Little kens our guid dame at hame,
That Whuppity Stoorie is my name.
‘ “Ha, ha!” thinks the woman, “I’ve got the mason’s word at last; the devil give them joy that told it!” So she went home far lighter than she came out, as you may well guess—laughing like a madcap with the thought of cheating the old green fairy.
‘Ah well, you must know that this goodwife was a jocose woman, and ever merry when her heart was not very sorely overladen. So she thinks to have some sport with the fairy; and at the appointed time she puts the bairn behind the knocking-stone, and sits on the stone herself. Then she pulls her cap over her left ear and twists her mouth on the other side, as if she were weeping; and an ugly face she made, you may be sure. She hadn’t long to wait, for up the brae climbs the green fairy, neither lame nor lazy; and long ere she got near the knocking-stone she screams out—“Goodwife of Kittlerumpit, you know well what I come for—stand and deliver!”
‘The woman pretends to cry harder than before, and wrings her hands, and falls on her knees, with “Och, sweet madam mistress, spare my only bairn, and take the wretched sow!”
‘ “The devil take the sow, for my part,” quoth the fairy; “I come not here for swine’s flesh. Don’t be contramawcious, huzzy, but give me the child instantly!”
‘ “Ochone, dear lady mine,” quoth the crying goodwife; “forgo my poor bairn, and take me myself!”
‘ “The devil is in the daft jade,” quoth the fairy, looking like the far end of a fiddle; “I’ll bet she is clean demented. Who in all the earthly world, with half an eye in his head, would ever meddle with the likes of thee?”
‘I trow this set up the woman of Kittlerumpit’s bristle: for though she had two blear eyes and a long red nose besides, she thought herself as bonny as the best of them. So she springs off her knees, sets the top of her cap straight, and with her two hands folded before her, she makes a curtsy down to the ground, and, “In troth, fair madam,” quoth she, “I might have had the wit to know that the likes of me is not fit to tie the worst shoe-strings of the high and mighty princess, Whuppity Stoorie.”
‘If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn’t have made the fairy leap higher than she did; then down she came again plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae, screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches.