Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/191

 Rh Here is another changeling story:—

The Fairy Blacksmith.

There was a poor man in co. Leitrim, and he had a sickly son, who was a fine boy in the commencement till he was about three years of age, when he got ill and donny; and and they couldn't know what was the cause. He remained so for four or five years more, and gave all sorts of annoyance to his poor mother and father, screeching and screaming for a thing to eat at all times.

One day his father went to the forge to get his loy irons laid with the smith. It happened that the smith did one iron remarkably well, and there was a flaw in the other, but the man never noticed it. When he came home with the irons, "Daddy," says the sickly little lad, "show me them irons." "What do you know about irons?" says the father. He still persevered to look at them; and to please him, his mother handed them to him. The lad looked at them: "Daddy," says he, "this is a good one, but that one is no good; did he throw those two irons on the ground when he did them?" "No" says the father; "he gave me this one in my hand, and he threw the other one on the floor." "The one he threw on the floor," says the little lad, "is a good one: but the one he gave you in your hand is cracked, and nearly broken; and that's the reason he handed it to you, because he knew it wouldn't sound clear on the floor. Go back with it now, and tell him it^s a bad iron, and to make it better for you."

The father went back again to the smith with the iron and said: "Why did you give me a broken iron, and didn't do it right for me?" "Who told you that?" says the smith. "A small little child I have of my own; and he said that because it was bad you handed it into my hand, and the good one you threw on the floor to me."

"Who told you that?" says the smith.