The Fairy Field

Some old fella told my father-in-law that he had built his house on an old fairy fort and that the fairies would, as a result, be very annoyed. My father-in-law is not religious or superstitious. Indeed, he is a man of admirable rationality. That didn’t stop him getting a hazel twig and sticking it in the soil.
“If the stick has moved then there are fairies here and they are annoyed.”
“What will you do? Will you knock the house down.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
If he’d just talk to the kids his mind would be put at ease – they know that all the fairies live in a wildflower meadow at the end of the boreen. The children call it The Fairy Fields and we go down there a couple of times every summer to have a picnic and discuss which kind of fairy lives in each flower.

2013 © Tim Bradford