Castlewellan and the nearby Maghera / Mourne area, County Down, Northern Ireland
Incident period: Nineteenth-century oral traditions; fieldwork published in 1913
Around Castlewellan, Elizabeth Andrews found two intertwined histories: stories of small people, music and dangerous thorn bushes, and real stone passages beneath the landscape. Her 1913 collection records conversations as well as visits underground. Read closely, it offers a remarkably local picture of County Down’s fairy traditions, with a clear difference between what an informant remembered and what the collector herself measured.
A collector follows the stories into the landscape
Ulster Folklore brought together Andrews’s enquiries into traditions, ancient structures and local explanations of them. In her introduction she described an interest encouraged by scientific discussion in the 1890s. She worked with English-speaking informants in several northern counties and acknowledged limits in her knowledge of Irish. Her collection is therefore a record of particular conversations, not a complete account of every community’s beliefs.
This case focuses on her County Down material around Castlewellan and neighbouring places. Her book ranges much more widely, but accounts from elsewhere should not be attached to the same pin. Even the name Maghera needs care: the Down locality near Newcastle and Castlewellan is different from the town in County Londonderry discussed in another chapter.
Andrews was interested in whether fairy traditions preserved memories of earlier people. That theory influenced the questions she asked. It does not mean that the stone passages she entered proved the existence of a separate fairy race. Her observations of structures and her interpretation of stories are two different kinds of evidence.
The beings at the fort
One elderly informant near Maghera told her about his brother as a small child. According to the story, their father found the boy on the grass with small figures dancing around him near a fort. The father drove them away. The account went on to connect the event with the child’s later deafness and early death. Those consequences were the family story’s explanation, not a medical connection established by Andrews.
Another Maghera tradition concerned a great-grandmother who was warned that a stack of turf obstructed a fairy chimney. She did not remove it, and cattle subsequently died. The narrative gives an ordinary farm decision a hidden second geography: what looked like convenient storage above ground might block a dwelling below. Its force comes from the warning and the household’s refusal to act.
In the Mourne area, a farmer described child-sized, red-haired figures outside on a stormy night. Asked whether they might have been children, he rejected that explanation because of the weather. Andrews preserved his reasoning as well as the description. Readers can see how an unusual sight was classified, instead of receiving only the finished assertion that fairies had appeared.
Thorn bushes, borrowed meal and music
The Down accounts include an old woman near Tullamore Park who associated cries and wild-haired figures with thorn bushes. The bushes were treated as places to respect rather than casual obstacles to clear away. Such traditions locate the uncanny in working countryside: a hedge, a fort, a stack or a route used by a family.
Another story told of an unfamiliar small woman who borrowed meal. The repayment became an inexhaustible supply until the recipient disclosed the secret to her husband; afterwards the barrel was empty. Here the fairy encounter is remembered through domestic exchange and a broken condition, rather than a frightening apparition. Hospitality and discretion matter more than pursuing a creature.
Andrews also recorded fairy music associated with a fort beside the Shimna River near Newcastle. These examples should remain separate accounts. The borrowed meal, the dancing figures and the music do not form one dated incident witnessed by the same family. Together they show the variety of experiences and explanations attached to a relatively small landscape.
Ballymagreehan: a passage she actually entered
At Ballymagreehan, near the road between Castlewellan and Newry, Andrews described going beyond hearsay. A short entrance passage turned at a right angle into a much longer section. Her measurements put that section at roughly forty feet long and three feet wide, with a height varying around four to five feet.
The construction impressed her: walls of unmortared stones and a roof of flat slabs. One end was obstructed by debris. The account does not describe excavating through the blockage or establishing a connection to another fort. It records the accessible portion of a real underground structure, commonly described in this context as a souterrain.
That physical visit gives the surrounding stories a setting without turning them into an archaeological conclusion. Someone could encounter an entrance in a bank or know that a field concealed passages and still have very little knowledge of their full extent. Andrews’s report preserves both the fascination and the limited reach of her inspection.
Herman’s Fort and the Backaderry cove
At Herman’s Fort in Clarkill townland, on another side of Castlewellan, Andrews found a thorn-grown enclosure and two openings. One led into a chamber she described as about six feet high. Another gave access to a passage more than thirty feet long. Nearby, she noted an old well with a round, unmortared stone lining.
She also visited the Backaderry cove on the road towards Dromara. The site lacked an obvious mound and was marked by thorn bushes. Her account describes a passage of about forty feet and a chamber around nine feet long. A local tradition linked it underground with Herman’s Fort, but Andrews did not report surveying a continuous tunnel between the two.
At Ballyginney near Maghera, the account is more limited again. Andrews saw an entrance, while a farmer explained how a flax crop had revealed the line of shallow roof stones. The difference between an entered passage, a visible opening and a farmer’s report of crop growth should remain visible. They are not interchangeable stages of a completed excavation.
The theory behind the collection
Andrews compared the traditions with contemporary arguments that fairies represented memories of small-statured earlier populations. She discussed David MacRitchie and correspondents who interpreted disappearance into mounds as entry into hidden dwellings. This is part of the intellectual history of her book, shaped by its period’s assumptions about peoples and prehistory.
The lasting value of this local file does not depend on accepting that theory. Andrews retained practical information which a shortened fairy tale often loses: the direction of a road, the shape of a passage, the informant’s relationship to an alleged witness, and whether she could inspect a place herself. Her book lets a reader move between oral history and field observation without pretending they answer exactly the same questions.
The map uses a broad Castlewellan reference. It does not identify private entrances or suggest that the old passages can safely be entered today. The historical appeal is the recorded relationship between a community and its landscape: small figures at a fort, music by a river, protected thorns, and real chambers beneath ordinary fields.
Timeline
Nineteenth century — the Down experiences and family traditions later related to Andrews; most have no exact incident year.
1890s onward — the intellectual and fieldwork setting described in her introduction.
Before 1913 — Andrews records local conversations and visits passages around Castlewellan and Maghera.
1913 — Ulster Folklore publishes the collection.
Sources & further reading
Elizabeth Andrews, Ulster Folklore, 1913 — Introduction and opening County Down material directly read, including the Castlewellan souterrain descriptions; later chapters concern other places.
Castlewellan townland and neighbouring townlands — Geographical context, including borders with Ballymagreehan and Clarkill.
Castlewellan locality map — Broad public locality coordinate; also distinguishes nearby Maghera in County Down.
Related case files
The Belfast Goligher Circle: the recorded knocks, the weighing machine and Crawford’s invisible beam
Islandmagee, 1711: the haunting reports and the witch trials
Location note: Broad Castlewellan locality for a surrounding landscape of oral traditions. No private souterrain entrance or exact fairy-encounter location is marked.
UKPX historical case file. Researched and checked 4 November 2026. Explore the UK case map · Links & Sources.