My nightly business I have told,
To play these tricks I use of old:
When candles burn both blue and dim,
Old folk will say, Here's fairy Grim.
More tricks than these I use to do:
Hereat cried Robin, Ho, ho, hoh!"
THE TRICKS OF THE WOMEN FAIRIES TOLD BY SIB
"To walk nightly, as do the men fairies, we use not; but now and then we go together, and at good housewives' fires we warm and dress our fairy children. If we find clean water and clean towels, we leave them money, either in their basins or in their shoes; but if we find no clean water in their houses, we wash our children in their pottage, milk, or beer, or whate'er we find: for the sluts that leave not such things fitting, we wash their faces and hands with a gilded child's clout, or else carry them to some river, and duck them over head and ears. We often use to dwell in some great hill, and from thence we do lend money to any poor man or woman that hath need; but if they bring it not again at the day appointed, we do not only punish them with
pinching, but also in their goods, so that they never thrive till they have paid us.
Tib and I the chiefest are,