The Latoon fairy bush, or Latoon fairy tree, is a whitethorn tree situated beside the M18 motorway in Latoon, County Clare, Ireland that was the subject of a preservation campaign led by Irish folklorist Eddie Lenihan in 1999 to save it from being cut down when the motorway was being built. According to Lenihan, the tree is an "important meeting place for supernatural forces of the region". The campaign purportedly held up the construction of the motorway for 10 years. Lenihan warned that its destruction could have resulted in "death and great misfortune for motorists travelling on the proposed new road". The tree was eventually spared in May 1999, and still grows in situ as of 2026.
Location The tree is situated on a gently sloping strip of median land between the M18 motorway and a northbound slip road leading onto the motorway, situated in the townland of Latoon South. The section of the M18 motorway beside which the tree grows is colloquially known as either the Newmarket-on-Fergus bypass, or the Ennis bypass, as the two bypasses join into one another in the region of the fairy bush.
Fairy sites Numerous sites exist with folkloric "fairy" significance in the Irish landscape. According to The New York Times, there are "perhaps 150 fairy-sacred locations in Ireland", some of which are bushes and some called 'fairy forts' (correctly known as ringforts) consisting of the "remains of stone or wooden forts which housed an extended family in early medieval times". Tradition dictates that they should never be moved or harmed, as Lenihan recounts:
"If you move or destroy a fairy fort or Celtic ringfort, you'll be in trouble and you're creating trouble. Never shift a fairy bush. It belongs where it is and nowhere else". Lenihan, one of Ireland's best known folklorists and story-tellers (seanchaí), describes a 'fairy bush' as being "a favourite meeting place for supernatural folk, dating back to the mist of pre-Celtic history". According to the 2013 publication Heritage Trees of Ireland, Ireland hosts more sacred trees than any other country in Europe.
History The Latoon fairy bush was known to Lenihan prior to the planned construction of the road, owing to a local farmer who had once pointed it out to him, as he had previously seen "white fairy blood" on the grass around the base of the tree. On another occasion, a farmer had told him how he once saw "lumps of green stuff with the consistency of liver" around the tree, indicating "that there had been fairy battles around the bush the night before." Lenihan recognised the tree as a fairy bush, and concluded that it must have been "significant for them (as) a meeting point for Munster fairies to battle with Connaught fairies". According to a 2019 article on TheJournal.ie, Lenihan, then a 49-year-old secondary school teacher (in 1999), was subsequently "passing the bush one evening on the way home from teaching in Limerick when he saw machinery and road workers beside it". "I knew nothing about the road being built, and asked them what would happen to the bush," he said. After being informed that the bush would be destroyed, Lenihan decided that he had to fight for its preservation, and wrote to the Clare Champion and Clare FM radio station warning of the possible consequences that its removal would bring. Lenihan subsequently wrote a letter which was published in The Irish Times and picked up by a New York Times correspondent. The piece in the New York Times, dated 16 June 1999, noted that the engineer in charge of the bypass had been warned of the possible effects that could transpire if the 15-foot-high bush were to be moved or destroyed and had confirmed that he would "think it over". The author of the New York Times article got in touch with the Folklore department at University College Dublin who agreed with Lenihan's sentiment that "while the people of modern Ireland scoff publicly at fairy stories, ashamed to admit their beliefs and superstitions to strangers, there is still strong vestigial belief in the fairies". Bairbre Ní Fhloinn, an archivist and fairy story collector at the same department added:
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