FAIRY RINGS. 
235 
According to Olans Magnus, this cause of the circles in 
the grass, called “ Fairy Rings,” was a general belief 
with the northern nations; and most of our poets who 
adopt it follow those traditions which the Norsemen left 
amongst ns. 
Some very curious legends attach themselves to these 
fairy rings, as, indeed, they do to every other branch of 
fairy lore. In Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border , 
a strange story is related of a poor man, who being em¬ 
ployed in pulling heather upon Peatlaw, near Carter- 
haugh, had tired of his labour, and had lain himself 
down to sleep upon a fairy ring. When he awoke, he 
was amazed to find himself in the midst of a populous 
city, to which, as well as to the means of transportation, 
he was a stranger. His coat was left upon the Peatlaw, 
and his bonnet, which had fallen off in the course of his 
aerial journey, was afterwards found hanging on the 
steeple of the church at Lanark. The distress of the 
luckless adventurer was somewhat relieved by meeting a 
carrier whom he had formerly known, who carried him 
back to Glasgow by a slower conveyance than had taken 
him from thence. At Carterhaugh, at the confluence of 
the Ettrick and Yarrow, the peasants point out these 
rings as unmistakable evidences of fairy revels; and 
throughout Scotland, and more particularly in Selkirk¬ 
shire, the belief in fairies and fairy influence is still per¬ 
tinaciously held by the peasants. Moses Pitt, in a scarce 
tract, relates that his female servant—“Ann Jeffries . . . 
was one day sitting in an arbour in the garden, knitting, 
and there suddenly came over the hedge six persons of 
small stature, all clothed in green, which frightened her 
