“EVERYBODY knows there’s fairies,” said the old nurse one night when she was bolder than usual. What she said we will put in English, not Scotch as she spoke it. “But they do not like to be called fairies. So the old rhyme runs: ‘If ye call me imp or elf, . I warn you look well to yourself; If ye call me fairy, Ye ‘ll find me quite contrary; If good neighbour you call me, Then good neighbour I will be; But if you call me kindly sprite, I ‘ll be your friend both day and night.’ So you must always call them ‘good neighbours’ or ‘good folk,’ when you speak of them.” “Did _you_ ever see a fairy, nurse?” asked Randal. “Not myself, but my mother knew a woman--they called her Tibby Dickson, and her husband was a shepherd, and she had a bairn, as bonny a bairn as ever you saw. And one day she went to the well to draw water, and as she was coming back she heard a loud scream in her house. Then her heart leaped, and fast she ran and flew to the cradle; and there she saw an awful sight--not her own bairn, but a withered imp, with hands like a mole’s, and a face like a frog’s, and a mouth from ear to ear, and two great staring eyes.” “What was it?” asked Jeanie, in a trembling voice. “A fairy’s bairn that had not thriven,” said nurse; “and when their bairns do not thrive, they just steal honest folks’ children and carry them away to their own country.” “And where’s that?” said Randal. “It’s under the ground,” said nurse, “and there they have gold and silver and diamonds; and there’s the Queen of them all, that’s as beautiful as the day. She has yellow hair-down to her feet, and she has blue eyes, like the sky on a fine day, and her voice like all the mavises singing in the spring. And she is aye dressed in green, and all her court in green; and she rides a white horse with golden bells on the bridle.” “I would like to go there and see her,” said Randal. “Oh, never say that, my bairn; you never know who may hear you! And if you go there, how will you come back again? and what will your mother do? and Jean here, and me that’s carried you many a time in weary arms when you were a babe?” “Can’t people come back again?” asked Randal.