Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/197

Rh woman and her young children. One night there was a great fight all up the hill between two bands of fairies, and the house coming in their way, they burst in at the back door and out at the front, fighting through the house. The woman was naturally greatly alarmed, and ran at once up to the room to see were her children safe. She found them quietly asleep, and in the morning all the doors were shut again. Some of the people say that she found a head under the bed, and that was the only evidence of the fight to be seen.

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Many tales connect the fairies with the forts or round earthworks, and exhibit them as carrying on therein the details of everyday life:—

There were two neighbours, one a cooper and the other a farmer. They went out one day to plough; and the field they went to plough in ran up to a fort. They were ploughing some time, about an hour or so; and they heard the noise of churning in the fort, but they could not tell where the noise came from. They ploughed on for a bit, but every time they came up to the fort they heard the sound of the churning. It stopped after a little; and when they had gone down the hill and up again, there was a table there, and the churn staff, with the dash off it, left out to be mended, with cooper's tools laid by. The cooper says: "Here's a job for me; you can plough till I get it mended for them." He set to work, and put the dash on the staff for them, and left it on the table, and went off to the other man to plough; and when they came back, the dash, tabic, and tools were all gone. The sound of the churning went on again for sometime after, and then it stopped, and a table was left out with oatcake and butter. The cooper invited the other to take some, but he wouldn't, and said it was not right. He went over and took some, and satisfied himself, and then went off to his plough again,