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- Herausgeber: The O'Brien Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Far more than just a faint echo of the past, Ireland's fairy forts are still vibrantly alive. The traditions connected to them are so powerful that, even today, people rarely interfere with Irish fairy forts or fairy trees. They aren't built on; roads curve around them; farmers don't plough over them The most numerous ancient remains in Ireland today, numbering up to 50,000 or more, these enigmatic mounds and grassy banks seem to call out to us from an earlier time. So, what are they, who built them and what were they for? And how have so many survived for so long? With evocative photographs by Richard Mills, master folklorist Jo Kerrigan explores the origins of these mysterious circular structures: the stories and legends, the history and archaeology, the living traditions and practices connected to them. And reminds us of the dangers of disturbing the ancient spirits dwelling beneath.
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Dedication
To na Daoine Mhaithe, the Good People, our ancient gods and spirits, who continue to watch over and care for this island of Ireland, this book is most respectfully dedicated.
Contents
Acknowledgements and Note on Sources
Tribute must be paid to the incredible foresight of the Irish government of the 1930s. They set up the Folklore Commission, established to record our legends, beliefs, folklore and local customs. Schoolchildren were tasked with obtaining the knowledge of their older relatives and friends and writing it down. It was perhaps the most creative and visionary of that very new government’s projects and resulted in a collection of immense value to researchers and historians everywhere.
This bank of priceless information, known as the Schools Collection, is now under the aegis of duchas.ie and has profited immeasurably from the hard work (still continuing) of volunteers who transcribe all these fascinating individual stories and transfer them online, making them available worldwide. Praise and thanks are due to every one of those volunteers.
Material from the Schools Collection has been much utilised within this book, but it was matched by the wonderful willingness of local people all over the country to share their own beliefs and knowledge of folklore. Wherever we went, we found everyone keenly interested in the research we were carrying out, and only too pleased to share what they knew. Thank you all.
That great historian and folklorist, Shane Lehane, was very willing to share his time in discussing the different facets of 7the old beliefs; and the work of Eddie Lenihan, folklorist and protector of the old ways par excellence, was an inspiration.
It should be noted that many of the sites mentioned within this book are on private land, and in cases where the exact location is not given, it is because the landowner expressly asked us not to. Always check and ask permission before visiting any ancient site.
Finally, it may well be pushing our luck even to mention this, but, quite apart from the welcome we received everywhere in the human sphere, a strange number of unusual small problems and accidents occurred throughout our wide-ranging fieldwork, which made us wonder if somebody – or something – was expressing annoyance at our interference with things that are best left alone. If so, and the Good People were responsible, please accept our sincere and respectful apologies. We have dedicated this book appropriately, as a form of compensation.
8
A perfectly circular ringfort, made by drawing a circle around a central stick.
Chapter I
What Are Fairy Forts?
You will glimpse them, perhaps quite by chance, as you drive along country roads. Unusual grassy circles; strange, tree-covered mounds in the centre of otherwise smoothly tilled fields; the road making a sudden and unexpected diversion around an obstacle that certainly isn’t a rock before returning to its straight route. Once you have got your eye in, so to speak, you will identify dozens of them. Very frequently (given our gentle climate and the enthusiastic willingness of bramble and bush to swallow up anything that stands still for more than a minute), they are too overgrown for you to be certain of what you are seeing. OS maps, unfortunately, rarely show fairy forts, although megaliths and other ancient archaeological features are usually well marked.
It is a good idea to consult Google Earth (an extremely recent invention when set against the timescale involved in these features). On Google Earth, these enigmatic earthworks stand out vividly – very clear circular formations in 10our otherwise squared and fenced environment. They are also often still clearly visible amid the gorse and bushes of wilder upland slopes.
Enormous numbers of fairy forts survive across Ireland. Somewhere between 45,000 and 60,000 is a very rough estimate, but in all probability there are many more, given the speed with which our lush vegetation covers up everything. However, advances in modern technology allow us to scan the landscape (and below it) more and more, and with considerably more accuracy than was ever possible heretofore, so the figure is likely to increase exponentially as ever more work is done.
So many ringforts within signalling distance of each other.
11Just a side note: don’t confuse fairy forts with fairy rings, which are circles of mushrooms or fungi that spring up overnight, seemingly by magic, and last a very short time. They are said to mark places where the fairies have been dancing the night before. Temporary and delightful, they should be noted and enjoyed. However, don’t venture into one, as that carries risks.
Never step inside a fairy ring. You may not be able to leave again.
‘I remember going out one morning and finding three large perfect circles of mushrooms in a field near us at home,’ recalls Gobnait, who grew up in north Offaly. ‘They were only in that one field, nowhere else. I went home and told my father, and he immediately said, “You didn’t step inside one, did you?” I said no, and he said, relieved, “Oh, that’s good. You might find you were in another place or another time altogether, and never be able to leave it again.”’ It’s a widespread belief.
A point to note here, though, and one to which this book will return again, is that both fairy forts and fairy rings are 12circles, never square. The circle is one of the oldest and most powerful symbols in the world, and was especially important to those who dwelt in ancient Ireland. The evidence of its influence can be seen in many surviving features from those times, including not only the aforementioned forts and rings, but also stone citadels, round towers, beehive huts, and of course the magnificent archaeological structures in which this country is so rich, like those at Brú na Bóinne. Even old Irish graveyards were always built in the round, never square or oblong like those of later settlers.
An old Irish graveyard, circular instead of square or oblong.
13The circle has of course been central to many religions and beliefs around the world, evolving naturally from observance of the turning of the year, the movement of crops through growth to harvest and disappearance into the earth, only to emerge again anew. Communities living close to nature, as most did in ancient times, would have observed the sun in its progress across the sky every day, going out of sight at night only to return the following morning; the moon waxing and waning over the month, and its effect on the tides; the constantly repeated slow dance of the cyclical round. To build shelters, homes and ritual sites in the same circular pattern was as natural as life itself.
The circle is a powerful form, as practitioners of wicca and other pagan religions know well. Casting a circle, whether for protection against evil influences or to create a charm, is the first thing you do when channelling what power you may need to achieve some important end. Drawing it with salt or white pebbles, lighting differently coloured candles at each point of the compass, or simply making a mental circle to aid concentration, are all familiar to those who work in the old ways. The vital thing is that the circle is unbroken, with no gap left to break the energy or allow malevolent energies to enter.
In ancient Ireland, as in many other venerable cultures, the circle was seen as reflecting the unending Wheel of Life, and was thus reflected and indeed respected in all early building.
As indicated above, even huge and impressive old stone forts or citadels (usually identified as dúns, caiseals, or cathairs), built and occupied over generations by powerful chieftains and kings or used as assembly and inauguration sites, were 14always circular. In a royal fort, the ruler was expected to live in some state, to welcome visitors, entertain them and offer good accommodation. For that you needed a large establishment with not only state rooms and a banqueting hall, but also homes for all the support systems – bakers, scribes, metalworkers and a myriad of other servants, as well as herders and their flocks. In addition, the regents of Ireland’s provinces went on frequent journeys around their kingdoms, bringing with them their entourage, including their chief bard and chief Brehon or expert in the law. The people of one particular area would gather together at one of these well-known sites on the chosen day or number of days, to make known their disputes or complaints and have judgement given on the advice of the learned Brehon. All of this took place within the curving power of an unbroken circle, which strengthened and enforced the ceremony.
Even crannógs, those wonderfully photogenic little artificial islands built on wooden piles in lakes as sheltered homesteads of farmers, were carefully built in the round. Usually reached by boat or occasionally by a drawbridge that could be raised in times of danger, they were a practical design, and are still beautiful to see in our inland waters, now often covered with trees and appearing almost to float on the calm surface. Our little beehive huts, some of the oldest of which are still to be seen standing in remote places like Slea Head in Kerry, are so skilfully built in the round that you wonder how on earth they managed with only rounded stones to hand. Yet they were still being built in exactly the same way on islands like the Blaskets well into the nineteenth century.15
A picturesque crannóg on a lake.
16The greater caiseals are for the most part preserved, well maintained, open and accessible as tourist attractions. The looming grandeur of Staigue Fort in its deserted Kerry valley, for example; the spectacularly sited Dún Aengus on Inishmore in the Aran Islands; the magnificent Grianán of Aileach, arrogantly bestriding a Donegal hillside; Navan Fort or Emain Macha towering above Armagh. They have been researched and documented, and we do at least have some idea of their history, of who lived there and what battles might have taken place around them. The royal fort at Rathangan in Co. Kildare was even the subject of one of our oldest Irish poems.
Staigue Fort in Kerry, built in the Iron Age as a defensive stronghold for a local king.
17The fort over against the oak-wood,
Once it was Bruidge’s, it was Cathal’s,
It was Aed’s, it was Ailill’s,
It was Conaing’s, it was Cuilíne’s,
And it was Maeldúin’s.
The fort remains after each in its turn
And the kings asleep in the ground
(Kuno Meyer translation, 1913)
In many cases, later structures, and eventually Norman castles, were built on the sites of such original stone forts. These locations were chosen for the very same reasons as the originals – a good strategic point on a height, positioned to keep an eye on the countryside all round and give early warning of approaching visitors or enemies. It is not unusual to find a modern farmhouse on a high mound where centuries of earlier buildings have stood, each in turn decaying and giving way to the newer structure.
However, crannógs and beehive huts, and the larger caiseals and dúns, have not, for some reason, gathered to themselves the countless legends, superstitions and beliefs that fairy forts have. Why this is, we simply don’t know. But it’s a fact. Admired, yes; snapped a thousand times, certainly. But venerated and feared? No.
Real fairy forts or fairy mounds are far smaller than any cathair though. They do not in any way resemble kingly residences like Dún Aengus or Staigue, except in that vital circular shaping. So what exactly are they?
These little features are to be found everywhere in the Irish 18countryside. They occasionally have a stone encircling wall, but more commonly merely an earthen ditch, often overgrown and covered with hawthorn, gorse and enthusiastic brambles. A few will have two or even three protective ditches and banks surrounding the central circle, but often these have been eroded by time or filled in by usage of the surrounding fields. The enclosed space may be no wider than fifteen metres or, rarely, may be as extensive as forty metres. (Incidentally, in the ancient Brehon laws, the dimensions dictated for the residence of a tribal king, which would certainly have been a caiseal or dún, was c.140 feet, or 42.56 metres.)
So numerous are they, and so long have they been part of the landscape, that they are virtually taken for granted by local residents (with certain careful provisos, as we will see). Known in Irish as ráths or lios, the briefest glance through a topographical directory or map will show that such features, both the large imposing ones and the smaller ones, though they are not individually identified as a rule, have given their names to innumerable townlands, villages and locations. They have thus remained very much a part of our modern landscape.
Just some examples: Lissarda (the high fort), Lisdoonvarna (the lios at the fort of the gap, a nice example of lios and dún combined in the same place name), Lisduff, Lismore, Liosnapuca. Lisnakea in Co. Fermanagh means ‘the fort of the sceach or whitethorn tree’. It took its name from the celebrated Sceach-ghabhra [Skagowra], under which the Maguire leaders were traditionally inaugurated. Rathmore (the large fort), between Millstreet and Killarney. The town and railway station hug the main road, but south of the conurbation in a quiet field 19lies the original Ráth Mór that gave the place its name. Every time the train passes Charleville in Co. Cork, the conductor announces in Irish ‘An Ráth’, which is its proper name, commemorating the ancient ringfort. Rathdangan, Rathpeacon, Ratheenduff (the little black fort), Raheenroe or Raithin-ruadh (the little red fort). And there are hundreds more to be discovered in every county.
This way to the lios at the fort of the gap.
Dúns and caiseals are equally numerous, although you might not realise at first what a signpost is telling you. Dunmore, Dun Laoghaire (the fort of Laoghaire), Dunmanway, Dunbeacon, Dunboyne, Dunbrody – the list is endless. Even 20the great rock of Cashel itself preserves forever in its Irish name, An Caiseal, the memory of its mighty past as the palace of the King of Munster (it passed into the hands of the Christian clergy in later times). All reflect old memories and strong tradition surrounding places of powerful magic.
Ráth Mór ringfort near Rathmore.
21Westmeath: In Adamstown at the back of Martin Neill’s house there is a fort circled with clay and stones. In Mr Casey’s field there is a fort called Ráth Drishóg. It is a big hill circled with rocks. The townland still bears the name Ráth Drishóg. In Jack Pigot’s field, Killeen, there is a high fort surrounded with banks. In the middle of it the fairies thatched their little houses with feathers.
So what do academic experts say about these so-called fairy forts? The formal archaeological approach classifies them (quite correctly) as old enclosures, constructed of either turf or stone, depending on what the local environment most easily offered, and used to shelter humans and their animals both from the weather and against threats from raiders or wild beasts such as wolves, which were plentiful here in earlier times. These enclosures were most likely made in their traditionally circular shape by the simple act of attaching a súgán rope (made by twisting straw) to a central stick and drawing a large circle.
As we have already seen, circles were always the instinctive shape in ancient Ireland. The harder square and oblong designs came in with later invaders, who did not have the same respect for the natural return of things to their beginning before 22starting off again. Perhaps it was the increasing availability of bricks rather than the materials that were naturally to hand in the landscape that effected this change. But then we remember Egypt’s pyramids and other ancient buildings across the world, all angles and edges, and must consider that it was a different way of thinking, a sternly practical approach rather than the instinctive, emotive approach of a land and its people working in harmony with each other. A circular enclosure was easy to create with that stick and rope, but wouldn’t a square or oblong shape be as easy to mark out?
The fact remains that all ancient Irish structures were carefully built in the round, honouring a belief and a tradition as old as time itself. An early Irish burial ground is instantly recognisable by its ring shape, while the later, Christian ones are square or oblong, as are their buildings.
It is hard to tell what the interiors of these circular enclosures might have looked like, given the centuries of change in between. Certainly any enclosure used for protection would have needed lookout points or at least a high centre, as well as flat spaces for huts. Whatever their size or the materials used, they would have taken a lot of hard labour and considerable time to erect. What we see today as a hollowed space within an earthwork probably contained a central mound ten thousand years ago. Indeed, that they have lasted so long, albeit much reduced and eroded by the passage of many centuries, is tribute to their original builders.
The huts or houses within a ráth or lios would have been built simply of posts with interlaced rods and coverings of reeds or straw, while in a grander dún or caiseal stone would 23have been used. There would also have been shelters within the central space for livestock. (It would have been asking for trouble to let your precious sheep or cattle roam free across the hillsides at night, what with roaming bands of wolves and opportunistic raiders from nearby settlements on the lookout for easy prey.)
A reconstruction of ancient dwellings at Lough Gur.
Unsurprisingly, very little evidence remains of these original layouts, but archaeological excavation has yielded enough information to enable several excellent reconstructions to be built, for example at Lough Gur in Limerick and the Irish National Heritage Park in Wexford. Such developments can really bring you back into the past and give you some idea of 24what life was like so long ago. Today, when so many children grow up in urban environments, with no idea that anything could exist that didn’t come from a shop or supermarket, these archaeological reconstructions are very valuable, especially on open days when ancient crafts and skills may be demonstrated.
You catch sight of them everywhere. An old ringfort in a field.
It can be frankly confusing at first to sort through the enormous range of differentiations in archaeology-speak – some separate hill and promontory forts from inland ringforts, henges from dúns and caiseals, barrows from ditch pit circles; while others insist on separating stone-built from earthen enclosures. Even the experts can’t agree on a fixed scheme of assigning a landscape feature firmly to one or other of these categories, and it is unlikely they will do so while so many remain hidden, unexcavated or much altered from their 25original forms. It isn’t worth agonising over. In this book, as already indicated, we are talking about the little ones, built either of earth or stone, almost disappeared into the landscape today but still retaining a powerful presence.
Even the common usage of the descriptive term ‘fort’ is questionable. A fort is usually taken to mean a strong, fortified, defensive structure, and most fairy forts were anything but that. It is strange to place a tiny, grassy circle in a field in the same category as the splendour of An Grianán or Staigue, but ‘fort’ is the accepted term, so we might as well go along with it. (No, you can’t call it a fairy ring – that term belongs strictly to the mushroom circles that spring up overnight and disappear just as quickly.) Throughout this book we will refer to a fort, ráth, lios, dún or caiseal as seems appropriate, or where others have used those terms.
Arguments also continue in archaeological circles as to how far back these structures date, but while some are content to say ‘medieval or thereabouts’, the current trend is to move at least some of them well back into prehistory. It is, in fact, pretty difficult to date something made of timeless earth and stones. Quite often an arbitrary century is allocated based on what has been found in an excavation. If artefacts are recovered, and these can be dated fairly accurately, then the structure itself is usually given the same date, although that is hardly satisfactory, given that such places might well have been occupied for many generations. Such a questionable solution can be likened to discovering the most up-to-date smartphone in a crumbling old house, and immediately deciding that the house was built only yesterday! It’s never 26that simple. Let’s just say that some of our still-extant fairy forts were certainly here well before Christianity ever came tramping determinedly over the horizon.
We know this because they are mentioned in the oldest writings, which themselves came into being when the zealous, newly arrived monks started to record in script the oral history of this land, carried through countless previous generations by the druids and bards, and passed down from the old to the young. Written records date from the fifth century AD onwards, but the knowledge and information they contain go back into the mists of time.
The Dindsenchas or Lore of Places is one such record, in which the wise ones shared their information with the scribes so long ago. It has many references to these magical sites, showing not only that they were a familiar sight to the druids, but that they were, even then (for at least several centuries before the arrival of the monks), regarded as ancient. For example:
Sinand … Mongan’s daughter from the fairy dwellings … … a prince’s son, the fairest that dwelt in a fairy mound in Erin …
… He was the craftsman of Badbh’s fairy mound …
References like this demonstrate just how far back the tradition goes of regarding these places as the dwelling places of the Good People. It isn’t a recent belief, the product of a modern desire for romance or mystery, but a very old conviction indeed, which has never died out.27
‘Gentle’ is a term you often find in the stories and legends about these magical structures. Lena Connolly of Mullinasole in Donegal used that word quite naturally when sharing her knowledge of local places back in the 1930s:
The fairies must have liked Mullinasole very much because there are quite a number of gentle spots within reach of our home. On the hill behind James Likely’s house there are two gentle spots and on Hugh Martin’s hill which lies right above James Likely’s hill there are four fairy mounds. There is a big hole under the ground stretching from one of the mounds in James Likely’s field to the big mound in Hugh Martin’s field. It is three and a half feet deep and it is one quarter of a mile long.
Souterrains or underground tunnels are indeed common to many of these forts. Used for storage, for shelter, perhaps even for escape, there are many records of tunnels leading for long distances underneath, even linking two similar rings. It is not unusual to find such souterrains in larger forts, where raids and battles might well be expected, which extend a long way to a safe exit. Such were the times in which the occupants lived.
There is an old fort in Droumalonhart in the west of Glencar [Co. Kerry]. There is a big hole down in the ground and stepping stones going down. Under the ground are two rooms. These are made of gravel.
A fort is a round raised up piece of earth with a ring of trees around it. The fairies were supposed to live in them long ago. 28Some of these forts have under ground tunnels or passages leading from one to another.
The tunnels are six or seven mile long. These passages or tunnels are called coves and are supposed to have been used by the fairies long ago. It is wrong to clear these forts or to touch them in any way. A fort is made about one hundred and thirty yards in circumference. It is a lonely place and people do not like to go near it at night.
The most of them are a round shape. There is a bank of earth around some of them and stones around more of them. There are trees around a few of them.
Outside one of them is a hole, going down into the ground with steps down into it. The people say that that is the entrance into it. Nobody ever went down that hole.
It is circular in shape surrounded by a mound of earth, outside which there is a circle of trees. In the centre of it is an entrance hole. Anyone that went in there never came out again …
Today, unsurprisingly, most of these souterrains still existing are completely blocked up, since the risk they pose to both human and animal life cannot be denied. Children disappearing without trace; animals falling in and breaking a leg; daring explorers getting lost – it is understandable, although a pity that we can no longer see many of them. Some that were strongly built with stone walls and roofs are still to be found in parts of the country, but always with protective gates and warnings. We live in different times.
In archaeological thinking, this is generally where these enigmatic circles have been left. Earthen or stone enclosures, 29used sometimes for habitation, more often for gathering cattle. Sometimes deep holes or tunnels found in them. No particular dates; no major discoveries. No links to heroic figures of old, no stirring tales of battle or romance. Taken for granted. Just old enclosures. Nothing to see here, move on.
Not good enough. Emphatically not good enough. There is no such thing as ‘just’ in history or its place in the landscape. No object or unusual feature should be left at what is only a starting point. Always lift it up metaphorically, peer under it, check around it, ask the questions begging to be asked by virtue of its very existence. Why might it have been built? Approximately when? By whom? These are all reasonable questions, and most of us will have voiced or at least thought those queries at one time or another. However, one other huge question above all emerges from the fact that these are the most numerous archaeological features still found in modern, developed Ireland.
So, what is the huge question?
How come they are still here in such enormous numbers?
The Ireland of today, like most other countries, is constantly moving forward, planning, clearing, building, commercialising. More housing is demanded year by year, more roads, more services. Villages expand into towns, then into large residential conglomerations. The outcry for more space, more land on which to build homes, to develop lucrative industries, to extend the farms that supply the essential foodstuffs for a growing population as well as for export, is never-ending. It is ongoing right now, even as you read this.30
Yet still these enigmatic little green mounds and circles remain, untouched, often in the very centre of a rigorously farmed landscape, surrounded by crops and cattle. Old laneways and minor roads curve carefully around them instead of taking the easy route straight through. Even modern motorways are diverted to avoid touching them. Plans for new factories are amended, layouts shifted, to take account of these far-longer-established features in the countryside.
The motorway and access roads had to respect this fairy fort near Nenagh.
What is the power that fairy forts hold even in today’s world of cynical planners, ambitious companies, demanding 31populations? Because hold it they certainly do. Look at those figures again: There are up to 60,000 fairy forts still here in the landscape, in an otherwise rapidly changing Ireland. Forests may fall, fields may disappear under housing estates, far-reaching views may become obscured by development, once-peaceful countryside may echo to the roar of traffic, but the fairy forts remain.
And the reason they remain is more powerful than any government plan or any ambitious development project. It has its endless, intertwining, interlacing roots buried deep in the very nature and character of Ireland. What is the real truth behind the amazing survival of our fairy forts?
32
Fairy fort meets adjoining hedgerows but doesn’t yield.
Chapter II
The Power of Belief
For centuries, the ancient fairy forts of Ireland have been believed to be the homes of na Daoine Mhaithe, the Good People, also known respectfully as Themselves, the Gentry or even, affectionately, the Other Crowd.
Why is this? Or, more accurately, why has it always been so, since the belief has stood firm for millennia? Well, according to folklore (and remember, folklore means the lore of the people, the history that has been passed down through memory from one generation to another, where no written record exists), it has to do with the Tuatha dé Danann, who held Ireland long long ago, and the Celts or Milesians, who later came up from Spain with the firm intention of seizing the fertile island for themselves. It is said that the warlike, wandering Celts had long known of this green land in the far northwest. They were determined to reach it if they could, travelling halfway across the world in search of their goal. The last leap was from northern Spain, and then they were here, ready to do battle and take over.34
The Tuatha dé Danann (the People of Danu, the mother goddess) are said to have been a tall, fair and courtly race, fond of music, feasting and the arts, and skilled in magic. They had lived here for a long time, devoted to the care of Ireland’s landscape and its fertility. When the Celts arrived, the Tuatha dé Danann fought bravely for the place they loved, but after some time, their leaders realised that endless battles did no good for anyone, least of all for the land they protected. They therefore sought to reach an agreement with the invaders, suggesting that they each take half of the island, and thereby peacefully co-exist. In this way, Ireland itself would suffer no more harm.
Unfortunately, the Celts had cunning leaders, well versed in the strategies and counter-movements of war, and they managed to manoeuvre the agreement so that the half to be taken by the Tuatha dé Danann would actually lie below ground and below water. Realising they had been tricked, the former lords of the country, instead of fuming and heading straight back into battle, acted in accordance with their noble character. They decided that rather than lay waste to everything they cared for, they would accept the unfair ruling.
Using their magical arts, they thus withdrew from the upper world of Ireland into the hills and under the rivers, lakes and surrounding sea. There, in the Otherworld, they continue to live as before, a life of music, dancing and feasting. They occasionally emerge to visit each other in different parts of the country, or to see what the human population is up to, always maintaining their passionate love of Ireland and their care for its good health. They became, in fact, our spirit ancestors, the gods and goddesses of nature itself.35
The fairy mounds, especially those with tunnels or souterrains lying underneath, are seen as entrances to this Otherworld, as are caves, hills, wells, springs, rivers and lakes – anywhere that can be seen to shield the world we know from the one we do not. They can be perceived as the gateways if you like, but it is most inadvisable to try passing through such a gateway without an official invitation.
This farmhouse track has carefully skirted its resident fairy fort.
36This is such a strongly held belief that from one end of the country to the other, people will go well out of their way to avoid interfering with or damaging these special places in any way. More, they will warn others to desist from such attempts, should they hear of any such plans, believing it their duty so to do. Interference could include removing stones from a fort for building purposes; digging for treasure (the belief that there are vast fortunes of gold and jewels hidden under such places is well-nigh universal); grazing cattle or sheep in the enclosure; or cutting for fuel the bushes and trees that have self-rooted in and around the fort. Indeed, the hawthorn tree (which is a powerful fairy tree, and should never be moved from wherever it chooses to place itself) is also known as a scíóg, or fairy bush.
Incidentally, the term ‘fairies’ is mostly used only in English cultural traditions, most of which were created during an upsurge of passionate interest in the subject in the early twentieth century. This was sparked by the appearance of a series of photographs that became known as the Cottingley Fairies, purporting to show the elusive little creatures perched on trees and playing with two little girls. Even such noted writers as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in them, and JM Barrie’s creation of Tinkerbell in his play Peter Pan
