In Cornwall a fairy bantling has to be put out to nurse, and has to be washed regularly in water and carried to its room by its invisible relatives. The nurse receives the marvellous sight after some of the liquid has splashed upon her eyes, and the usual result follows. She sees a thief in the market-place—that of St. Ives; and after he has muttered—
'Water for elf, not water for self!
You've lost your eye, your child, and yourself!'
she becomes blind. In another Cornish legend a green ointment, made with four-leaved clover, gathered at a certain time of the moon, confers the wondrous gift. In Lancashire the four-leaved clover does not require any preparation; the mere possession of it being supposed to render fairies visible.
The Scandinavian belief appears to have been that, although the hill folk could bestow the gift of this sight upon whom they chose, all children born on Sunday possessed the faculty. This superstition seems to survive in a slightly altered form in the Lancashire one that children born during twilight can see spirits and foretell deaths, the latter faculty, probably, having been substituted for the prophetic power of the chosen of the elves in the Northern mythology.
It is more than probable that these ointment stories came from the East. Who does not remember the charming history of the blind man, Baba Abdalla, whose sight was destroyed by a little miraculous ointment, and afterwards as wonderfully restored by a box on the ear?
24.
An old farm-labourer pointed out to me a place where the Evil One used to meet the witches, and gambol with them until cock-crow. It was at the junction of four cross-roads, between Stonyhurst and Ribchester; and as I stood there at 'th' edge o' dark,' when the wind was whispering through the fir woods on either hand, with that mysterious sound so like the gentle wash of waves upon a sandy shore, the spot seemed indeed a suitable one for such gatherings.
My informant, however, although very circumstantial in his account of what had transpired at the nocturnal assemblies, scouted the idea of anything of the sort taking place in these times, and remarked drily: 'Ther's too mich leet neaw-a-days, Mesthur, fur eawt o' that mak'. Wi' should hev' th' caanty police after um afooar they'd time to torn raand!'
25.
Until recently, there was an ancient British tumulus by the side of the highway from Darwen to Bolton, where the road passes through the domains of White Hall and Low Hill. This spot, long before the urns of bones were disinterred, was looked upon by the country people as being haunted by various boggarts, and Mr. Charles Hardwick says that children were in the habit of taking off their clogs and shoes, and walking past the heap barefooted when compelled to traverse the road after nightfall.[E]