The Fairy-Whipping

THE FAIRY-WHIPPING

A WOMAN who lived about two miles distant from Ballasalli, and used to serve Mr. Waldron's family with butter, made him once very merry with a story she told him of her daughter, a girl of about ten years old, who being sent over the fields to the town for a pennyworth of tobacco for her father, was on the top of a mountain surrounded by a great number of little men, who would not suffer her to pass any farther. Some of them said she should go with them, and accordingly laid hold of her; but one, seeming more pitiful, desired they would let her alone, which they refusing, there ensued a quarrel, and the person who took her part fought bravely in her defence. This so incensed the others, that to be revenged on her for being the cause, two or three of them seized her, and. pulling up her clothes, whipped her heartily; after which, it seems, they had no farther power over her, and she ran home directly telling what had befallen her, and showing her buttocks, on which were the prints of several small hands. Several of the town's-people went with her to the mountain; and she conducting them to the spot, the little antagonists were gone, but had left behind them proofs, as the good woman said, that what the girl had informed them was true, for there was a great deal of blood to be seen on the stones, This did she aver with all the solemnity possible.