Fairy ring of mushrooms
A mushroom fairy ring marks a fungus spreading outward about a foot a year, so a large ring can be centuries old. In English folklore it was the fairies' dance floor, and one saying held that a house built on one would prosper.
What it may mean
A circle of mushrooms looks like it arrived overnight, but the circle is the visible edge of a very old project. Underground, the fungus spreads outward about a foot a year, and on large lawns a colony may persist for hundreds of years. People argued for centuries about the cause: fairies dancing by moonlight, lightning, moles burrowing in circles, even trenches dug by ancient Britons. In 1807 Dr. Wollaston, secretary of the Royal Society, put it down to mushrooms that draw so much from the soil that the grass dies back for a while. Feelings ran both ways: a 1770 poem has a shepherd keeping his sheep out of a ring, while the Athenian Oracle said a house built on one would wonderfully prosper. Some things in a life also widen a little each year before anyone notices their shape.
Depending on how you saw it
A ring on the lawn in late summer
Rings show up most in late summer and autumn, when the fungus sends up its caps. With the fairy ring champignon, the lawn may also show a band of dead grass beside a band greener than usual. Where has one change left both a bare patch and a greener one?
Stepping into the circle
In England, the 1903 encyclopedia reports, putting your foot in a fairy ring with a friend's foot resting on top of yours would make the fairy world visible. In that version it takes two people to see it. What have you only been able to see with someone else's help?
Dew on the ring at dawn
In western Scotland, dew gathered on the first of May was thought to keep the skin free of wrinkles, and a poem Napier quotes pictures people wringing it from the grass in a fairy ring. A small custom can outlast the people who kept it once someone puts it into a few lines of verse. Which family habit of yours would be worth writing down before it fades?
Why it happens in nature
A fairy ring is the edge of a fungal colony. Its threads spread outward through the soil and die out in the center, so mushrooms rise in a widening circle, roughly a foot a year. The fairy ring champignon, Marasmius oreades, can leave a band of dead grass with greener grass beside it, and colonies in large areas of turf may last hundreds of years.
What folk beliefs say
England
The fairies, an old account said, danced on moonlit nights in a ring, "as one may see at this day upon every common in England where mushroomes grow."
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 2 (1849), vol. 2, p. 481. View the page
England
The Athenian Oracle recorded a popular belief that if a house is built on ground where fairy rings are, whoever lives in it will wonderfully prosper.
Source: John Brand; Henry Ellis (ed.), Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 2 (1849), vol. 2, p. 481. View the page
England
If you put your foot in a fairy ring with a companion's foot on top of yours, the fairy world and its elves would become visible; a coat worn inside out was the charm against their anger.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 3 (1903), vol. 3, p. 1406. View the page
Devon and Cornwall
It was said that a man passing one of the piskie rings and hearing the little people dancing and singing inside threw a large stone into the circle; the music stopped at once and a dreadful shriek rose.
Source: Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 3rd ed. (1881), p. 96. View the page
West of Scotland
Napier, writing of the west of Scotland, records that dew gathered on the first of May was believed to keep the skin from wrinkles and freckles, and quotes lines by Ferguson about people wringing the cool dew from the grass "on May day in a fairy ring."
Source: James Napier, Folk Lore: or, Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century (1879), p. 170. View the page
To reflect on
What in your life has been widening slowly for years before you noticed its shape?