The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various CountriesKeightley, Thomas
General
The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Keightley, Thomas
Fairies; Fairy tales; Folk literature; Folklore
The former, whom, like the Scots, they also term the _guid folk_ and
_guid neighbours_, they conceive to inhabit the interior of green
hills. Persons who have been brought into their habitations have been
dazzled with the splendour of what they saw there. All the interior
walls are adorned with gold and silver, and the domestic utensils
resemble the strange things that are found sometimes lying on the
hills. These persons have always entered the hill on one side and gone
out at the other.
They marry and have children, like their northern kindred. A woman of
the island of Yell, who died not long since, at the advanced age of
more than a hundred years, said, that she once met some fairy
children, accompanied by a little dog, playing like other boys and
girls, on the top of a hill. Another time she happened one night to
raise herself up in the bed, when she saw a little boy with a white
nightcap on his head, sitting at the fire. She asked him who he was.
"I am Trippa's son," said he. When she heard this, she instantly
_sained_, i. e. blessed herself, and Trippa's son vanished.
_Saining_ is the grand protection against them; a Shetlander always
sains himself when passing by their hills.
The Trows are of a diminutive stature, and they are usually dressed in
gay green garments. When travelling from one place to another they may
be seen mounted on bulrushes, and riding through the air. If a person
should happen to meet them when on these journeys, he should, if he has
not a bible in his pocket, draw a circle round him on the ground, and in
God's name forbid their approach. They then generally disappear.[227]
They are fond of music and dancing, and it is their dancing that forms
the fairy rings. A Shetlander lying awake in bed before day one
morning, heard the noise of a party of Trows passing by his door. They
were preceded by a piper, who was playing away lustily. The man
happened to have a good ear for music, so he picked up the tune he
heard played, and used often after to repeat it for his friends under
the name of the Fairy-tune.
The Trows are not free from disease, but they are possessed of
infallible remedies, which they sometimes bestow on their favourites.
A man in the island of Unst had an earthen pot that contained an
ointment of marvellous power. This he said he got from the hills, and,
like the widow's cruise, its contents never failed.
They have all the picking and stealing propensities of the
Scandinavian Trolls. The dairy-maid sometimes detects a Trow-woman
secretly milking the cows in the byre. She sains herself, and the
thief takes to flight so precipitately as to leave behind her a copper
pan of a form never seen before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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