Fairy Hills of Ireland
by Tammy McDonald
(California)
Hello,
I just read what you had on another site about Fairies and Elves and you mentioned the Fairy path at Dublin castle. Well, I lived in Northern Ireland and heard often about the fairy hills and the fairy trail at Dublin Castle and planned on going to see them.
On one of our many excursions while living in Belfast we decided to go see the Fairy Hills. As we neared the hills an older gentleman gave us a warning about getting too close to the Fairy Hills and to watch closely for fairy rings as that was the time that they could be found. I didn't think anyone really believed in Fairies, elves or gnomes any longer, but this old gentleman was serious.
When a couple of people in our party started snickering, he began to tell us of a few incidents that he had witnessed for himself. One of the stories he told us was about a man who had been in the pub for quite awhile and the talk turned to the Fairy Hills and some of the events that had taken place there. Well the guy was quite drunk by this time and started spouting off about the fairies being fake and just a fairy tale to scare children and that nothing would happen if one was to go up there.
Some of the patrons in the pub started goading the drunk guy into going to the Fairy Hill and prove to them that the fairies were fake so this man and a few other patrons of the pub followed the drunk guy up to the Fairy Hills where he proceeded to go over the little fence that was placed on the Fairy Hills to keep people out. He stepped over the fence and began to kick the Fairy Hill. The man fell down and passed out on the spot.
The others who had gone with him were drunk as well and only laughed at the guy and started down the hill leaving the drunk man there alone. The next morning when the man awoke he found himself outside the fence on the fairy hill and when he tried to get up to go home his legs would not work, the man was paralyzed from the waist down.
The next story was kind of the same only the next man wasn't drunk he was a teen who was dared to go in and dig into the fairy hill and find the supposed fairies that were in there. So the young man stepped over the fence and started digging into the Fairy Hill when all of a sudden he grabbed his chest and fell over. His friends ran to see what had happened to him and when they got to him the young man was dead. He was taken to hospital and the morgue where an autopsy was performed but the medical examiner could find no obvious reason for the youth's death. I don't know whether these stories are true or not but they sounded great and made us think twice about disrespecting the fairies and their hills and rings. We made sure that we did not get too close to either.
