Don’t Touch Fairy Strings! (Co. Antrim)

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knotted string fairies

Malcolm M’Neill relates the following: ‘When I was about twenty years of age, a farmer in Layde hired a servant boy, named M’Alister, from Tievera. He and a neighbouring herd were in the habit of playing together on the braes, and they often came upon duck eggs in strange places, and they frequently broke the eggs for amusement. One day they found a woollen string with knots tied at intervals, evidently dropped by some fairy. M’Alister was taken suddenly ill from, as was supposed, meddling with the good folk, and he had to return to his home at Tievera. He grew worse and worse, all the time dwindling in stature. Malcolm M’Neill, when going to Ballycastle after this occurred, met Mrs. M’Alister, with the boy on her back, and he was shocked to see him so wizened and dwarfed; they were then on their way to Scotland. Brenan 61

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