Not a list of lucky horseshoes. These are the fairy beliefs that shaped the Irish landscape and still, now and then, stop a road: each one here has a documented case or a written record behind it.
The ring forts and raths that cover the countryside, built from perhaps the late Iron Age into early Christian times, were believed to belong to the aos sí, the people of the mounds. There were between thirty and forty thousand identifiable forts in Ireland as of 1991, and the belief that damaging one brings bad luck is why so many survive in the middle of farmed fields.
A whitethorn standing alone in a field is a fairy bush, and cutting one is asking for trouble. It is the belief that keeps solitary hawthorns standing in the middle of ploughed land all over the country.
Bealtaine, 1 May, was a dangerous turning of the year. Yellow and white flowers, primrose, rowan, hawthorn, gorse, were put at doors and windows, a custom documented in 19th-century Ireland. Cattle were driven between two fires to protect them from disease, a practice still found in parts of Ireland in the 19th century.
At holy wells, a strip of cloth is tied to the tree beside the water as part of a cure, a custom thought to come from much older offerings left in water. Many wells carry a saint's name and a story of the saint making the water flow.
Samhain night was when the mounds opened and the Otherworld came through, and the púca was abroad. The barmbrack, the turnip lantern and the fortune-telling games belong to the same night.
Halloween in Ireland, and what is recorded about it → · Source: Wikipedia ↗
A lone whitethorn, or hawthorn, is believed to belong to the fairies, and cutting it brings bad luck. The belief is strong enough that in 1999 the storyteller Eddie Lenihan campaigned against road builders in County Clare who planned to cut the Latoon fairy bush.
The remains of a ring fort, rath or other circular earthwork, built from perhaps the late Iron Age into early Christian times. There were thirty to forty thousand identifiable ones in Ireland as of 1991. Folk belief says they belong to the fairies and that damaging one brings bad luck.
In the Schools' Collection. In the 1930s Irish schoolchildren were asked to collect stories and beliefs from older relatives and neighbours, and their copybooks can be read online at Dúchas, county by county and school by school.
Was there a belief kept in your family, a field nobody would plough, a bush nobody would cut? Tell us. · The creatures behind the beliefs · Halloween · The quarter days