{"id":18901,"date":"2016-10-30T09:48:19","date_gmt":"2016-10-30T16:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18901"},"modified":"2016-10-30T09:48:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-30T16:48:19","slug":"fairy-ring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=18901","title":{"rendered":"Fairy ring"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

He wha (who) tills the fairies’ green <\/em>
\n Nae (no) luck again shall hae (have)<\/em>
\n And he wha (who) spills the fairies’ ring<\/em>
\n Betide him want and wae (woe).<\/em>
\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Traditional Scottish verse<\/p>\n

\u00a0It is now difficult\u00a0to recapture the mediaeval mindset of those who saw doom in stepping inside a ring of mushrooms. These fairy rings were presumed to be places inhabited by fairies, pixies and elves, all of whom lived, danced and carried on inhuman rites therein. A human who stepped inside, or damaged, the ring was doomed to want and woe.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are about sixty species of mushrooms capable of\u00a0producing such rings merely by starting somewhere, depleting nutrients at that spot, then\u00a0propagating outward to nutrients beyond the depleted zone. This simple natural process would seem an unlikely one to produce widespread and long-lasting supernatural angst. Yet, it did just that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the spirit of tomorrow’s date, I caution trick-or-treaters who might come my way:\u00a0Entering the ring on Halloween (even inadvertently) was considered especially dangerous.<\/p>\n

The mushroom may be the Violet Webcap; the architects are undoubtedly the (invasive) Celtic pixie.
\n \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  He wha (who) tills the fairies’ green Nae (no) luck again shall hae (have) And he wha (who) spills the fairies’ ring Betide him want and wae (woe). \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 Traditional Scottish verse \u00a0It is now difficult\u00a0to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-wildflowers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18901"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18939,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18901\/revisions\/18939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}