THE LOWLAND FAIRIES.
The ‘people’ had several dwellings near the village of Largs26(Na Leargun Gallta, the slopes-near-the-sea of the strangers), on the coast of Ayrshire (see Introduction to Campbell’sTales of the West Highlands).
Knock Hill was full ofelves, and the site of the old Tron Tree, now the centre of the village, was a favourite haunt. A sow, belonging to the man who cut down the Tron Tree, was found dead in the byre next morning. A hawker, with a basket of crockery, was met near the Noddle Burn by a Fairy woman. She asked him for a bowl she pointed out in hisbasket, but he refused to give it. On coming to the top of a brae near the village, his basket tumbled, and all his dishes ran on edge to the foot of the incline. None were broken but the one which had been refused to the Fairy. It was found in fragments. The same day, however, the hawker found a treasure that made up for his loss. That, said the person from whom the story was heard, was the custom of the Fairies; they never took anything without making up for it some other way.
On market-days they went about stealing here and there a little of the wool or yarn exposed for sale. A present of shoes and stockings made them give great assistance at out-door work. A man was taken by them to a pump near the Haylee Toll, where he danced all night with them. A headless man was one of the company.
They often came to people’s houses at night, and were heard washing their children. If they found no water in the house, they washed them inkit, or sowen water. They were fond of spinning and weaving, and, if chid or thwarted, cut the weaver’s webs at night. They one night dropped a child’s cap, a very pretty article, in a weaver’s house, to which they had come to get the child washed. They, however, took it away the following night.
In another instance, a band of four was heard crossing over the bedclothes, two women going firstand laughing, and two men following and expressing their wonder if the women were far before them.
A man cut a slip from an ash-tree growing near a Fairy dwelling. On his way home in the evening he stumbled and fell. He heard the Fairies give a laugh at his mishap. Through the night he was hoisted away, and could tell nothing of what happened till in the morning he found himself in the byre, astride on a cow, and holding on by its horns.
These are genuine popular tales of the South of Scotland, which the writer fell in with in Largs. He heard them from a servant girl, a native of the place. They are quoted as illustrations of the vitality of the creed. They are not stories of the Highlands, but are quite analogous. The student of such mythologies will recognize in them a semblance to the Fairy tales of the North of Ireland.