An immense deal of legendary lore has clustered round the so-called
fairy-rings--little circles of a brighter green in old pastures—within
which the fairies were supposed to dance by night. This curious
phenomenon, however, is owing to the outspread propagation of a
particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is
manured for a richer following vegetation.[6] Amongst the many other
conjectures as to the cause of these verdant circles, some have ascribed
them to lightning, and others have maintained that they are produced by
ants.[7] In the "Tempest" (v. i) Prospero invokes the fairies as the "demi-
puppets" that:
"By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms."
And in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5) Mistress Quickly says:"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."
Drayton, in his "Nymphidia" (1. 69-72), tells how the fairies:"In their courses make that round,
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so called the fayrie ground,
Of which they have the keeping."
These fairy-rings have long been held in superstitious awe; and when
in olden times May-dew was gathered by young ladies to improve their
complexion, they carefully avoided even touching the grass within them,
for fear of displeasing these little beings, and so losing their personal
charms. At the present day, too, the peasant asserts that no sheep nor
cattle will browse on the mystic patches, a natural instinct warning them
of their peculiar nature. A few miles from Alnwick was a fairy-ring,
round which if people ran more than nine times, some evil was
supposed to befall them.
It is generally agreed that fairies were extremely fond of dancing
around oaks, and thus in addressing the monarch of the forest a poet has
exclaimed:
"The fairies, from their nightly haunt,
In copse or dell, or round the trunk revered
Of Herne's moon-silvered oak, shall chase away