The Fairy Baby in the Hay

Pin It

raking hay

Editor’s Note: This is a nineteenth-century Cleveland story.

But her fairy reminiscences were by no means exhausted, even by such a revelation as this. She had known a lass quite well, who one day, when raking in the hayfield, had raked over a fairy bairn [child]. ‘It was liggin’ in a swathe of the half-made hay, as bonny a lahtle thing as ever yan seen. But it was a fairy-bairn, it was quite good to tell. But it did not stay lang wi’ t’ lass at fun’ (found) it. It a soort o’ dwinied away, and she aimed (supposed) the fairy-mother couldn’t deea wivout it any langer.’ Here again I was a little disappointed. I had expected to get hold of a genuine unsophisticated changeling story, localised and home-bred. But the termination was as I have just recorded (Atkinson 53-54).

Pin It