Donal Hickey: Don't walk on bluebells – you might be enchanted by the fairies and die

In folklore, the bells in the flower were believed to call the fairies when ‘rung’

Bluebells blooming in West Cork. Strange how such a lovely plant did not find fairy approval. Picture: Denis Scannell

It’s a scene reminiscent of Andy Irvine’s song from 1976 about roving out on a bright May morning to view the meadows and flowers gay.

The location is a quiet boreen between the villages of Ballydesmond and Kiskeam in Co Cork. We walk between ditches speckled with bluebells, cowslips and other floral delights of early summer: a picture straight out of Kavanagh’s bucolic poetry.