Notes and Queries, Number 61, December 28, 1850Various
History
Notes and Queries, Number 61, December 28, 1850
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
_Miraculous Cures for Lameness._--The holy well _Y fynnon fair_, or Our
Lady's Well, near Pont yr allt Goch, close to the Elwy, has to this day
the reputation of curing lameness so thoroughly, that those who can
reach it walking on crutches may fling their crutches away on their
return home. Welsh people still come several miles over the hills to
this holy spring. A whole family was there when I visited its healing
waters last month.
The same virtue is ascribed at Rouen to a walk to the altar at St.
Katherine's Church, at the top of St. Katherine's Hill, where the
cast-off crutches have been preserved. In the latter case something less
than a miracle may account for the possibility of going away without
crutches; for they may be required to mount to a lofty eminence, and may
well be dispensed with on coming down: but as this supposition would
lessen the value of a tradition implicitly believed, of course all
sensible men will reject it at once.
WM. DURANT COOPER.
81. Guilford Street.
PIXEY LEGENDS.
In reference to your correspondent H.G.T.'s article on _pixies_ (Vol.
ii., p. 475.), allow me to say that I have read the distich which he
quotes in a tale to the following effect:--In one of the southern
counties of England--(all the pixey tales which I have heard or read
have their seat laid in the south of England)--there lived a lass who
was courted and wed by a man who, after marriage, turned out to be a
drunkard, neglecting his work, which was that of threshing, thereby
causing his pretty wife to starve. But after she could bear this no
longer, she dressed herself in her husband's clothes (whilst he slept
off the effects of his drunkenness), and went to the barn to do her
husband's work. On the morning of the second day, when she went to the
barn, she found a large pile of corn threshed, which she had not done;
and so she found, for three or four days, her pile of corn doubled. One
night she determined to watch and see who did it, and carrying her
intention into practice, she saw a little pixey come into the barn with
a tiny flail, with which he set to work so vigorously that he soon
threshed a large quantity. During his work he sang,
"Little Pixey, fair and slim,
Without a rag to cover him."
The next day the good woman made a complete suit of miniature clothes,
and hung them up behind the barn door, and watched to see what _pixey_
would do. I forgot to mention that he hung his flail behind the door
when he had done with it.
At the usual time the pixey came to work, went to the door to take down
his flail, and saw the suit of clothes, took them down, and put them on
him, and surveyed himself with a satisfied air, and sang
"Pixey fine, and pixie gay.
Pixey now must fly away."
It then flew away, and she never saw it more.
In this tale the word was invariably spelt "pixey."
TYSIL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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