That is the glow-worm. In America a popular story represents an Irishman as believing that a fire-fly was a mosquito “sakin’ his prey wid a lanthorn.”
God speed you, gentlemen!
“When an Irish peasant sees a cloud of dust sweeping along the road, he raises his hat and utters this blessing in behoof of ye company of invisible fairies who, as he believes, caused it” (“Fairy Mythology”).
The Phooka have dirtied the blackberries.
Said when the fruit of the blackberry is spoiled through age or covered with dust at the end of the season. In the North of England we say “the devil has set his foot on the Bumble-Kites” (“Denham Tract”).
Fairy, fairy, bake me a bannock and roast me a collop,
And I’ll give ye a spintle off my god end.
“This is spoken three times by the Clydesdale peasant when ploughing, because he believes that on getting to the end of the fourth furrow those good things will be found spread out on the grass” (Chambers’ “Popular Rhymes, Scotland,” 3rd ed. p. 106).
Turn your clokes (i.e., coats),
For fairy folkes