In Reply to: Foidin Mara posted by Derg on November 25, 2010 at 20:53:18:

The "Foidin Mhara" or"Stray Sod" is well known in folklore of England and Ireeland and is also sometimes called 'The Lone Sod' or Foidin Seacrain.

The Irish version of the state of being Pixy-led or Pook-ledden. It is not effected by lights or voices; the general explanation is that a fairy spell is laid on a piece of turf so that the human stepping on it is unable to find his way out of a well-known spot, and wanders helplessly, often for several hours, until the spell is suddenly lifted.

References to this phenomenon are to be found in many of the learned writings of the seventeenth century, but the fullest modern account is given in THE MIDDLE KINGDOM by D. A. Mac Manus, who devotes a short chapter to 'The Stray Sod'.

Several anecdotes illustrate the belief, among them one of a rector who was called out one Midsummer Night to visit a sick parishioner who lived about seven miles off by road. A pleasant footpath more than halved the distance, so the rector determined to walk there. The footpath led through a strong gate to a field with a fairy oak in the middle of it and a stile at the other end of the path. The rector walked straight through the field, but when he got to the other side of it, the stile was not to be found, and what was more the path had gone. The rector walked along the hedge, feeling for any possible gap, but there was none. When he got back the gate had gone as well as the stile. He walked round and round the field, following the hedge for several hours, until suddenly the spell lifted and he found the gate. He went through it and home, where he took his bicycle and went by the road. The usual spell in Ireland as in England against fairy misleading is to turn one's coat. The rector did not try the spell of Turning Clothes, but D. A. Mac Manus says that it has been tried with the stray sod and has failed.

Excerpt from ""Encyclopedia of the Celts"

D.A. Mc Manus was born in Killedan, near Kiltimagh and was well known author in the Irish Literary Revival.