“Weaving-loom, have pity, and open the door.”
“I am all topsy-turvy, and cannot move,” sighed the loom.
“Fulling-water, open the door,” they implored.
“I am off the fire,” growled the fulling-water, “and all my strength is gone.”
“Oh! Is there nothing that will come to our aid, and open the door?” they cried.
“I will,” said a little barley-bannock, that had lain hidden, toasting on the hearth; and it rose and trundled like a wheel quickly across the floor.
But luckily the housewife saw it, and she nipped it between her finger and thumb, and, because it was only half-baked, it fell with a “splatch” on the cold floor.
Then the Fairies gave up trying to get into the kitchen, and instead they climbed up by the windows into the room where the good housewife's husband was sleeping, and they swarmed upon his bed and tickled him until he tossed about and muttered as if he had a fever.
Then all of a sudden the good housewife remembered what the Wise Man had said about the fulling-water. She ran to the kitchen and lifted a cupful out of the pot, and carried it in, and threw it over the bed where her husband was.
In an instant he woke up in his right senses. Then he jumped out of bed, ran across the room and opened the door, and the Fairies vanished. And they have never been seen from that day to this.