Fairies, Folklore and Forteana

Simon Young FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF

“they is pixy rings,”

will be the sure reply, “made by the little people when they dances in the

moonlight”

fairy circles

In 1841, a humorous book was written, partially in the dialect of Devon, by one Charles Selby: Maximums and Speciments of William Muggins, Natural Philosopher and Citizen of the World. Humour does not transfer very well from generation to generation and it would be possible to read tens of pages of Maximums without the barest lifting of the corners of the mouth. However, there is one interesting paragraph on p283: “Ask any country lad or lass the meaning of the beaten circles as is sometimes seed in high grass fields. ‘They is pixy rings,’ will be the sure reply, ‘made by the “little people” when they dances in the moonlight’’.

At first glance, this is nothing special. It is a mid19th-century reference to fairy circles: and there are scores, perhaps even hundreds of such sentences between Victorian covers. And fairy circles? They are, of course, rings that appear in the grass. Sometimes they are circles of dead grass, sometimes rings of different coloured grass and sometimes rings of toadstools. Explanations for these rings varied from fungus, to lightning, to ‘airflows’, to, a personal favourite, moles. Nothing to see, move along?

Well, possibly; but there is one peculiar fact that doesn’t fit. Selby’s description fails to match the ‘sour ring’, where grass has failed to grow, nor is there any reference to mushrooms or different colours. The circles are, instead, “beaten”. This may just be a slip of the author’s pen, but combined with “high grass fields” it recalls modern crop circles. I am ignorant of the history of crop circles and have always presumed them all (though without any effort at research) to be fakes. However, this short sentence made me wonder whether we don’t have something with its roots in folklore…

The earliest thing that could be construed as a description of crop circles was a picture (though not the text), of a pamphlet from 1678 entitled “The MowingDevil: Or, Strange News out of Hartford-shire”, showing the Devil cutting a field of oats in a strange formation [ FT53:3839]. The next work discussed by crop-circle enthusiasts appears in Nature in 1880: “a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks… forming a circle… and… a circular wall of stalks.” I’d certainly prefer Selby to the Mowing Devil, which requires special pleading, and would rank it behind the Nature letter. It would be too much to call any of the three proof: but the two 19th-century references are, let’s say, suggestive. Simon Young writes on folklore and history and runs www.fairyist.com