that Tinker Bell would be glad to see her he said, 'Who is Tinker Bell?' Try as she might, nothing she said helped Peter remember Tinker Bell. Finally, Peter said, 'There are such a lot of them, I expect she is no more.'" The narrator comments that he expected Peter was right, "that fairies don't live long, but they are so little that a short time seems a good while to them." 

In the first draft of the play, she is called Tippy-toe, but became Tinker Bell in the later drafts and final version.<ref>Roger Lancelyn Green, ''Fifty Years of Peter Pan'', Peter Davies Publishing, 1954 (Chapter 6)</ref>