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The toadstools often found near these so-called fairy-rings were also thought to be their workmanship, and in some localities are styled pixy-stools, and in the North of Wales "fairy-tables," while the "cheeses," or fruit of the mallow, are known in the North of England as "fairy-cheeses."
Some said they wos fairy-rings, but at last they comed to know they wos nothin' more nor less than places where buffaloes wos used to waller in. It's often seemed to me that if we knowed the raisons o' things, we wouldn't be so much puzzled wi' them as we are."
What tales our fancy wove into the fairy-rings under the elm-trees! We lifted each moist fungus half expecting to see the brownies and the elves fly from beneath it! And what fearsome care we took to include no single hypocritical toadstool among our treasures! I am really afraid that Mr. Chesterton would have been less conscientious. Mushrooms and toadstools are all alike to him.
There were circles trodden bare on the plains, thousands, yes, millions of them, which the early travellers, who did not divine their cause, called fairy-rings. From the first of April until the middle of May was the wet season; you could depend upon its recurrence almost as certainly as on the sun and moon rising at their proper time.
Some said they wos fairy-rings, but at last they comed to know they wos nothin' more nor less than places where buffaloes wos used to waller in. It's often seemed to me that if we knowed the raisons o' things we wouldn't be so much puzzled wi' them as we are."
The streaky bends of curdled water, lately true as fairy-rings, stopped and wavered, and drew inward on their flowing curves, and outward on the side toward the ebb. Then the south wind brought the distant toll of her father's turret-clock, striking noon with slow deliberation and dead certainty.
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.
And according to a Danish belief, any one wandering under an elder-bush at twelve o'clock on Midsummer Eve will see the king of fairyland pass by with all his retinue. 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.
The marshes were shaggy with reeds and rushes, and brown with coarse, fading herbage, although here and there gleamed emerald-hued patches of water-soaked soil, fit for fairy-rings. Beyond a moderately high embankment of turf and timber, the lovers could see the broad river, sweeping eastward to the Nore, with homeward-bound and outward-faring ships afloat on its golden tide.
The storm had released uneasy spirits from their bondage in crannies of primeval hills, and it was on such a night as this that many a child has glimpsed the Folk tripping lightly around those fairy-rings which science would have us believe due to other causes than the mystic dance.
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