lxx
Journal of Proceedings.
of fairies in a circling dance, few people now, unfortunately, believe in
fairies. They have gone the way of the giants, dryads, gnomes, and
wraiths, since
' In Briton's isle in Arthur's days,
The mid-night fairies danced the maze.'
We could ill spare any of them, but in these times, when even the very
youngest men are teaching us about the origin and evolution of all the
phenomena of Nature, there is scant room for the fairies. The best
known fungus occupant of fairy rings is the Fairy Ring Agaric, or
Champignon, Marasmius oreades, termed in the older botanical books
Agaricus oreades. It was termed Marasmius from the habit possessed
by all the species of drying up and shrivelling in decay, as distinguished
from Agarics proper, which all speedily putrefy. It has derived its name
of oreades from the Oreads, the playful nymphs of the hills and
mountains. The Oreads were the companions of Pan or Hylaeos, the
forest god, and they danced and circled to his piping. The feeling of
loneliness belonging to hilly places was attributed to the presence of
Pan, and from this old belief has arisen our modern word ' panic,' which
Fig. 5.—Fairy Ring Fungus (Marasmius oreades, Fr.), slightly reduced. A, Section.
means fear without a visible cause. Pan is said to have terrified people
by sudden loud shouts, and to have sometimes ill-treated the inoffensive
dancing fairy ring Oreads. If the botanist who walks over grassy hills
happens to be an archaeologist as well as a fungologist, he will possibly
light on arrow heads of flint in country places, and especially in Ireland.
These flint arrow heads are termed fairy darts or elfin shots, and they
are associated with the sports and quarrels of the nymphs and fairies.
Fairy rings are common in Ireland, but moles do not occur there ; this is
a difficult point for the mole theorists. Fairy darts of flint were at one
time common in Ireland, but of late they have nearly all been bought up
by Irish cow doctors, who lend them to rustics to boil in the same pot
with hot mashes prepared for ailing cows and pigs, for these fairy darts
are supposed to have a mystic and potent power for curing the diseases
peculiar to oxen and hogs.
" After this slight digression in reference to the classic name and
associations of the Fairy Ring Agaric, we may now notice the fungus
itself. Marasmius oreades is generally about two or three inches high ;
its colour is slightly more buff than a biscuit. The same colour pervades