Читать книгу THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES: An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures - Lucy Cooper - Страница 27

Circles of grass known as “fairy rings” mark the fields and meadows where fairies dance and cavort during their moonlit revels. In some places, these appear as bright, lush patches of grass, in others as bare circles of earth. Sometimes circles of mushrooms, known as Marasmius oreades, sprout from fairy rings, some of which are believed to be hundreds of years old. In Orkney, one such ring appears as a patch of bright green on bare moorland, which mushrooms sprout from at certain times of year.

Many are the tales of individuals who have stepped into a fairy ring, lured by the sound of pipes, harps, or fiddles and the irrepressible urge to kick up their heels and dance. Once inside the ring, one is swept up into the wild dance of the fairies, unable or unwilling to leave. Time takes on a different dimension and when a mortal stumbles out into the human world after what seems a single night of dancing, it is not unusual to find that many years have passed.

A Welsh tale collected in Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828) relates the dangers of stepping into the fairy ring to dance:

Rhys and his friend Llewellyn were farm laborers who worked in the mountains. One day they were returning to the farmhouse with their ponies when Rhys stopped and asked Llewellyn if he could hear music. Llewellyn could not, but Rhys insisted that he could and was eager to stay. He urged his friend to take his pony back to the farm so that he might linger a while and listen.

Llewellyn put the ponies in their stable, ate his supper, and went to bed. The next morning Rhys had not returned and Llewellyn informed their master of what had happened.

A search of the countryside ensued but to no avail: Rhys had vanished.

Suspicions grew that Llewellyn was responsible for his friend’s disappearance and he was put in jail, though there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.

An old farmer, well versed in matters of the fairy world, suspected he knew what had happened and asked whether Llewellyn and several others could accompany him to the spot where Rhys had vanished.

On arrival, they saw a circle of grass and Llewellyn heard sweet music. The old farmer asked the group to place one foot on the edge of the fairy ring and be sure to keep the other outside the circle.

As they did so, the music grew louder and, to their astonishment, they saw dozens of little people, the size of three or four-year-old children, dancing round and round. Rhys was among them. Llewellyn grabbed him by the collar and dragged him out of the circle. He pleaded to be allowed to finish the dance, convinced he had only been there five minutes. His friends managed to pull him back to the farm, but he took to his bed in a state of melancholy at leaving the revels and a couple of days later he faded away.