gs in old pastures[30]--little circles of a
brighter green, within which it was supposed the fairies dance by
night--are now known to result from the out-spreading propagation of a
particular mushroom, the fairy-ringed fungus, by which the ground is
manured for a richer following vegetation. An immense deal of legendary
lore, however, has clustered round this curious phenomenon, popular
superstition attributing it to the merry roundelays of the moonlight
fairies.[31] In "The Tempest" (v. 1) Prospero invokes the fairies as the
"demy-puppets" that

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

[30] Chambers's "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 671.

[31] Among the various conjectures as to the cause of these
verdant circles, some have ascribed them to lightning; others
maintained that they are occasioned by ants. See Miss Baker's
"Northamptonshire Glossary," vol. i. p. 218; Brand's "Pop.
Antiq.," 1849, vol. ii. pp. 480-483; and also the
"Phytologist," 1862, pp. 236-238.

In "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), the fairy says:

"I do wander everywhere,
Swifter than the moon's sphere;
And I serve the fairy queen,
To dew her orbs upon the green."

Again, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (v. 5), Anne Page 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."

And once in "Macbeth" (v. 1), Hecate says:

"Like elves and fairies in a ring."

Drayton, in his "Nymphidia" (l. 69-72), mentions this superstition:

"And 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."

Cowley, too, in his "Complaint," says:

"Where once such fairies dance, no grass does ever grow."

And again, in his ode upon Dr. Harvey:

"And dance, like fairies, a fantastic round."

Pluquet, in his "Contes Populaires de Bayeux," tells us that the fairy
rings, called by the peasants of Normandy "Cercles des fees," are said
to be the work of fairies.

Among the numerous superstitions which have clustered round the fairy
rings, we are told that when damsels of old gathered the May dew on the
grass, which they made use of to improve their complexions, the