Donal Hickey: Fear of the fairies no longer preventing destruction of Ireland's ringforts

Structures that stood for thousands of years in some cases have been bulldozed away

About half of the estimated 60,000 forts have disappeared. File Picture

There was a time when if you’d a spark of sense you’d keep on the right side of the fairies. Alas, fear of these mysterious people from the otherworld’ is no longer preventing the destruction of ringforts dotted around the country, it seems.

So-called fairy forts were places of the unexplained and the supernatural. They were treated almost with reverence. The folk tradition of every parish has tales of people thought to have suffered misfortune because they interfered with them. Most farmers wouldn’t disturb such structures.