Fairy ring

The second theory, which is presented in the investigations of Japanese scientists on the Tricholoma matsutake species, shows that fairy rings could be established by connecting neighbouring oval genets of these mushrooms.

[citation needed] One of the manifestations of fairy ring growth is a necrotic zone—an area in which grass or other plant life has withered or died.

Long-term observations of fairy rings on Shillingstone Hill in Dorset, England, further suggested that the cycle depended on the continuous presence of rabbits.

Chalky soils on higher elevations in the counties of Wiltshire and Dorset in southern England used to support many meadow-type fairy rings.

A ring can start from only a few spores from which the mycelium develops; the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms appearing only later when sufficient mycelial mass has been generated to support them.

[citation needed] Soil analysis of soil containing mycelium from a wood blewit (Clitocybe nuda) fairy ring under Norway spruce (Picea abies) and Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) in southeast Sweden yielded fourteen halogenated low molecular weight organic compounds, three of which were brominated and the others chlorinated.

[7] On the South Downs in southern England, Calocybe gambosa has formed huge fairy rings that also appear to be several hundred years old.

[39] In German tradition, fairy rings were thought to mark the site of witches' dancing on Walpurgis Night,[38] and Dutch superstition claimed that the circles show where the Devil set his milk churn.

French tradition reported that fairy rings were guarded by giant bug-eyed toads that cursed those who violated the circles.

[41] In his History of the Goths (1628), Swedish writer Olaus Magnus makes this connection, saying that fairy rings are burned into the ground by the dancing of elves.

[38] British folklorist Thomas Keightley noted that in Scandinavia in the early 19th century, beliefs persisted that fairy rings (elfdans) arose from the dancing of elves.

[47] Victorian folklorists regarded fairies and witches as related, based in part on the idea that both were believed to dance in circles.

[53] A Devon legend says that a black hen and chickens sometimes appear at dusk in a large fairy ring on the edge of Dartmoor.

[55][58] American writer Wirt Sikes traces these stories of people trespassing into forbidden territory and being punished for it to the tale of Psyche and Eros.

He set out for the scene of revelry, and soon drew near the ring where, in a gay company of males and females, they were footing it to the music of the harp.

[55] One source near Afon fach Blaen y Cae, a tributary of the Dwyfach, tells of a shepherd accidentally disturbing a ring of rushes where fairies are preparing to dance; they capture him and hold him captive, and he even marries one of them.

A tactic from early 20th-century Wales is to cast wild marjoram and thyme into the circle and befuddle the fairies;[70] another asks the rescuer to touch the victim with iron.

[71] Other stories require that the enchanted victim simply be plucked out by someone on the outside,[72] although even this can be difficult: A farmer in a tale from the Llangollen region has to tie a rope around himself and enlist four men to pull him from the circle as he goes in to save his daughter.

"[77] A story from early 20th century England says that a mortal can see the sprites without fear if a friend places a foot on that of the person stepping beyond the circle's perimeter.

Welsh folk believe that mountain sheep that eat the grass of a fairy ring flourish, and crops sown from such a place prove more bountiful than those from normal land.

[38] A folk belief recorded in the Athenian Oracle claims that a house built on a fairy circle brings prosperity to its inhabitants.

[80] Likewise, a legend from Pont y Wern says that in the 13th or 14th century, the inhabitants of the town of Corwrion watched fairies dancing in a ring around a glow worm every Sunday after church at a place called Pen y Bonc.

"[81] John Rhys recorded a Welsh tale in 1901 that tells of a man who supposedly lived on the side of the Berwyn, above Cwm Pennant, in the early 19th century.

In gratitude, the fairies gave him a half crown every day but stopped when he told his friend, "for he had broken the rule of the fair folks by making their liberality known".

[88] Victorian poets who have referred to fairy rings in their works include Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Eliza Cook, Robert Stephen Hawker, Felicia Hemans, Gerald Massey, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.[b]W.

H. Cummings composed the cantata The Fairy Ring, and William Butler Yeats wrote of them in The Land of Heart's Desire (1894).

On the one hand, artists were genuinely interested in the culture such imagery represented, and on the other, fairies could be depicted as titillating nudes and semi-nudes without offending Victorian mores, which made them a popular subject of art collectors.

Examples of Victorian fairy-ring paintings include Come unto these Yellow Sands (1842) by Richard Dadd and Reconciliation of Titania and Oberon (1847) by Joseph Noel Paton.