Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/226

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There was once a farmer, who had a barn containing corn, and however much he threshed in the day it ahvays seemed as full as ever in the morning. One night he determined to watch, and presently in came some (I think only two or three) pixies. Each seized a flail and began to thresh. Then said one : " Tweat you ? I tweat." The farmer felt grateful and determined to reward them for their trouble, so he had little suits of clothes made for them. Then he put these in the barn, and hid himself and watched again, and by-and-by the pixies came in. They were delighted with the clothes and dressed themselves in them, but after that they went away and did no more work for the farmer.

The other tale was written down for me by a woman whose father told it to her, and I give her exact words.

" Once there was a farmer who used to employ a workman by the name of Robin Hood, so the farmer agreed with him to thresh some corn. He worked at it for several days and could not shrink it one bit, so he thought to himself one day he would watch through the night. So when it came on dark he hid him- self in a corner of the barn and about twelve o'clock, having locked the door on the inside, he saw a big picksy come through the keyhole with a big load on his back, and then a smaller one, and then a very little one. They put down their loads and rubbed themselves, and said : ' I tweat. You tweat. Tweat I too.' The man jumped out of his hiding-place with a pick, so they disappeared through the keyhole, and the man finished his threshing in peace the next day. But the picksys did not forget or forgive him. When he was retui-ning home from his work one came and jumped on his back and kept saying : ' Turn again, Robin,' till it brought him down to a river. Then it jumped in the river.

" Then Robin met his two brothers, so they thought they would go for a night's poaching. Off they started, through wild and lonely places. When they got on the top of a hill they looked down over and saw something like fire. One said it was fire, and another said it was the sun rising in the earth. The other said it must be the moon. Then it divided into a lot of little picksys with shining heads. They thought they would be brave and see what they were up to, but when they came up nearer to them the men got so frightened they began to run away, each in a different direction. They scrambled through brambles, ditches, and mud. When they arrived home they were shoeless and hatless. They