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.