The Untouchables: Our Irish fairy forts

Irish Examiner

15 hours ago

You tend to take them for granted, so much a part of our accustomed landscape that the eye hovers briefly over them, then passes on as we drive our modern roads.
Yet in those strange little circular earthworks that dot our fields, stand on hilltops, sometimes even survive in the midst of industrial development, lies an incredibly ancient and powerful history of belief and tradition, so strong, so powerful, that all the forces of religion, of commercialism, of industry, of technology, has not affected these echoes of our distant past.
Go and search for them this year, discover just how many there are (upwards of 50,000 is one guesstimate) and see what they say to you. In this too-modern world, ruled by social media and technology, they may have a very strong message for those who are willing to hear.
Ireland's fairy forts are, at the same time, an enigma and a firm fact of life. You can find them everywhere. If you don't know of any right now, then bring up Google Earth (modern technology does have some advantages, it has to be admitted) and you will soon learn to recognise those little overgrown circles in the landscape.
But search where you will, ask anyone who lives close to one, and the answer will be the same. Don't touch it, don't interfere with it. Bad luck will surely follow if you are foolish enough so to do.
Where did this come from? Is it an amusing Victorian survival, a belief that pretty little fairies with gossamer wings and magic wands can somehow be found here? No. That would be easy enough to laugh at and then forget. But the history and legend of the fairy fort in Ireland goes back far further and far deeper than you could imagine.
In our most ancient documents like the Dindsenchas (The Lore of Places), handed down by word of mouth from druid to student over millennia, and only finally committed to manuscript by the newcomer Christians around 450AD, they are recognised as places of immensely strong Otherworld power.
So, although archaeologists are generally content to identify them as mere earthen enclosures, used for the protection of cattle and people at night before more sturdy housing became the norm, they do in fact date back into ancient times, long before even the Celts came to Ireland, let alone a new religion from Rome.
Although they are called 'fairy forts', the beings believed to inhabit them are not the little folk of pantomime.
The thing is, that although they are called 'fairy forts', the beings believed to inhabit them are not the little folk of pantomime. They are in fact our ancient nature gods, tasked with the care of the Irish landscape, there to guard against any damage or ill-will shown to that same environment.
Our ancestors, very sensibly, paid homage to the spirits that governed the weather, flocks, fertility, everything that mattered in a primarily agricultural country. If you hoped for a good harvest, then you climbed to Crom on Mt Brandon or Croagh Patrick at Lughnasa.
If you wanted your sheep to bring forth healthy lambs, you besought Brigit at Imbolc. If you had an illness or an infection, you went to one of the sacred wells which was known to be governed by a spirit who was expert in curing such afflictions. It all made sense. Still does, really.
So what should you look for as you explore our ancient sites of power this summer? First of all, find your own fairy fort, the one that calls to you alone. Use Google Earth, as suggested above, or just drive the countryside keeping your eyes open for that telltale perfect circle, whether it still shows its earthen or stone walls, or whether it is covered with hawthorn trees, known since time immemorial as 'the fairy tree'. (By the way, never damage a hawthorn, as ill luck will surely follow.
The only exception is May Eve, when you can pick branches to put over the door of your home and outbuildings, to guard against evil coming by.) And when you've found it? Well, here the strongest advice is 'respect it'. You wouldn't go charging into a stately home without invitation, would you?
When you find your fairy fort, stop, admire it, look at it.
Or kick open the door of an imposing public building? Dance noisily through a church? Well, the same applies to fairy forts, but even more so. They are believed (known?) to be the home of Themselves, The Good People, our original ancient gods, and deserve nothing less than extreme respect and courtesy from those like ourselves who are only passing through during our lifetime.
If you don't believe that, then go and look at the evidence in The Schools Collection where children of the 1930s collected beliefs from their grandparents. There you will find frightening tales of what happened to those who knowingly invaded fairy forts or took it upon themselves to remove them altogether.
One incident is a coincidence, a dozen is peculiar, several hundred means something else.
So just superstition from almost a century ago, right? Wrong.
As we said above, ask anyone who lives near a fairy fort and they will warn you, tell you of things that have happened last year, last week, yesterday. A postman on a country road told us of a pair of brothers who uprooted a fort and were drowned in the river the following week when their car went off the road.
A farmer driving his tractor recounted how a neighbour took stones from a fort to build a wall elsewhere, and became paralysed immediately. The beliefs, and the repercussions, are still very much with us.
So when you find your fairy fort, stop, admire it, look at it. Open your mind and let it speak to you. Notice its perfect circular shape. That is a characteristic of these echoes of the past, and a characteristic of the Irish tradition. Everything in ancient Ireland was built in a circular form, even graveyards. It was a powerful symbol of the circle of the year, of continuity, of power (think of modern cults where a circle of salt or of candles is drawn as a centre of power and protection). All those angles and corners and squares and rectangles came from very different cultures, like Rome.
See if hawthorn trees are growing on the fort or around it. They may have originally been planted as an extra protection (you don't mess with those thorny branches!) or they came by themselves because they wanted to.
That's one of the habits of the hawthorn – it's a 'come by chance' that chooses for itself where it wants to grow. You are never supposed to dig up a thorn tree, even if it is in the way of what you want to do. Revise your plans, think otherwise, and leave it where it is. It knows what it's doing – do you? The one exception might be if it comes up in the middle of your lawn and it is more than likely that the grass mower will hit it. In that case, you ask its permission, explain the reason, and then move it carefully to the protection of a nearby hedge.
Once you have spent time discovering our fairy forts, you will look at life and at Ireland's landscape in a very different way.
This, however, can only be done if it's still a little seedling. A thorn tree has roughly three times the length of root to the visible above-ground stem, so anything bigger just won't move. Next time you see a thorn tree in the middle of a huge ploughed field, you will known why. No farmer would willingly move it.
You may also find on your explorations that a road or pathway makes a sudden curve, to avoid a fairy fort. In fact, it's always worth wondering why a road suddenly jerks away from the straight – what was it that caused the diversion? Usually it's a fort or the memory of an ancient boundary from long ago. We have many examples around the country of new roads having to be adjusted to take account of a fort or fairy tree. And also of the accidents and disasters which occurred when this situation was foolishly ignored.
So what can you do? Well, there are those who say you can go inside if you do so with proper respect and humility. Others say not. It's up to you. Stand outside and let the place speak to you. Listen. Then, follow its advice. One thing for certain: once you have spent time discovering our fairy forts, you will look at life and at Ireland's landscape in a very different way.