Do you dare enter a fairy ring? The mythical mushroom portals of the supernatural

Ancient Origins

For thousands of years, the sudden appearance of a ring of mushrooms was a sure sign of otherworldly presences. These rings would seemingly appear overnight, or travel from one location to another, with no clear rhyme or reason. Warnings of the dark forces that must create these abnormalities were passed down between generations, and the folklore of fairy rings was established.

 These fairy rings (fairy circles, elf circles or pixie rings) are a naturally occurring phenomenon. A fungi creates a ring or arc shape within the soil, affecting the grass in the area, and grows up through the greenery forming a circle of mushrooms. These rings—a lovely surprise and good luck to some, or a dark omen and nasty lawn problem to others—can spread from a very few inches or feet to 164 feet (50 meters) or more. The ring found in Belfort, France, is thought to be the largest ring ever found. It is approximately 2,000 feet (600 meters) in diameter, and an astonishing 700 years old

Fairy rings in moss in Iceland. (Chmee2/Valtameri / CC BY 3.0)

 Sometimes there can be more than one ring in an area, and they will overlap, creating strange, winding patterns in the grass. Often the grass inside the ring is dead and withered, and has a clearly different coloring than the grass outside.

Supernatural Creatures with Mysterious Powers
Fairy rings have an historical, mythical reputation, as revealed by the folklore and warnings surrounding them around the globe, but especially in Western Europe.

A mushroom ring in the woods. (Alison Chaiken, Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Various places have their own superstitions surrounding the fairy rings, but for the most part the myths involve fairies or supernatural creatures either dancing around the ring, or have the ring serving as a portal between the fairy realm and our world. It was also believed that the circles were formed by shooting stars, lightning strikes, or were the work of witches. These beliefs persisted into the 19th century, as did the warnings to not stray into a fairy circle, lest you be transported to the fairy realm, and certain doom.

The rings are known throughout Europe. In tradition, they were called “sorcerers’ rings” in France, and “witches rings” in Germany, where they’re supposedly most active on Walpurgisnacht, the eve of April 30, when witches were believed to meet and hold large celebrations coinciding with the arrival of Spring.

Beautiful fairy ring, or profuse circle of Clitocybe nebularis fungus. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

In English, Scandinavian and Celtic and many other traditional European beliefs the rings were caused by fairies or elves dancing. Such events were associated especially with moonlit nights, and the sudden appearance of the rings in the morning were evidence of a dance the evening before.

Images of nude and semi-nude fairies dancing in rings became popular during the Victorian era. Public Domain

In Scotland it was believed the fairies sit on the mushrooms and use them as tables for their fetes, while in Wales the story goes that the mushrooms were picked by the fairy folk and used as parasols or umbrellas. Even now in Wales it’s said the rings signify an underground fairy village. Welsh folklore also considers the rings as locations of fertility and fortune, and claim that crops grown around them and livestock feeding nearby will flourish.

 In contrast, the Dutch legends had it that the barren center of the ring was caused by the devil placing his milk-churn there.

The Austrian tradition said flying dragons caused the rings, blighting the area so only toadstools could grow there for seven years.

 French folklore believed the strange circles were guarded by giant toads that would curse anyone that happened into the ring.

Do NOT Step Into the Ring
 It is generally felt that fairy circles are to be avoided as dangerous places as they’re associated with malevolent beings.

If you dare to enter a ring, many myths warn you will die young. You also become invisible to the mortal world, unable to escape the ring, or you are transported instantly to the fairy realm. You might also lose an eye for your foolishness. Either way, you will be forced to dance around the ring until you die of exhaustion or madness.

"Plucked from the Fairy Circle" A man saves his friend from the grip of a fairy ring. Public Domain

To avoid this terrible, cavorting fate, you can take specific measures, such as running around the ring nine times (nine times only, as 10 is too many and will undo the procedure). It is said that to enter the ring without penalty you can run around the ring during a full moon, but only in the direction the sun travels during the day. If you do this you might hear the fairies dancing underground.

You might also wear a hat backwards, because this is said to confuse the fairies and they will not do you harm.

This fellow is probably in trouble – his hat is not on backwards. The Fairy Ring; the Enchanted Piper (c.1880) Public Domain

 Can Science Explain the Mystery?
 In present day the fungi that causes the natural phenomenon is well understood. Mycelium is a spreading fungus which grows in fertile, damp environments. In good conditions, the spores will develop into mushrooms (the most well-known being the edible Scotch bonnet, or fairy ring champignon). The mushrooms reach out of the ground and create an easily visible ring. Underground, the mycelium networks out under the grass, moving outward from the center, and feeding upon organic matter and decomposing as it travels. The dead mycelium forms a thick, water-repellant mat that starves the grass roots of nutrients and moisture. Eventually the land within the ring withers and dies from starvation, but the leading edge of the ring remains lush and green, as the feeding/dying and decomposing mycelium releases fertilizers. This cycle can continue for centuries, and the ring grows, shrinks, and moves around the countryside, delighting some people and disturbing others.

Clitocybe nebularis mushrooms in part of a ring. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

We in modern times may scoff at the traditional superstition of the fairy rings, but scientists still struggle to explain the so-called “fairy circles” occurring in Africa. It is reported that in Namibia in southern Africa, bare, circular spots on the sandy grasslands have been occurring for unknown reasons. The circles behave much like the mycelium growths, persisting and then vanishing after decades. But scientists have ruled out a similar fungus, and remain stumped as to why these rings have been appearing in the remote, arid landscape. Local oral tradition explain them as the work of spirits and nature gods.

The enigmatic rings of Africa can be about 6.5 feet (2 meters) to almost 40 feet (12 meters) in size. The circles appear, and then disappear, leaving “ghost circles” behind. Credit: Mike and Ann Scott of the Namib Rand Nature Reserve

The differences of the lush outside of the ring compared to the dead inside, with no obvious cause, undoubtedly led the people of antiquity to presume that otherworldly affairs were at work. Certainly the abrupt, unpredictable change in the natural world, the age-old circle symbolism, and the fact that these ‘portals’ seemed temporary and mobile were convincing evidence of the supernatural.

To the consternation and frustration of those now seeking unblemished lawns, ridding a yard of a fairy ring can be as tricky as dealing with the legendary fairy-folk. To stop the mycelium from spreading its necrosis, one should pick the mushrooms as soon as they appear. Next, a thorough soaking of water may drown out the problem, but often it requires digging down beneath the white fungus to remove the tainted soil. This can sometimes mean digging down several feet or more to get all the infected dirt, replacing it all with fresh soil, and restarting the lawn anew.

Perhaps it would be easier just to take your chances with the fairies.

Featured image: A mushroom ring creating a circle on the grass. These rings were believed to be portals to the fairy realm, and areas of danger. (Unukorno, Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Liz Leafloor

The Origins of the Faeries: Encoded in our Cultures

Ancient Origins

The faeries appear in folklore from all over the world as metaphysical beings, who, given the right conditions, are able to interact with the physical world. They’re known by many names but there is a conformity to what they represent, and perhaps also to their origins. From the Huldufólk in Iceland to the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland, and the Manitou of Native Americans, these are apparently intelligent entities that live unseen beside us, until their occasional manifestations in this world become encoded into our cultures through folktales, anecdotes and testimonies.

Middle-Earth-like elves by artist (Araniart/CC BY 3.0)

In his 1691 treatise on the faeries of Aberfoyle, Scotland, the Reverend Robert Kirk suggested they represented a Secret Commonwealth, living in a parallel reality to ours, with a civilization and morals of their own, only visible to seers and clairvoyants. His assessment fits well with both folktale motifs, and some modern theories about their ancient origins and how they have permeated the collective human consciousness. So who are the faeries, where do they come from…and what do they want? 

Faerie-tales
“Myth is a story that implies a certain way of interpreting consensus reality so to derive meaning and effective charge from its images and interactions. As such, it can take many forms: fables, religion and folklore, but also formal philosophical systems and scientific theories.” -

Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory: On religious myth, truth and belief (2016)

 Faerie-tales are a type of mythology; explanations of human and environmental phenomena, usually set at an indeterminate time in the past. Most faerie-tales are never one-offs, but seem to cluster as a single form from many sources, which are dispersed geographically and chronologically. In Europe and America, they were mostly collected by folklorists in the 19th and early-20th centuries, from both oral and written sources, and then disseminated from there. Many were incorporated into the folklorists’ bible, the Aarne-Thompson catalogues of folktale types and motifs, which were first put together in 1910 by the Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne, and completed by Stith Thompson in 1958. They consist of several doorstop volumes, which index every conceivable story type and motif from around the world.

‘The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania’ by Noel Paton (Public Domain)

 It’s been suggested that the catalogues actually codify every human experience, distilled into story; an index of our collective memory as a species, realized through the medium of mythology. Amidst the catalogues are the story types classed as faerie-tales, each containing hundreds of separate motifs; they are the descriptors of a vast array of myth. These are not simple tales told to pass the long winter nights (although that was always one use for them), but rather, they are sophisticated tools that can be used to interpret human experience and to help understand the reality we find ourselves in.

 One common faerie-tale motif, for instance, is the suspension of time when a mortal visits faerieland. A nice example is the Irish story of Oisín, a poet of the Feinn. After falling asleep under an ash tree he awakes to find Niamh, the shape-shifting Queen of Tir na n’Og, the land of perpetual youth, summoning him to join her in her realm as her husband. He agrees and finds himself living in a paradise of perpetual summer, where all good things abound, and where time and death hold no sway.

  Oisín and Niamh travelling to Tír na nÓg. (Public Domain)

But soon he breaks a taboo of standing on a broad flat stone, from where he is able to view the Ireland he left behind. It has changed for the worse, and he begs Niamh to give him leave to return. She reluctantly agrees, but asks that he return after only one day with the mortals. She supplies him with a black horse, which he is not to dismount, and ‘gifted him with wisdom and knowledge far surpassing that of men.’ Once back in Ireland he realizes that decades have passed and that he is no longer recognized or known of. Inevitably, he dismounts his horse and immediately his youth is gone and he becomes an enfeebled old man with nothing but his immortal wisdom. There is no returning to the faerieland of the Tir na n’Og. In other variations of the story, the hero turns to dust as soon as his feet touch the ground of consensus reality.

The faeries as elementals (Courtesy author)

This important and widespread folktale motif seems to suggest that faerieland is the world of the dead, immune from the passage of time, and that return to the world of the living is not possible as the mortal body has aged and decayed in line with the physical laws of this world. In the Japanese tale of Urashima Taro, the hero, when returning home, is even given a casket by his faerie bride, in which his years are locked. When he opens it, his time is up. These stories articulate a belief in an otherworld that is never heaven, but is apparently ruled over by a race of immortals who can exert control over the consciousness of an individual, who may believe themselves to still be in human form, but are actually already dead and existing in non-material form. It is ultimately the place where the faeries come from; a place untouched by the passage of time and physical death. It could even represent the collective consciousness of humanity made into an understandable form in the stories, immortal in nature and containing all wisdom and knowledge, as suggested in the Oisín tale.

19th-century woodcut demonstrating the dangers of entering the faerie ring. (Public Domain)

This might be explained by seeing folktales of this type as representing a surviving pagan belief system of the afterlife. This afterlife did not follow the strictures of Christianity or other world religions, and provided an alternative view of what happens to consciousness after death. It is a view that was (in the West) superseded by Christian theology, but that may be surfacing in these folktales as remnants of the previous system of belief (a belief system that remained partially intact but operated underground for fear of religious persecution). The presence of faeries in this otherworld, and their ability to materialize in standard reality, suggests that they were an essential element in pagan ideas about consciousness and that they had a role to play when it came to death. In this theory the characters in the story play the part of messengers, telling us about the true nature of a timeless reality that is distinct and separate from consensus reality, and showing us that human consciousness disassociates from the physical body to exist in a parallel reality such as Tir na n’Og, where the faeries are in charge. This message is encoded in the stories.

Real Faeries and Shaman Spirits
However, it’s not possible to reduce the origin of the faeries only to abstract mythological themes. Their appearance in folklore often takes the form of witness testimonies or anecdotes, continuing to the present day. They take a myriad of different forms— leprechauns, sylphs, brownies, pixies, even aliens in a technologically updated version of their form— but they are portrayed as real entities, making appearances in this world from their own.

17th-century English woodcut showing faeries dancing in a ring, with hollow hill, amanita muscaria mushroom and 'spirit face' in the tree. (Public Domain)

They lure people into their magical dancing rings, abduct children and adults, play tricks on the unwary, process in faerie funeral corteges, and generally disport themselves with a sense of mischievous, and sometimes malevolent, immorality. There are countless descriptions of their metaphysical presence in our world, throughout time, playing a part in human culture, always liminal, but constantly present as far back as folklore stretches.

Neil Rushton is an archaeologist and freelance writer who has published on a wide variety of topics from castle fortifications to folklore. His first book is Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.

 Top Image: Cave painting from Kimberley, Australia, c.10,000 BCE (Public Domain)

 By Neil Rushton