Cork author of book on Fairy Forts: 'Some happenings could not be explained away'

When O’Brien Press commissioned a book on Irish fairy forts from Richard Mills and myself, we thought it would be a pleasant enough piece of work: some photographs, some history, and there you were.

But once we got going, the stories and beliefs surrounding these ancient sites took us aback. We simply had no idea of how far back the traditions went, how strong they still are today.

What’s more, although we always pride ourselves on keeping an open balanced mind when it comes to myth and legend, there were some incidents and happenings during our actual research which just could not be explained away.

Up to 50,000 of these antique circles still exist in our landscape, and Cork has more than its fair share. Archaeologists tend to brush them aside, classifying them as earthen or stone enclosures of variable dates, nothing more to see, move on. But that’s no way to treat a basic fact. Always, but always, lift it up, look underneath, examine it from all sides, see what more it is telling you.

And what it told us was that there was a huge question still to be answered: How come there are still 50,000 of them to be seen?

Look, County Cork, like the rest of Ireland, is under siege from developers these days. Everywhere you look, new housing estates are being carved out of hitherto rural countryside. Nowhere is safe from the bulldozer, the JCB, the cement truck.

Except the fairy forts. They are still there, on every side, often right in the middle of a ploughed field or surrounded by industrial development but left untouched.

There had to be some overpowering reason for leaving them alone, and that reason wasn’t hard to find once you started asking.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of touching them. You’d be asking for trouble”; “Didn’t this fella over the hill there dig one up, and wasn’t he dead in three months?”; “My father warned us never to interfere with it, not even pick blackberries around it”. And so on. And that wasn’t just country- dwellers. Senior doctors, lawyers, politicians, all said the same. “It is just something you don’t do.”

On every side, they are such a familiar sight you hardly notice them. Flying into Cork Airport, you glide over several, including one right next to the runway’s perimeter fence. Driving down to Ballycotton, you a gate from which you can glimpse not just one but three in plain sight. Near Ringaskiddy, that byword for pharmaceutical industry, there is a dignified little fairy fort standing all by itself in a small field, ignoring the modern world all around it.

Yes, even developers respect tradition. Between Macroom and Killarney, there is a lovely example of this, where the construction of the new road meant slicing a corner off a fairy fort. 

“I didn’t want that to happen,” says Risteard O’Lionaird, senior resident engineer on the project. “I did all I could to avoid it, but the designer said there was no option. So I did the best I could, and designed a wall for that section which shielded the remainder of the fort, and had the design of its three circular banks incorporated into the wall itself.

“I had trouble even then - the young lad who drove the digger said he wouldn’t damage the fort, no matter what, so I had to give him by-leave and get somebody else, which was a lot of hassle. But I did have to respect his point of view, because I felt the same way myself.”

You can see that stretch of wall any time you , a testament to the enduring belief in the power and importance of these echoes of the past.

That strange things can happen if you meddle with a fairy fort happens as much today as ever. Con Kelleher, a Cork bat expert, got a shock when he went out to measure one example, to check if it was of a size to encourage bat populations.

“I climbed up on the bank and accidentally broke off a branch of the blackthorn. That’s known as the fairy bush, and I was sorry I’d done it, but laid it down neatly next to the bush and went on, down into the fort itself.

“I set up the com carefully and sighted straight across to the other side, then started walking. When I got there, I wasn’t there! I had walked directly, following the com, yet when I climbed up on the opposite bank, I was next to that branch I had broken off on my way in, and its fairy bush. Now you tell me how I could have made a full circle on a simple crossing of the enclosure?”

We had an odd experience ourselves, looking at a fairy fort outside Millstreet. Walking round outside its banks, Richard suddenly discovered all his camera batteries had gone completely dead. Now that’s something he just doesn’t allow to happen, but it had. We went back to the road, puzzled, and found the car wouldn’t start. Tried everything, to no avail.

We rang the AA, and in the two hour intervening period, chatted to three ing farmers on tractors. They all said exactly the same thing. “What do you expect if you’re meddling with one of those? Themselves don’t like it.”

And that, in effect, was what the AA man said too when he finally found us. No, he couldn’t start the car either, despite even ringing his base for advice.

Only as the sun set did themselves relent and let the poor beleaguered car start up again. Needless to say, the garage couldn’t find anything wrong when we brought it in for checking.

Fairy forts. Keep an eye out for them when you’re driving. But tip your hat or give a nod of the head just for safety. The Good People like to see a proper acknowledgement of their presence.

Irish Fairy Forts: Portals To The Past, by Jo Kerrigan and Richard Mills. Published by O’Brien Press, April 14, 2025. ISBN 978-178849-501-1.