it has come to my attention that outside of Ireland a lot of people think a fairy ring exclusively means something like a small ring of mushrooms or flowers.
in Ireland we have hundreds of stone circles, ring forts and other ancient structures that are more prominent in fairy folklore here and also i think they look a lot cooler.
you can find these all over the country, they are very old, and usually have a lot of local folklore surrounding them.
these are the kinds of places that personally come to mind when I think about a fairy circle/ring
this stone circle is extra special, it also has a fairy tree!
some are also burial mounds (or whats left of them) they originally would have been build up into artificial hills and people were buried inside. here's some with and without their full structure intact.
not pictured here but the Brú na Bóinne complex is one of my favourite places on earth and has 3 amazing examples of these.
not every stone circle or tomb is necessarily a fairy ring but they generally have some sort of mythology/folklore attached and in Ireland "fairy" can be used as a bit of an umbrella term for various folklore characters and creatures.
there's also lots of different varieties of these ancient structures from stone circles to ringfords to dolmens to hill forts and passage tombs but if I start talking about the archaeology side of things we'll be here all day
there's also specifically fairy forts which were originally ring forts and would have been someone importants home at one point. I don't have my own image for these so im borrowing this one from the Irish Times:
if you come to Ireland and visit a one of these locations please be mindful. even if you don't believe in fairies these locations were often constructed as burial sites originally and are deeply loved by locals. they're also usually on private farmland so you may have to ask the farmer first.
