And sure enough, the door of the cottage was flung wide open, and all the little Fairies came running out, knocking each other over in their eagerness to be first at the hill. In the confusion the good housewife slipped away, and ran as fast as she could to her cottage; and when she was once inside, it did not take her long to bar the door, and turn everything upside down. She took the band off the spinning-wheel, and twisted the head of the distaff the wrong way. She lifted the pot of fulling-water off the fire, and turned the room topsy-turvy, and threw down the carding-combs. Scarcely had she done so, when the Fairies returned, and knocked at the door. “Good housewife! let us in,” they cried. “The door is shut and bolted, and I will not open it,” answered she. “Good spinning-wheel, get up and open the door,” they cried. “How can I,” answered the spinning-wheel, “seeing that my band is undone?” “Kind distaff, open the door for us,” said they. “That would I gladly do,” said the distaff, “but I cannot walk, for my head is turned the wrong way.” “Weaving-loom, have pity, and open the door.” “I am all topsy-turvy, and cannot move,” sighed the loom. “Fulling-water, open the door,” they implored. “I am off the fire,” growled the fulling-water, “and all my strength is gone.” “Oh! Is there nothing that will come to our aid, and open the door?” they cried. “I will,” said a little barley-bannock, that had lain hidden, toasting on the hearth; and it rose and trundled like a wheel quickly across the floor. But luckily the housewife saw it, and she nipped it between her finger and thumb, and, because it was only half-baked, it fell with a “splatch” on the cold floor. Then the Fairies gave up trying to get into the kitchen, and instead they climbed up by the windows into the room where the good housewife's husband was sleeping, and they swarmed upon his bed and tickled him until he tossed about and muttered as if he had a fever. Then all of a sudden the good housewife remembered what the Wise Man had said about the fulling-water. She ran to the kitchen and lifted a cupful out of the pot, and carried it in, and threw it over the bed where her husband was. In an instant he woke up in his right senses. Then he jumped out of bed, ran across the room and opened the door, and the Fairies vanished. And they have never been seen from that day to this. THE KING OF THE CATS AN ENGLISH FOLK-TALE BY ERNEST RHYS Once upon a time there were two brothers who lived in a lonely house in a very lonely part of Scotland. An old woman used to do the cooking, and there was no one else, unless we count her cat and their own dogs, within miles of them. One autumn afternoon the elder of the two, whom we will call Elshender, said he would not go out; so the younger one, Fergus, went alone to follow the path where they had been shooting the day before, far across the mountains.