So many pots boiling I never have seen.”)
She had heard old wives tell how the fairies sometimes took advantage of the absence of the mother or nurse, to steal away a sleeping child, and to substitute one of their own bantlings in its place, and how the only way to cause them to make restitution was to throw the changeling on the hearth, when the fairy mother, unable to withstand the piteous cries of her offspring, was sure to appear, and bring back the stolen infant with her.
She lost no time therefore in catching up the fairy imp, who, knowing the fate that awaited him, set up a fearful yell. Immediately, the fairy mother, without stopping to lift the latch, leaped over the “hecq” or half-door, and, restoring to the trembling housewife her babe uninjured, snatched up her own squalling brat, and departed by the same way she had come.[108]
[108] From Mrs. Savidan. (Also see [Page 225]).
Building of the Castel Church.
The parish of Notre Dame du Castel, or, as it is now the fashion to call it, St. Mary de Castro, is the largest in the island, but the church is situated at one extremity of the parish, close on the bounds of St. Andrew’s, to the great inconvenience of many of the parishioners. It is true that in former days they had some relief in the Chapels of Ste. Anne, St. George, and St. Germain, but chapels are not parish churches, and many, while trudging through the miry roads in winter, or toiling up the dusty hill in summer, when some of the great festivals required them to present themselves at the mother church, have inquired how it came to pass that so inconvenient a site had been chosen. The old people, depositaries of the ancient traditions of the place, will answer that originally the foundations were laid in a field called “Les Tuzés,” but this was haunted ground, and a favourite resort of the fairies, and that, these little ladies, unwilling to yield up their rights without a struggle, in the course of a single night transported all the tools, stones, etc., in their cambric aprons, to the spot where the Church of St. Mary now stands. Thrice did this happen before the builders gave up their intention of erecting the sacred edifice on the site first chosen.[109]
[109] From Rachel Duport.
Similar stories are told of the Forest Church, of St. Martin’s and the Vale Churches, of St. Brelade’s in Jersey, and many others.
See Chambers’ Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 335, and Notes and Queries, 2nd Series, IV., 144.