![\"Colm](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5088246_3_articleinline_iStock-1241732973.jpg\" "\\"Colm")
Colm O’Regan: ‘There\u2019s a philosophical term for holding two contradictory beliefs at once: Cognitive dissonance. But that feels a bit negative. I\u2019m very happy hoping the person who cuts a fairy bush gets pustular boils.’<\/p>\nIt was in the merry month of May\u2026 I feel like any column written in May about piseogs and fairies should begin that way.<\/p>\n
There was a post in one of the 4,000 procrastination tools I use every day \u2014 the niche Facebook groups. I know the young aren\u2019t on Facebook anymore and that\u2019s grand. They\u2019d only be ruining things, asking questions like why are there 32,000 people in the Bathtubs In Fields Appreciation Group. Hush child.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This time, the post was in either Hedgerows of Ireland, Ireland\u2019s Wild Birds and Animals, or maybe in the bathtubs one.<\/p>\n
Someone was furious that a fella was chopping a hawthorn tree in full bloom on a ditch. (It is still not clear to me why people mangle the hedgerows so much. I know a tasty man who could give you a haircut with his hedge cutter. It\u2019s possible to trim without destroying.) Everyone was up in arms.<\/p>\n
I joined in claiming \u201cthe fairies have his photo now anyway\u201d. And then someone corrected me that actually a fairy bush is one in the middle of a field and they are not as bothered by the ones on the ditches. Fairy nuff. It\u2019s important to get this stuff right.<\/p>\n
What struck me was how easily I slipped into the mode of hoping the fairies would punish him. I\u2019m not even going to say publicly whether I believe they exist or not, just in case they do and sour the milk here. I would definitely hedge my bets by leaving the hedges alone.<\/p>\n
In case you are living under a rock, which some fairies do actually, the fairies are said to be the Tuatha De Danann who were driven underground by us, the Gaels, who bulldozed through their lands without planning permission. They\u2019re not Tinkerbell; the proper name is Sidhe and they ain\u2019t playing.<\/p>\n
Especially if you break the gates, which are the fairy bushes. It\u2019s a piseog \u2014 a superstition, folk curse, or charm \u2014 like the number of magpies. There are hundreds of them. Specific to different areas and different times of year. Everyone used to believe in them before because they explained disease, oddness, bad luck, weather. It made perfect sense when nothing else made sense.<\/p>\n
Colm O’Regan: ‘There\u2019s a philosophical term for holding two contradictory beliefs at once: Cognitive dissonance. But that feels a bit negative. I\u2019m very happy hoping the person who cuts a fairy bush gets pustular boils.’<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting is not that people used to believe these things. Of course they did. In a world without antibiotics or weather forecasting or adequate nutrition, you worked with what you had. When a cow sickened for no visible reason, the theory that a neighbour\u2019s envy had poisoned her was no more improbable than germ theory, which was also invisible.<\/p>\n
Piseogs were a rational response to an uncertain world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What\u2019s interesting is that after all the science and explanations, many of us still believe in them in some shape or form. Some overtly \u2014 the kind of people on Instagram who say they are \u2018empaths\u2019 and are channelling the Tuatha de Danann and you can too with this \u20ac100 course. Others sort of quietly, just in case-edly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a philosophical term for holding two contradictory beliefs at once: Cognitive dissonance. But that feels a bit negative. I\u2019m very happy hoping the person who cuts a fairy bush gets pustular boils.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like we\u2019re operating on another level. This is the system for dealing with shit that just happens. The shower that spoils a wedding has a perfectly rational explanation, but it\u2019s too complicated to understand.<\/p>\n
If a child of Prague makes a difference, why not? These are gestures that live below the threshold of belief. They\u2019re not claims about how the world works. They\u2019re something closer to manners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, within reason, of course. Don\u2019t be turning around just because you met a red-headed woman. She\u2019s your boss and it\u2019s annual review time.<\/p>\n
But still. Leave the fecking fairy trees alone. Wherever they are. A light trim will do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was in the merry month of May\u2026 I feel like any column written in May about piseogs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-461034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}