Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/519

Rh story, and, to his distress, found it disbelieved, and he himself accused of having murdered his companion. He begged for a year to clear himself, and, law being easy in those days, this was granted. On the same day of the next year he led his accusers to the fairy mound, where they found the performance of the last year repeated. In the midst of the fairies was the man supposed to be murdered, still clinging to his greybeard. He refused to leave, resisting all efforts to drag him away; and the men, for their own safety, had to go. But on the same day of the succeeding year, his first companion, cleared of suspicion, but still anxious, returned once more—this time alone—and succeeded in dragging him out of the fairy ring. But he ever after lamented being torn away from the fairy festivities.

In connection with these fairy stories many places are still pointed out as the former homes of the fairies, and an old man told the writer that graves of unknown age having been opened in the north of the island, huge skeletons as of giants were discovered; while in another place small bones "that would not be children's bones at all, but those of men and women" were found.

(15) A story given as a witch story, but which, as far as I can see, is a fairy story, is the following:

A little boy, while playing about, was spoken to by an old woman in red (?). She took him away with her, and made him work for her. One day, however, she sent him a message to a place near his own home, hoping that with the lapse of time he had forgotten it. But he remembered, and seized the opportunity to run away.

(1) A man lying sick in bed saw two neighbours come in to visit his wife. The three women went to the kist at the side of the bed and took out mutches, curches as they are called in these parts. They put these on their heads, and saying some magic words, which the man heard and stored in his memory, they disappeared. As soon as they were gone the man imitated their example, and on saying the magic words found himself in