The good woman of Kittleroopit, who now knew her customer, gave a scream like a screech-owl, and falls to begging and praying, but it wouldn’t do. “You may spare yourself all this trouble and screeching as if I were as deaf as a door-post; but this I’ll tell you, by our laws I cannot take your child till the third day from this day, and not then if you can tell me my right name.” Hereupon the green lady goes her way, round the back of the pig-sty, and the good woman fell down in a swoon where she stood.
That night she could not sleep for fretting, and the next day she could do nothing but hug her baby, that she nearly squeezed the breath out of it; but the second day she thought a walk would do her good, so she went into the fir-wood I told you of. She walked on far among the trees, with her baby in her arms, till she came to an old quarry hole all over-grown with grass. Before she came close up to it she heard the “bizzing” of a spinning-wheel and a voice singing, so she crept quietly among the bushes and peeped down into the hole.
What should she see, but the green Fairy spinning away as fast as possible and singing awhile—
“Little knows the good old dame
That Fittletetot is my name.”
“Ah, ha!” laughed our good Woman, and she was fit to jump for joy, when she thought how the green old Fairy would be cheated.
The good Woman discovering the Fairy.
She was a merry woman when there was nothing to weigh too heavily on her heart, so she determined to have some sport with the Fairy when she came the next day, as she little doubted she would. That night she slept well, and found herself laughing in the morning when she woke.