What exactly was/is the deal with "fairy forts" in Ireland?

I've been watching a bunch of films about ethereal concepts like witch-craft, voodoo and exorcisms.

I have no good answer as to why I've been doing this, but I suspect it may be related to an ulterior perspective on culture (aka "cults"), societal beliefs, and the overarching underwriting concept of all the above - neural action (how we're "coded", the physiological structure through which the aforementioned are mediated).

If you have no interest in physiology or can't remember what you were taught in the cellular biology section of your science lessons at school, fear not - the conversation is intended to revolve primarily around more day to day relatable concepts.

.....

W.B. Yeats wrote -

"come away oh stolen child,

to the waters and the wild,

with a fairy hand in hand,

for the worlds more full of weeping,

than you can understand".

Now this may well be my esoteric interpretation of this verse (it's also possible I heard it on the JRE), but it sounds suspiciously like he was talking about getting f**ked-up/dissociated on psilocybes (aka magic-mushrooms).

All this "fairy hand in hand" talk, magical etc., as fairy-forts are often located in fields and anyone who goes walking that times of year will tell you psilocybe growth tends to be plentiful in such areas.

Were fairy-forts old school flower-beds basically, used to grow and harvest shrooms?

Feisar

They were old Bronze Age forts, all that's left of 99% of them now is the impression on the ground. Small bit of superstition around them with some people.

silliussoddius

Isn’t it linked to the Tuatha de Danann of mythology where they were said to be driven underground by the Milesians. A good way to link more current mythology with older structures.

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011067#Comment_118011067

The superstition is still strong. A lot of farmers won't dare touch them, even though by destroying them, they would increase land yields. There's still over 40,000 of them on the island.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011105#Comment_118011105

How do you explain the psilocybe growth there?

Maybe that's specifically cause farmers not touching them ensures the shroom spores are left undisturbed?

None the less, Ireland has a strong history of mythology, "druids" and Shamans and shit, does it not?

Mythology is basically dissociative practices, rain dancing and trying to trip-balls.

Not to mention Alchemists were basically that generations pharmacologists, were they not?

Prescribing some psilocybe to the jilting spirit? (thus "spiritual" healers?)

silliussoddius

Did Roe Jogan say that Yeats was writing about tripping balls (instead of the old idea of changelings), or are you going full woo yourself?

Gregor Samsa

How do you explain the psilocybe growth there?

but sure you get them growing in all kinds of places. We used to collect shrooms on football pitches and golf courses. That they might grow near a ring fort isn’t indicative of any particular property exclusive to them.

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011115#Comment_118011115

Sure they grow everywhere here on the island, given the right conditions at this time of the year. Mostly in low sheltered areas where cows and sheep have been grazing. The embankments could make nice sheltered areas for the mushrooms to grow, but like I said, they are everywhere in the fields this time of the year.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011153#Comment_118011153

No he was basically saying the "let's dance with the fairies" was an analogy for shroom use, in much the same way as "dancing with the wolves" is the south american cults analogy for vaping DMT or whatever other assortment of tryptamines they're frying their brains on.

silliussoddius

Well he is a bit of a twat.

jackboy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011115#Comment_118011115

Are you mixing up ringforts (manmade) with fairy rings ( natural ring pattern growth of shrooms).

Feisar

I don’t partake, well not since that time in Amsterdam but I’m in an Irish based Reddit group dedicated to liberty caps

buried

There is a huge one that I know of near my Grandparents house. The ring is massive, with an embankment lined with huge trees and hedges. The entire ring takes up the near entire field so its only good for grazing. You can still walk the trench which is about 20 feet wide in places. We used to go down there as kids and the place had this unreal ethereal feel to it, almost as if you were being watched by something from all sides, and we weren't on the mushrooms at that stage. It is a brilliant place. The grandparents didn't like us going in there. They didn't like talking about the fairies either though, didn't want them even mentioned in the house. Its a fascinating cultural subject that we have here.

EmmetSpiceland

If you ever get “stuck” in one you should take your coat off, turn it inside out and put it back on. You’ll be able to leave fine then.

Trying to generally get the idea behind ethereal dissociation, spells, the analogous meaning of "magic", and the under writing physiologic manifestation of these feelings = neural firing (feeling uplifted etc. - but that's just a subordinate clause for the purposes of this discussion).

https://youtu.be/ogMNV33AhCY

As always, I like to co-interpret concepts through the medium of expositional dance.

riclad

Farmers would not touch them as some said you will be cursed if you use that land for anything like crops.

Peregrinus

There isn't a lot of evidence - in fact, there is no evidence at all - that pre-Christian religious or spiritual traditions in Ireland had any rituals or practices involving the use of psilocybes, or associated states of altered consciousness, etc. In fact from the little evidence we have it seems to have been a pretty practical affair, mainly concerning itself with a proper relationship with the environment (when to sow and when to reap; what land to leave fallow; etc) and with the maintenance of social order and the resolution of disputes. Similarly for the folk-spiritual beliefs and practices that survived into the Christian era and became absorbed into Christianity. If there's a theme that runs through what little we know of pre-Christian religion in Ireland it's not magical and ethereal and spiritual and otherworldly; it's an intense connection with the land. They weren't into body/spirit dualism at all.

Which is not to say that people might not have used psilocybes. But, if they did, there's nothing to suggest that they spiritualised the experience. They probably used them like we might use alcohol.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012103#Comment_118012103

You don't think old school Ireland engaged in "magical" beliefs, and they were all just hardcore farmers?

FarCanal

Where I am, there is a series of fairy rings that stretch for around 20 miles. They are all within view of each other and a lot around here reckon it that this was their way of defending themselves ie if the fire in the middle of one went out the next few would know something was wrong. Also seems, around here anyway, that they are only built on very sheltered tree lined fields.

Sadly, a good few of them have been razed, built on and the fairies havent seem to have minded.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012255#Comment_118012255

No, they certainly engaged in magical beliefs. But they were magical beliefs about practical things - farming, land use, relations with family and neighbours, the avoidance of harm. They weren't so much into dreams and visions and transcendental experiences and expanding your consciousness. These things come from an entirely different dualist tradition which considers the spiritual world as something separate and apart from the material world, and radically different to it. In the Irish tradition, the two are intimately intertwined; effectively two faces of the one coin.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011105#Comment_118011105

Which was a very good thing as far as preservation of our ancient structures is concerned. Other European nations didn't fare so well on this score and a lot of it was lost. There was a similar set of beliefs in north western France which has a staggering number of megaliths still around, though they're much older than fairy forts which are for the most part Iron Age farmsteads.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012316#Comment_118012316

+1, though we only know of one Irish tradition, the one that was reported and written down in the early medieval, we have no real clue about earlier traditions, EG the traditions of those who built sites like Newgrange.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012416#Comment_118012416

Oh, sure. We know something about the pre-Christian religion/spirituality of Gaelic Ireland because there is a cultural continuity there, but we know next to nothing about the religion/spirituality of the preceding cultures, beyond the little we can infer from obvious facts like the monuments they left behind.

ednwireland

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011067#Comment_118011067

iron age to early medieval mainly

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012482#Comment_118012482

The immediately pre christian stuff like had a fairly long continuity going back to the Bronze age when the bell beaker culture came here from the continent and supplanted the previous neolithic culture(and genetics). Then again and like when Christianity absorbed a lot of the local faiths and culture, the bell beaker probably did similar with the existing neolithic. They were farmers too.

The dualist traditions you mentioned that are about expanding your consciousness, shamanism and the like seem to have a hunter gatherer bias to them and where they're found today that type of culture is either still on the go, or in the pretty recent past. Farming cultures tend to have very different philosophies.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118012411#Comment_118012411

Yeah, and I'm sure there's at least one windbag out there who thinks all superstition about them is nonsense, wouldn't object to seeing them all razed, and then in the same breath complain about the loss of Ireland's traditional culture through immigration and globalisation.

looksee

There is one fairy fort that I know of that is on top of a drumlin. It is much too small to have been a fortified dwelling and is in the middle of woodland. A bit of research shows that it is the highest point around for a good number of miles, and that the land was planted as woodland only in the C16/17 or so. Without the trees it would have been visible for miles around and the suggestion is that it was a signal point that would have had a fire lighting in it for signalling purposes, most likely linking to other sites. Old maps show a footpath leading to it (still visible), then stopping, as though it was a place that people walked to. There was a boreen beyond it that linked to another road so it may have been a continuous foot path through, the maps show it stopping at the fairy fort.

So at some point it was a practical structure with no 'spiritual' or fairy links - unless the fires were considered some way supernatural, though this seems unlikely and unnecessary. At some stage along the way it gained minor celebrity as having fairy connections, which like religion is just a way of finding an explanation for things that could not be explained at the time - luck, the afterlife, unresolved events, aspects of unexplained science.

Possibly initially as simple as 'tell the kids a tale of ghoulies and ghosties to keep them away from the place where we have a fire set ready for an emergency, we don't want them setting it off inappropriately'. Over a couple of generations this would be fairly well established, some people would believe it utterly, others would treat it like Santa Claus - a nice bit of nonsense that there is no reason to disprove. I am making this last bit up as I go along, but it seems reasonable.

whisky_galore

Electric lighting pretty much 'killed off' the fairies and ghosties that people once believed in. Very easy to let imagination run riot when all you had were oil lamps and candles.

chooseusername

They're Ringforts.

The clue is in the name, nothing to do with Faeries or mushrooms.

Should never interfere with a solitary hawthorn bush either, or you’ll have to deal with the wrath of the piseogs.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013462#Comment_118013462

Depending on how we are able to cope with the demand for energy over the next few decades, lamps and candles could be where we end back up at.

Church on Tuesday

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011105#Comment_118011105

Good few near were I grew up. My grandfather in the 20s along with his mates would observe orbs flying around a fort at night down from the local shop were they brought cigs. This fort was just down the road from us.

A house was built on the site of the fort (the fort was more or less levelled) and it experienced paranormal activity for decades. The occupants of the house would lock the front door at night and it would be wide open in the morning. Every morning. Had to get priest in give a blessing when it got to the point in rural Ireland that you couldn't have a door unlocked much less wide open. Spectral figures would be seen outside the house at 4 in the morning... lots of odd stuff

So yeah, don't chance it if a fort is in your way of a build.

Lia_lia

They are everywhere. I often go looking around Google Earth to how many are around. I’ve a friend that was refused planning permission as there is one on her Dad’s farm land. Surprised he even let her apply for it with the superstitions.

chooseusername

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013511#Comment_118013511

I linked to a map of them earlier, but the link didn't work,

think it's ok now;

https://maps.archaeology.ie/HistoricEnvironment/

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013508#Comment_118013508

Eddie Lenihan, noted folklorist, managed to get a road diverted around a fairy bush, although it wasn't as a result of a direct to the council who were building it. Some big papers around the world picked up on the story and the publicity got to be too much and the route of the road was changed. Otherwise they would have gone straight through.

To link back to your anecdote a bit, fairy bushes (whitethorn and blackthorn bushes standing alone in the middle of a field usually) are said to be the waypoints along the paths that fairies use for travel. There was a story relating to this where a house was built and the owner was driven demented at night with banging on the walls. Every night - BANG, BANG, BANG for a couple of hours. Eventually, suspecting the supernatural, Biddy Early was called upon to investigate and almost immediately she identified the problem - there was a fairy bush out in a field beyond the front of the house and another in the field beyond the back. The house had been built directly on a fairy path, and was blocking their travel, leading to angry banging on the walls as they were diverted from their route. The owner eventually had to shift the doors to be in line with these two bushes and leave them unlocked at night, and every morning he'd find them wide open from then on, but at least the angry banging stopped. Good yarn, if nothing else.

A cautionary tale from Eddie Lenihan about some young upstart ignoring his father’s advice about interfering with a fort on his land.

https://youtu.be/48qgmOzQCUg

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118011105#Comment_118011105

I think the prospect of a very substantial fine for interfering with an archeological site might also have some bearing on their reluctance to touch a fairy fort.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20217604.html

Okay we get the idea, they were defense structures from less developed times.

That being the case, Yeats was just using "fairies" as what, an analogy?

For saying, "let's get fucked up on shrooms cause reality blows?".

He was just coming out of a time period where life expectancy was about less that 50% of it what it is currently though, around that time.

No health insurance, and hell even if there was health insurance the most cutting edge medical interventions were cauterizing wounds using hot steel.

I guess I could sympathize with the dude as, one could understand why folk sough escapism in the spirit world around that time period, essentially to raise their own "spirits" (synonym for "outlook", motivation etc), cause absence of technology and associated lifestyle limitations, you'd imagine things got pretty depressing.

silliussoddius

No point trying to back project new age woo into Irish folk lore, fairies were seen as a mischievous/malevolent force. They were blamed with kidnapping children, swapping them with changelings etc. God know what things like cot death, autism, mental conditions etc were attributed to this back in the day.

Isn't this where the term away with the fairies comes from?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013500#Comment_118013500

I know of a solitary Chinese hawthorn, er, near me. Would this apply to it as well or just the native hawthorn ? Asking for a friend.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118014382#Comment_118014382

There was a good reason not to interfere with things associated with the fairies that went beyond simple superstition. Back in the old days, stillborn babies, beggars and even strangers to a community could not be buried in the consecrated ground of a graveyard, and would instead need their own separate place, and sometimes this could be within a cordoned-off area of a graveyard that was un-consecrated, or another site that was a landmark, and this often could be within a fort or under a fairy bush. So the historical hesitance to interfere with things like fairy forts and bushes may be manifold, stemming from very old pagan beliefs in the beginning, then to respect for ancient things, then to respect for the dead buried within and under, be it recent or not so recent.

whisky_galore

Are you a witch or are you a fairy

Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/offbeat/the-story-of-the-last-witch-burned-alive-in-ireland-1.2880691

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118014837#Comment_118014837

You'll be attacked by Chinese fairies and considering the distance they'll have to travel they'll be mightily pissed off.

Wibbs

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118014740#Comment_118014740

Could well be. And yep, magic of various forms was to blame for things people didn't understand, and that was a lot of things, especially for the poor peasant classes in society. Most of whom could barely read if at all and exposure to science and learning was in the hands of very few.Things like the Renaissance and the Enlightenment would have touched the common man very much at a distance. Long held oral traditions held far more sway, as did religions.

Woo has a long history too. IE post industrial, mostly urban societies looking to some "wise" past to help, even explain the disconnect with urban living. Popular among the intelligentsia too as there were always some mysteries out there. In Yeats' time the woo was about more culturally local stuff for the most part. Fairies, druids, Wicca etc, much of it processed and invented by and for the late 19th century urban mind. With wider travel and exposure to even more "primitive" societies throughout the 20th century people looked around for the mother lode and after some diversion towards the mysterious East(the European mind always had a gra for the Orient) with a sideorder of Egyptian stuff(the discoveries there had a big impact) shamanistic and hunter gatherer societies were often seen as the "purist" in such things and they were after all about the oldest belief systems on the planet and the more anthropoligists recorded and transmitted these beliefs to a wider audience the more it became woo for some. Then the 60's happened and the counterculture went around looking for a pill for their ills and a way to touch godhead and all that. Without having to spend decades in deep meditation and the like. A shortcut to godhead as it were.

the_pen_turner

Not sure about it myself but lots of people are very serious about them

I know one farmer that is scared shirtless about them .

I did work for him and went down to an outside farm . The farm lane leading to the farm went around the fort. There were 2 trees that fell across the lane. A neighbour asked if he could cut them and started on the first. Got the bar stuck in tree and had to leave it there and use another to cut it out. Cut along until be got to the boundary with the fort where he got a heart attack and died. Second tress us still there untouched and growing even though its sideways, timber from first tree still were it fell along with the bar and chain still stuck .

Farmer fenced around the trees and built the lane out around everything.

briany

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118015164#Comment_118015164

In a similar vein, there's a story I heard about an old farmer and his son. The elder man was a widower in his 80s and the son in his 40s, but the son was hanging around as the farm would be his inheritance. The old man, however remained healthy and able to work the farm well, but the son became too impatient and delivered an ultimatum. Either sign over half the farm or the son would be away to try his luck in England on the building sites. The old man, being terrified of being left alone, reluctantly agreed to this, and the son got half the farm signed over, although the elder continued to work his own half. A short time later, a storm came down. A violently windy one, and it partially uprooted a fairy bush in one of the fields now belonging to the son. The son, being of a more modern mind, saw this as his opportunity to do things his own way - he would clear that dying bush. The father strongly advised against it, of course, but the son wouldn't listen. The son got a tractor and a steel rope, fastening one end to the bush and the other to the tow bar on the tractor, then started up the tractor and set about pulling the push away. Well, the bush proved much more difficult to more than he had anticipated. The tractor's engine strained as he revved it and the tractor crept forward as he felt the bush give way a little. He revved a bit more with the steel wire completely taught. Eventually the wire snapped and whipped violently back through the glass window on the back of the tractor, cleanly decapitating the son.

On the actual subject of occultism;

Ever venture around those parts (woody backwaters, fairy fort'esque locations etc) and run into some crazies doing their rain dance?

It happens.

I believe somehow or other it tends to wind up with ritualistic sex.

.....

Bang bang bang.

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013508#Comment_118013508

Very interesting. The same ringfort that I was speaking of, 2 houses were built beside the structure in the early 2000's. The one right beside it has a very disturbing story, supposedly the lady of the house was alone one particular night, she heard her infant child upstairs in her room talking on the baby monitor, so the mother goes up to get the child back to sleep, she entered the room went over to the cot where the infant was standing up facing another part of the room, the mother looks over to where the child was looking and the mother sees the figure of a person standing right there in the room. The mother freaks it, grabs the child and runs straight out the house to the car. She rang the Gardai, the entire neighborhood seen the squad cars with the lights and sirens blaring rushing to the house. The Gards found nothing. But that is what happened to that woman. I never heard any other stories because I haven't been there in a good while.

buried

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118014382#Comment_118014382

Yeah that is true, there are huge fines for removing the most substantial ones, but I think the whole mindset and culture of 'leaving them alone' definitely predates the current laws of the state. They have lasted on the landscape for hundred's and hundred's of years, possibly thousands. Not even the planters would touch them when they arrived here and levelled most other woods and fields for agriculture production, which is very interesting.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118013355#Comment_118013355

You say "at some point it was a practical structure with no spiritual or 'fairy' links". But I don't think this is right. For this culture, there was no contrast between "practical" and "spiritual"; everything had both a practical and a spiritual dimension and, if this structure had an important practical signficance, then that argues for, rather than against, its also having spiritual significance. If, as you reasonably speculate, it was the location of a beacon, then the beacon would have had both practical and spiritual significance. And so forth.