The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture

Folklore, Oct, 2001 by Andy Letcher

However, protesters do not just believe in fairies because it is an appealing or romantic notion of how they would like nature to be. They believe in fairies because a number of protesters have had actual encounters with otherworldly entities. Aware of the potential for ridicule, or for having their sanity questioned, protesters are naturally reticent about discussing these experiences. However, during the course of my research, I have heard many stories of encounters with otherworldly beings. One protester, for example, saw a sprite dancing in an orchard, and there were frequent sightings at Stanworth Valley (the M65 road scheme) and at Fairmile.

Some of these sightings occur whilst practitioners are under the influence of hallucinogenic fungi. The cultural association of fairies and fungi is deeply ingrained in our culture; the pointed caps of the "magic mushroom," Psilocybe semilanceata, even resemble the pointed hats that fairies are usually portrayed as wearing. These fungi grow in great abundance during the autumn in upland areas of Britain and are picked and dried (the mushroom season was, in the 1980s and early 1990s, sometimes celebrated with a free festival [Heelas 1993]). The dried mushrooms are either eaten as they are, or powdered and mixed with chocolate to form truffles, or made into a tea (the active ingredients being water soluble). Users frequently describe the experience as reconnecting them in some deep, and occasionally overwhelming, manner with the natural world, especially with plants and trees. One informant described the mushroom experience as "a Babel fish to the plant kingdom," and another as "a walk in the fairy garden." [16]

In most expressions of contemporary paganism, alcohol is the drug of first choice. However, within the road protest movement and eco-paganism, at least in rural campaigns, psychoactive drugs are often preferred, especially cannabis, mushrooms and, to a lesser extent, LSD. Ecstasy (MDMA) is far less common, which is perhaps surprising given its now widespread usage. In part, this pattern of usage reflects the protest movement's origins in hippy culture and the free festivals of the 1970s through to the mid-1990s; but it also shows a preference for "natural" drugs, in keeping with an environmental movement. Mushrooms have the added advantage, for a movement with very little income, of being acquired freely.

It is usual in Western culture to dismiss experiences derived from hallucinogens as being in some way delusory or invalid. [17] Religious studies scholars, however, take a neutral stance as regards the validity of experience, and concentrate on how that experience becomes meaningful to practitioners (Braun 2000). Experiences derived from mushroom use, especially encounters with otherworldly beings, are taken extremely seriously by protesters. This is illustrated by the following example. One protester, whom I shall call Brian, was very involved in the Newbury bypass campaign, but after the route had been cleared and the treetop camps evicted, he and others were involved in a kind of guerrilla campaign, harrying security guards and attempting to pixie the heavy machinery. One evening, the protesters drank some mushroom tea, and Brian went for a walk in the woods. There he encountered what he described to me as an elf, who told him in no uncertain terms that what he was doing as a protester was wrong, and that he should leave immediately. The next day he packed his bags and left. [18]