Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/213

 PEEPING TOM AND LADY GODIVA.

N an article which appeared in one of the later numbers of the Archæological Review, I discussed at some length the stories of midwives who have assisted lady fairies in the hour of their need. The chief points of interest were the necessity for human help, the danger of accepting fairy food, the gratitude of these supernatural beings, and the conditions involved in the acceptance of their gifts. There remains, however, another class of tale similar in its general tenor to these, but wherein we are led by a new turning-point to a different catastrophe. The plot no longer hinges upon fairy gratitude, but upon human curiosity and disobedience.

The typical tale is told, and exceedingly well told—though, alas! not exactly in the language of the natives—by Mrs. Bray in her Letters to Southey, of a certain midwife of Tavistock. One midnight, as she was getting into bed, this good woman was summoned by a strange, squint-eyed, little, ugly old fellow to follow him straightway, and attend upon his wife. In spite of her instinctive repulsion she could not resist the command; and in a moment the little man whisked her, with himself, upon a large coal-black horse with eyes of fire, which stood waiting at the door. Ere long she found herself at the door of a neat cottage; the patient was a decent-looking woman who already had two children, and all things were prepared for her visit. When the child—a fine, bouncing babe—was born, its mother gave the midwife some ointment, with directions to “strike the child’s eyes with it”. Now the word strike in the Devonshire dialect means not to give a blow, but to rub, or touch, gently; and as the woman obeyed she thought