The windfairies, and other tales

by Mary De Morgan

The ploughman carried the odd little figure back to his cottage, gaping with astonishment; there he put it down on the kitchen-table in the little kitchen. It looked all round it, and twisted about its little black head.

“That will do nicely,” it said at last; “there is a little hole in that corner, down which I can go, and near that hole you must place all your daintiest bits, and remember that I must always be helped first at all your meals.” And without a word it leaped from the table, and scuttled away down a big hole that the rats had made, and was no more to be seen.

But when in the evening the ploughman came in to eat his meal, before he began it he took the very best bit of meat and the nicest of the vegetable, and laid them down near the hole. Then he watched eagerly to see what would happen, but while he looked there they remained. Suddenly, however, the door shut with a bang, and he turned his head for a moment to see what caused it, and when he looked back the food had disappeared. Every day it was much the same. He put some of the best food on the table down near the hole, but as long as he watched there it remained, but when he took his eyes off for a moment it had disappeared. In the same way when he had new clothes, he took a choice bit of material and laid it near the hole, and it vanished also. And of whatever came into the house he took some of the best and did the same with it.

Meantime things began to improve very much with him. He had only a little bit of land round his cottage, but this year the vegetables and fruit he had planted there grew so well that he had a large quantity to send to market, and he sold them for such good prices, that soon he was able to get more land and buy his own animals, and in a little while had a farm of his own, and had grown to be quite a rich man, while all his neighbours said his luck was extraordinary. Meantime he saw or heard nothing more of the little black gnome, and except when he put the food and other thing’s near the hole almost forgot all about her.

Time passed, and the time came when the ploughman began to think he would like to take a wife; he made up his mind to marry a very pretty girl in the next village, who was said to be the prettiest girl in all the neighbourhood. Many of the young men would have liked to marry her, but the ploughman was a handsome, cheery young fellow, and she preferred him to all of the others, and so they were married, and she came home to live at the farm. The evening after their wedding they had a fine fat fowl for supper, and the ploughman before he helped his wife cut off the choicest slice from the breast and took it as usual to the hole.

“Husband,” cried the wife, “have you gone mad that you should give the best of the food to the rats and the mice?”

“I am not mad at all,” said the ploughman, “but my grandfather loved nothing in the world so well as rats and mice, and he made me promise before he died that they should always be well cared for in my house, and have of the best.”

“Then if you are not mad,” replied the wife, “I think your grandfather was! It is only the best poison that is good for rats and mice, and they shall have it soon, now that I am in the house.” But the ploughman caressed his wife and begged her to let him keep his promise to his grandfather, and the wife held her peace, not liking to seem bad-tempered on her wedding-day. After a bit she got used to her husband putting down little bits of food, as he said, for the rats and mice, and though she always declared she was going to poison them, she did not try to do so, as her husband seemed grieved when she talked about it.

Thus things went on very happily for some months, when the wife began to think that her clothes were getting very old, and that she must have some new ones. So she took plenty of money and went into the neighbouring town, and came home with new dresses, and hats, and bonnets, and very pretty she looked in them, and her husband was very much pleased with them. But that evening after his wife was gone to bed, as the ploughman was finishing his pipe in the kitchen, he suddenly heard a deep voice from the hole, which called out just as it had done months before, “Stop, I am coming up.”

For an instant the ploughman quaked with fear, then he saw something no bigger than a black beetle creeping through the hole, and it came in front of his chair, and he heard the voice, which was not so loud this time, say—