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Fairy Merchandise

Recorded by Katharine M. Briggs from Ruth L. Tongue, September 28, 1963. Miss Tongue heard the story as a child from haymakers at Galmington, near Taunton in Somerset, in the summer of 1906.

Motifs here are F342.1, “Fairy Gold”; F258.1, “Fairies hold a fair”; and Q41, “Politeness rewarded.” Fairy people in England and Scandinavia commonly give a gift of seemingly useless things that turn to gold if kept. An account of a fairy fair near Taunton is also given in Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, pp. 249–95; and Hartland, English Fairy and Other Folk Tales, pp. 139–41, although here the human intruder is lamed. The necessity for politeness in dealing with supernatural people is stressed throughout Europe; e.g., see Type 480, The Spinning-Women by the Spring.

Legends with the present motifs are found in Sikes, British Goblins, pp. 120–24; and Hartland in The Science of Fairy Tales discusses them at length in his two chapters on “Fairy Births and Human Midwives.” Their distribution runs from China to northern Europe.

THERE WERE A varmer over-right our place did zee the vairies to their market and come whoame zafe tew. Mind, he didn’t never vorget tew leave hearth clean ’n a pail of well water vor’n at night, ’n a girt dish o’ scalt cream tew. My granny did say her’d get’n ready vor’n many’s the time. Zo when her [the farmer] rode up tew stall, zee, all among the vair, ’n axed mannerly vor a zider mug ahanging up, the vairies answers ’n zo purty as if they was to Tanton Market. With that the varmer lugs out his money bags ’n pays, ’n what do ’ee believe! They gived ’n a heap of dead leaves vor his change, quite ser’ous like. Varmer he took ’n mannerly ’n ser’ous tew; then he wishes ’n “Good night, arl,” ’n he ride whoame. He d’ put zider mug on table ’n spread they dead leaves round un careful, then he d’ zay, “Come morn they won’t none o’ they be yur, but ’twere worth it tew zee the liddle dears’ market.”

Come morn when Varmer went tew get his dew-bit avore ploughing what dew her zee on table but a vine silver mug, ’n lumps of gold all around ’n.

Goblin Combe

Collected by Ruth L. Tongue who heard the account told in chorus by two old ladies from Clevedon, Somerset, in 1945.

Central motifs are F211.2, “Fairyland entrance under a stone,” and J2415, “Foolish imitation of a lucky man.” The latter motif is prominent in Type 503, The Gifts of the Little People, widely reported from northern Europe, with scattered examples from the New World and from as far east as Japan. See Nos. 36, 37 in Folktales of Japan, a companion volume in this series.

Primroses and cowslips are both fairy flowers in English country tradition.

THERE WAS A parcel of children and they was a-picking primroses, see, and one poor little dear her wandered away on her lone self right down into Goblin Combe. She were only a little trot, see, and didn’t know no better. Well, when she do find she’s a-lost she cries, and the tears do run down her dear little face, and dap on her pinafore like summer rain, and she do throw her little self a-down in her grief and the primroses they knocks against a rock. Then the rock opens and there’s the fairises all come to comfort her tears. They do give her a gold ball and they lead the dear little soul safe home—on account she was carrying primroses, see.

Well, ’twas the wonder of the village and the conjuror he gets the notion he’d aget his fistes on more than one gold ball when next the fairises opened the hill. So he do pick a bunch of primroses and he go on up Goblin Combe, and he was glad enough to get in to the rock after all he see and hear on the way up. Well, ’twasn’t the right day, nor the right number of primroses, and he wasn’t no dear little soul—so they took him!

The Fairy Follower

Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 29, 1963, who heard the story as a child told by a maid from the Welsh Marches.

A number of familiar motifs are present here. Those involving fairies include F234.2.5, “Fairy in form of beautiful young woman”; F236.1.6, “Fairy in green clothes”; and F363, “Fairies cause death.” Also evident are D1272, “Magic circle,” and F404, “Means of summoning spirits.”

E. S. Hartland in “The Treasure on the Drim,” Folk-Lore Journal, VI (1888), 125–28, gives two Welsh variants of evoking spirits through a magic circle, and the subsequent death of the person who called them up. In her study of Ritual Magic, E. M. Butler presents at length accounts from literary sources, such as Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), of necromancers summoning demons, ghosts, and fairies. Similar to the present tale is an ill-fated experience befalling a blacksmith’s son, which Butler quotes from The Spectre, or News of the Invisible World, London, 1836 (in the Noonday Press edition, New York, 1959, pp. 281–82). A similar spell for obtaining sight of the fairies is found in a seventeenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (e Mus 173).

THERE WAS ONCE a lad, and he loved a girl with all his heart, and all he wanted was health and wealth to marry her. His love was so hot that he could not bear to wait, but set to to get help from the fairies. It was an unchancy thing to do, and he set about it the wrong way. First he took a fair white cloth without asking the farmer’s wife’s leave, and no good could come of that. Then he filled a pail of river water, and that wouldn’t do. Then he tried a pail of well water, and that wouldn’t do. At last, he filled a pail of clear spring water, and that was right enough, but he stood it outside the door on the night of the new moon, instead of inside, so nothing came of that. So he had to wait a whole month, till the next new moon, and for two nights running, he set the pail inside the door, but that wasn’t good enough, and still nothing happened. So he waited another month; it was May by this time, and he swept the hearth, and put the pail of water to stand on it, two nights before the new moon, and that was right. Just after midnight, he tiptoed down to the pail, and there was a thin gold oil on top of the water. He skimmed it off, and made a cake of it, with meal, and set it down on the fair white cloth. He made a circle and said the words and waited.

The door opened, and a dark fairy came in, and stretched out her hand for the cake.

“Not for thee,” he said, and he shouldn’t have spoken.

Then a fair fairy came in, and stretched out her hand. He tapped her on the wrist and said, “Not for thee.” But he shouldn’t have touched her.

Then came a most beautiful lady in green, and she said, “For me,” and ate the cake.

After that she was always with him, and he told her his wishes. She granted them right enough, but in a back-handed way that turned them all to bitterness. He wanted marriage, and he got it, but with a cruel old woman, the richest in the parish. So he had his money too, and small good it did him. Then a great pestilence came on the place, and people died to the right and left of him, and his poor pretty sweetheart, whom he had loved all his life, was the first to die. But the lad’s great strength bore him through everything, and it seemed he could not die. But at length the fairy at his elbow, meddling and urging him this way and that, though no one else could see her, wore him down to a thread and he died. As he lay in his coffin, a dark, cloudy shadow came down over it, and out of the darkness a voice said, very cold and clear, “For me.”

Pixy Fair

Collected by Ruth L. Tongue from a farmer’s daughter on the Quantock Hills, South West, in Somerset in 1960.

The central motif is F352, “Theft of a cup (drinking horn) from the fairies.” Legends of cup thefts are given in Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology (London, 1860), pp. 283–85, 292–93, the best known being “The Luck of Eden Hall.” E. S. Hartland in The Science of Fairy Tales (London, 1891), pp. 48–50, chap. 6, “Robberies from Fairyland,” gives many similar traditions, as well as examples of fairy gold (F342.1) turning to coal or leaves. Christiansen classifies the type as 6045, “Drinking Cup Stolen from the Fairies” in The Migratory Legends, and prints two texts in Folktales of Norway, a companion volume in this series, Nos. 52a, 52c, “The Drinking Horn Stolen from the Huldre-Folk.” See also W. A. Craigie, Scandinavian Folk-Lore (London, 1896), p. 132, “One-Leg and the Stolen Goblet.”

In West Quantock dialect, well-illustrated in this tale, the word for lame, applied to a horse, is “scramble-footed”; to a man, “crippled”; and to a woman, “hobbled.”

’AVE ’EE YEARD ’bout th’ old man that come whoame from Markut? He wuz comin’ up road loike when ’er zaw th’ girt Pixy Vair, an’ on one o’ the starls there he zaw a gold mug vull up the top o’ gold pieces. Zo ’er thart to ’isself, “Ef I d’ grab ’ee I shall ’ave ’nuff money vur rest of me loife.”

Zo with no more ado he d’ gallop right on dru Pixy Vair, laying hold to mug as her went, and went on whoame as vast as pony’s legs ’ood carry ’n. Highly delighted with proize he took ’n to bed vor zafe-keeping. Well, next marnin’ vust thing he looks at was his mug—but ’t ’ad gone. And what do ’ee think—arl there was was a girt twoad-stool. And when ’ee goes out t’ get pony ’e finds ’tis scramble-footed, an’ zo ’twas ’er was like it the rest of ’er days.

The Fairy Midwife

Recorded from Ruth L. Tongue, September 28, 1963, who heard the tale as a child in Taunton and Trull, Somerset, and remembers this version from “Annie’s Granny.”

This is one of the oldest and most widely known of the fairy legends in England. The earliest form, close to the present text, is from Gervase of Tilbury in the thirteenth century. See E. S. Hartland, “Peeping Tom and Lady Godiva,” Folk-Lore, I (1890), pp. 207–26, esp. 213.

Common motifs present here are F372.1, “Fairies take human midwife to attend fairy woman”; F235.4.1, “Fairies made visible through use of ointment”; and F378.6, “Tabu: using fairy bath water, soap, or ointment on oneself while bathing fairy child.”

Legends embodying these motifs are found throughout Great Britain and northern Europe. See G. F. Black, County Folk-Lore, No. 3, edited by N. W. Thomas (London, 1903), pp. 26–28, from Shetland; Mrs. Bray, The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, 2 vols. (London, 1879), pp. 174–77, from Devonshire; Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 39, “Tam Lin” and No. 40, “The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice”; R. Th. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends, 5070, “Midwife to the Fairies”; E. S. Hartland, The Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 59–67; Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, First Series, pp. 110–16; Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, pp. 301–303, 310–12; Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 117–21; Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, pp. 86–88, from Wales.

THERE WAS AN old body who was asked by the vairies to come and look after their babies. She was well fed and clothed and had never been so happy—but of course she would go and rub her eyes with their fairy ointment—just to make sure “’Twouldn’ hurt the pretty dears” and then she saw too much!

Next year she had a stall at Taunton Market and she saw the vairies picking and stealing shamefully. “Thee shan’t steal none of my vairings,” she said out loud. They came all around her like a cloud of angry wasps and when they’d gone her eyesight was gone too!