I read 13 of these when I was a child. How many of them are still read today, I wonder? I'm currently relishingWuthering Heights.
Berlie Doherty
@berliedoherty.bsky.social
157 followers 41 following 38 posts
I write I read I walk in the countryside I listen to music
![Cauld Lad of Hilton
68
As one man they flung down their sacks in a panic and ran for home.
Next morning when they ventured timidly up the hill they found the two sacks neatly folded, but no sign of the fairies. They had had such a fright that they gave up their poaching ways and became industrious weavers, like the rest of the village. This tale is to be found in James Bowker's Goblin Tales of Lancashire, and one like it about the theft of a pig is given by C. Latham in "West Sussex Superstitions',
*, Folk-Lore Record (vol. 1).
SKILLYWIDDEN and COLEMAN GRAY tell of little fairies who were carried into human houses but got back to their own family in the end.
In the sadder tale of BROTHER MIKE the little captive never escaped, but pined away and died. Ruth Tongue has a story of a rather rare water-spirit, an ASRAl, who pined and melted away under the heat of the sun like a stranded jelly-fish when a fisherman caught it and tried to bring it home to sell.
Most of these fairies, great or small, seem powerless to avenge the wrong offered to them, though other fairies avenge much more trifling injuries with BLIGHTS AND ILLNESSES, or even death.
[Type: ML6o1o. Motif: F387]
Cauld Lad of Hilton, the. One of the domestic spirits which is half BROWNIE, half ghost. It was supposed to be the spirit of a Northumbrian stable boy killed by one of the past Lords of Hilton in a fit of passion.
He was heard working about the kitchen at nights, but he was a perverse spirit, for like PUDDLEFOOT or the SILKY of Haddon Hall, he would toss about and disarrange whatever had been left tidy, but clean and tidy whatever had been left dirty or in disorder. He used to be heard singing sadly at night:](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:n337ktyjowhlm3ciiuvn3wzr/bafkreiaicusxtpotsrf7xikt3wapunl7i4gv75xr2zjx62vfvz2vsetjoi)
