Folk Tales of Scotland (5 page)

So thumbs were wet, and into the sty she marched.

The Green Lady looked at the sow with a frown, and then began to mutter to herself words the Goodwife couldn’t understand. They sounded like:

Then she took out of her pocket a wee bottle with some kind of oil in it, and rubbed the sow with it above the snout, behind the ears and on top of the tail.

‘Get up, beast,’ said the Green Lady. Up got the sow with a grunt, and away to her trough for her dinner.

The Goodwife of Kittlerumpit was overjoyed when she saw that,

‘Now that I’ve cured your sick beast, let us carry out our bargain,’ said the Green Lady. ‘You’ll not find me unreasonable. I always like
to do
a turn for small reward. All I ask, and
will
have, is that wee son in your arms.’

The Goodwife gave a shriek like a stuck pig, for she now knew that the Green Lady was a fairy. So she wept, and she begged, but it was no use.

‘You can spare your row,’ said the fairy, ‘shrieking as if I was as deaf as a door nail; but I can’t, by the law we live by, take your bairn till the third day after
this; and not then, if you can tell me my name.’

With that the fairy went away down the brae and out of sight.

The Goodwife of Kittlerumpit could not sleep that night for weeping, holding her bairn so tight that she nearly squeezed the breath out of him.

The next day she went for a walk in the wood behind her cottage. Her bairn in her arms, she went far among the trees till she came to an old quarry overgrown with grass, and a bonny spring well
in the middle of it. As she drew near, she heard the whirring of a spinning-wheel, and a voice singing a song. So the Wife crept quietly among the bushes, and peeped over the side of the quarry.
And what did she see but the Green Lady at her spinning-wheel singing:

‘Ah, ah!’ thought the Goodwife, ‘I’ve got the secret word at last!’

So she went home with a lighter heart than when she came out, and she laughed at the thought of tricking the fairy.

Now, this Goodwife was a merry woman, so she decided to have some sport with the fairy. At the appointed time she put her bairn behind the knocking stone, and sat down on it herself. She pulled
her bonnet over her left ear, twisted her mouth on the other side as if she were weeping. She looked the picture of misery. Well, she hadn’t long to wait, for up the brae came the fairy,
neither lame nor lazy, and long before she reached the knocking stone, she skirled out:

‘Goodwife of Kittlerumpit! You well know what I have come for!’

The Goodwife pretended to weep more bitterly than before, wringing her hands and falling on her knees.

‘Och, dear mistress,’ said she, ‘spare my only bairn and take my sow!’

‘The deil take the sow for my share,’ said the fairy. ‘I didn’t come here for swine’s flesh. Don’t be contrary, Goodwife, but give me your child
instantly!’

‘Ochon, dear lady,’ said the weeping Goodwife, ‘leave my bairn and take me!’

‘The deil’s in the daft woman,’ said the fairy, looking like the far end of a fiddle. ‘I’m sure she’s clean demented. Who in all the earthly world, with half
an eye in their head, would be bothered with the likes of you?’

This made the Goodwife of Kittlerumpit bristle, for though she had two bleary eyes, and a long red nose besides, she thought herself as bonny as the best of them. She soon got up off her knees,
set her bonnet straight, and with her hands folded before her, made a curtsey to the ground.

‘I might have known,’ said she, ‘that the likes of me isn’t fit to tie the shoe-strings of the high and mighty fairy W
HUPPITY
S
TOORIE
!’

The name made the fairy leap high. Down she came again, dump on her heels, and whirling round, she ran down the hill like an owlet chased by witches.

The Goodwife of Kittlerumpit laughed till she nearly burst. Then she took up her bairn and went into her house, singing to him all the way:

CROFTER
’
S
wife had a black iron cooking-pot, and every day
a fairy-wife borrowed it. The fairy said nothing, just seized the pot. Each time she made off with it, the goodwife of the croft called after her:

The fairy always returned the pot filled with meat and bones.

Now, one day, the goodwife had to go by ferry to the town on the mainland, and before she went, she said to her husband:

‘Promise you’ll say my rhyme to the fairy-wife when she comes for the pot today, then I’ll go to town with a quiet mind.’

‘I’ll do that,’ said he. ‘I’ll do whatever you tell me.’

So the goodwife left her husband busy twisting heather ropes. But when he saw the fairy-wife coming up the hill, he noticed she had no shadow and glided over the ground, unlike any mortal.
Terrified, he fled into the house and slammed the door.

The fairy-wife came to the door but the goodman didn’t open it. He was too frightened and forgot what his wife had told him to say. So the fairy climbed on to the thatched roof of the
croft and stood beside the smoke-hole. The cooking-pot was on the fire, underneath the smoke-hole, and suddenly it gave a leap right through the smoke-hole. The fairy-wife
caught it and carried it off, and the goodman was pleased to see the back of her.

Night came but the fairy-wife did not. Only the goodwife came home, and the first thing she looked for was her cooking-pot. She looked high and low but it was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’s my cooking-pot?’ she cried.

‘I don’t know,’ said her husband, ‘and I don’t care. When I saw that fairy-wife, I was so scared I shut the door tight. The fairy climbed on to the roof and stood
by the smoke-hole. Then the cooking-pot leapt up right through the smoke-hole. She seized it, took it away, and didn’t bring it back.’

‘You good-for-nothing wretch, what have you done? There’ll be no supper for us this night.’

‘She’ll bring it back tomorrow, you’ll see.’

‘She will not.’

Next day, the goodwife climbed the hill behind the cottage. At the top was an entrance to the fairies’ cave. The goodwife went in, and there, asleep either side of the fire, were two
little old men with long white beards, dressed in green. On the hearth was the cooking-pot, half-filled with food. The fairies had eaten their supper and gone off to sleep.

The goodwife crept over to the pot. Very quietly, she took hold of the handle and carried it off, without a word or a blessing for the two old fairy-men, still asleep by the fire.

The pot was very awkward and heavy to carry, and as the goodwife was going out, it knocked against the entrance. There was a terrible shriek. The two old men woke up, sprang to their feet and,
when they saw the goodwife carrying off the pot, they screamed:

The goodwife ran so fast the old men couldn’t catch her, but the two great dogs were faster. She heard them getting nearer and nearer, so she threw them pieces of food
from the pot. The dogs stopped to eat, but soon they had finished and were close at her heels again. She threw them another piece from the pot and ran on, knowing that the hounds were not far
behind. She wondered how much meat was left in the pot and if it would last till she reached home.

It was getting dark, but the goodwife could see the lamp shining in the cottage window. She knew she hadn’t far to go, but the fairy hounds were closing in on her and she could hear them
panting. Then she turned the pot upside-down, threw them every scrap of meat that was left, and reached home safely.

The farm dogs came running to meet her. When they heard the bark of the fairy hounds, they barked even louder. The black hounds stopped in their tracks, stared at the farm dogs and were too
frightened to go any nearer. Then they turned and ran off up the hill.

The crofter was very pleased to see his wife and she was glad to be home. The fairy-wife never came to borrow the cooking-pot again and it was never empty.

ONG
, long ago a drover courted and married the Miller of Cuthilldorie’s only
daughter. The drover learned how to grind the corn, and so he set up with his young wife as the Miller of Cuthilldorie when the old miller died. They did not have very much money to begin with, but
an old Highlander lent them some silver, and soon they did well.

By and by the young miller and his wife had a daughter, but on the very night she was born the fairies stole her away. The wee thing was carried far away from the house into the wood of
Cuthilldorie, where she was found on the very lip of the Black Well. In the air was heard a lilting:

The lassie grew up to be by far the bonniest lass in all the countryside. Everything went well at the mill.

One dark night there came a woodcock with a glowing tinder in its beak, and set fire to the mill. Everything was burnt and the miller and his wife were left without a thing in the world. To make
matters worse, who should come along next day but the old Highlander who had lent them the silver, demanding payment.

Now, there was a wee old man in the wood of Cuthilldorie beside the Black Well, who would never stay in a house if he could help it. In the winter he went away, nobody knew
where. He was an ugly bogle, not more than two and a half feet high.

He had been seen only three times in fifteen years since he came to the place, for he always flew up out of sight when anybody came near him. But if you crept cannily through the wood after
dark, you might have heard him playing with the water, and singing the same song: