Hello Sarah!

Picture by Sheila A. Dane

This is my first post since I told a real life person about this blog. I never planned on telling anyone about it but I’d had a couple of drinks last weekend and thought my sister might enjoy some of it. So this one’s for you Sarah, I know you’ll like it.

A Donegal Fairy

by

LETITIA MACLINTOCK

Ay, it's a bad thing to displeasure the gentry, sure enough--they can be unfriendly if they're angered, an' they can be the very best o' gude neighbours if they're treated kindly.

My mother's sister was her lone in the house one day, wi' a big pot o' water boiling on the fire, and ane o' the wee folk fell down the chimney, and slipped wi' his leg in the hot water.

He let a terrible squeal out o' him, an' in a minute the house was full o' wee crathurs pulling him out o' the pot, an' carrying him across the floor.

"Did she scald you?" my aunt heard them saying to him.

"Na, na, it was mysel' scalded my ainsel'," quoth the wee fellow.

"A weel, a weel," says they. "If it was your ainsel scalded yoursel', we'll say nothing, but if she had scalded you, we'd ha' made her pay."

Originally published in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, edited and selected by W. B. Yeats, 1888.