Just as this pixy reached the bridge, Farmer Boggins stepped out in front of him. “Not so fast, my fine little fellow,” he said. “There’s some work owing me in payment for that suit you’re wearing.”
The farmer had scarcely got the words out of his mouth when he heard a great splash in the stream behind him, and a voice that sounded like his wife’s cried, “Husband! Husband! Come quick and help me, or I’ll drown.”
The farmer turned about, and immediately there was a burst of elfin laughter. The stream lay silent and smooth in the moonlight. No one was there, and when the farmer turned back to the bridge again every pixy was gone from it.
Then the farmer knew that he had been tricked, and he had to go home without either the pixy or the suit of clothes. His wife was there though. She had never been out of the house at all, and a fine scolding she gave him for letting himself be tricked that way by the little men.
But the pixy never came back to help him with his grain, or to thank him for the suit of clothes either.
RABBIT’S EYES
A KOREAN FAIRY TALE
ONCE upon a time the king of the fishes fell ill, and no one knew what was the matter with him. All the doctors in the sea were called in, one after another, and not one of them could cure him.
Once when the fishes were talking about it, a turtle stuck its head out of a crack in a rock. “It is a pity,” said the turtle, “that no one has ever thought of asking my advice. I could cure the king in a twinkling. All he has to do is to swallow the eye of a live rabbit, and he will become perfectly well again.”