Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/154

146 green fairy anything she liked, and the sow was made well. To the mother's dismay the fairy then said that she would have the bairn. "But," said she, "this I'll let ye to wut, I canna by the law we leeve on take your bairn till the third day after this day; and no then if ye can tell me my right name." For two days the poor woman wandered "cuddlin' her bairn," when, as she came near an old quarry hole, she heard the "burring of a lint-wheel, and a voice lilting a song," and then saw the green fairy at her wheel, "singing like ony precentor,"

Speeding home glad-hearted, she awaited the fairy's coming; and being "a jokus woman," pulled a long face, begging that the bairn be spared and the sow taken, and when this was spurned, offering herself. "The deil's in the daft jad," quo' the fairy; "wha in a' the earthly warld .... wad ever meddle wi' the likes o' thee?" Then the woman threw off her mask of grief, and, making "a curchie down to the ground," quo' she, "I might hae had the wit to ken that the likes o' me is na fit to tie the warst shoe-strings o' the heich and mighty princess, Whuppity Stoorie." "Gin a fluff o' gunpowder had come out o' the grund, it couldna hae gart the fairy loup heicher nor she did; syne doun she came again, dump on her shoe-heels, and whurlin' round, she ran down the brae, scraichin' for rage, like a houlet chased wi' the witches."

In the Swedish variant, given in Thorpe's Yule-Tide Stories, entitled, "The Girl who could spin Gold from Clay and Long Straw," the mother sets her on the roof of their cot that she might be shamed by folks seeing her sloth. The king's son, as he rides by, sees the fair spinner, and, asking why she is there, is told by the mother ironically that she is so clever as to be able to spin gold out of clay and long straw. He then said that she should be his wife if this Were true, and forthwith carried her to the palace to make proof of her skill, Left in her maiden-bower with straw and clay, she wept