Lady Wilde’s work, already quoted, makes no reference to the employment of either mushrooms or mistletoe by the Irish peasantry.
The mixing, in the popular imagination, of Fairies and Druids, of Fairy Circles and the Druid Circles, is noticed on p. 505, Brand, art. “Fairy Mythology.”
Perhaps in all this there may be a vague reminiscence of a former use of the agaric in potions not very dissimilar to those still to be found among the Koraks and Tchuktchi. We read that this Witches’ Butter was associated with sorcery. It was believed in Sweden to have been “spewed up” by the cat which went with the witch.—(See Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 7, article “Sorcery.”)
“No subject could be more interesting than an inquiry into the origin of the superstitions of uncivilized tribes.” (“Philosophy of Magic,” Salverte, vol. i. p. 138.) Salverte remarks that the Fairies “were supposed to be diminutive, aerial beings, beautiful, lively, and beneficent in their intercourse with mortals, inhabiting a region called Fairy Land,—Alf-Heiner,—commonly appearing on earth at intervals, when they left traces of their visits in beautiful green rings, where the dewy sward had been trodden in their moon-light dances.... The investigations of science have traced these rings to a species of fungus,—Agaricus oreades,—but imagination still leads us willingly back to the traditional appearance of these diminutive beings in the train of their queen; ... and we also behold her tiny followers dancing away the midnight hours to the sound of the most enchanting music.”—(Idem, vol. i. p. 138, footnote.)
There is the following memorandum in Hazlitt’s “Fairy Tales” (London, 1875, p. 35): “Mem., that pigeon’s-dung and nitre steeped in water will make the fayry circles; it draws to it the nitre of the air, and it will never weare out.”
“The mushroom has always been associated with fairy-lore. It is mentioned as the fairy dining-table (p. 502); while in the list of foods partaken of by Oberon, we read:—
“ ... with a wine,
Ne’er ravished with a clustered vine,
But gently strained from the side
Of a sweet and dainty bride;