The Courier
27th July, 1912
Fairy Rings
I along with a companion, while rambling in search of “Hermit’s Cave,” came across these alleged “fairy rings,” and stayed awhile curiously examining them. Then there came across our path an elderly, jolly faced patriarch, prodding the turf with a crooked stick. He accosted us, and we smilingly answered his questions as to our business on the lands, and from that moment, we became great friends. 
The old gentlemen was a garrulous and easy talker when once he got his fling, and we for the most part were willing to listen to his quaint language.
“Them be fairy rings,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have touched one for all the world.”
“In old times, before I was born, fairies were believed in by everybody in the country (locality). There were good and bad fairies. Some used to ride the farmers’ horses. The brownies used to help all the good folks in their house and farm duties and the “knockers,” another kind of fairy, used to help the lead miners.”
“A poor women once lived who had been trusted with a child to nurse. She washed the child with some water from a fairies font that lay among the rocks of “Robin Hood’s Stride,” and she became possessed of the power of seeing the fairies all the time, day or night.
