st the many other
conjectures as to the cause of these verdant circles, some have ascribed
them to lightning, and others have maintained that they are produced by
ants.[7] In the "Tempest" (v. i) Prospero invokes the fairies as the
"demi-puppets" that:

"By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make,
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you, whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms."

And in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5) Mistress Quickly says:

"And nightly, meadow-fairies, look, you sing,
Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring;
The expressure that it bears, green let it be,
More fertile-fresh than all the field to see."

Drayton, in his "Nymphidia" (1. 69-72), tells how the fairies:

"In their courses make that round,
In meadows and in marshes found,
Of them so called the fayrie ground,
Of which they have the keeping."

These fairy-rings have long been held in superstitious awe; and when in
olden times May-dew was gathered by young ladies to improve their
complexion, they carefully avoided even touching the grass within them,
for fear of displeasing these little beings, and so losing their
personal charms. At the present day, too, the peasant asserts that no
sheep nor cattle will browse on the mystic patches, a natural instinct
warning them of their peculiar nature. A few miles from Alnwick was a
fairy-ring, round which if people ran more than nine times, some evil
was supposed to befall them.

It is generally agreed that fairies were extremely fond of dancing
around oaks, and thus in addressing the monarch of the forest a poet has
exclaimed:

"The fairies, from their nightly haunt,
In copse or dell, or round the trunk revered
Of Herne's moon-silvered oak, shall chase away
Each fog, each blight, and dedicate to peace
Thy classic shade."

In Sweden the miliary fever is said by the peasantry to be caused by the
elf-mote or meeting with elves, as a remedy for which the lichen aphosus
or lichen caninus is sought.

The toadstools often found near these so-called fairy-rings were also
thought to be their workmanship, and in some localities are styled
pixy-stools, and in the North of Wales "fairy-tables," while the
"cheeses," or fruit of the mallow, are known in the North of England as
"fairy-cheeses."

A species of wood fungus found about the roots of old trees is
designated "fairy-butter," because after rain, and when in a certain
degree of putrefaction, it is reduce