Upon the day of the sale all the things were brought out in the road, and the plate-cupboard was put up, the lad recognising it and bidding up for it till it was sold to him. When he had paid for it he took it home in a cart, and when he got in and examined it, he found the secret drawer behind was full of gold. The following week the house and land, thirty acres, was put up for sale, and the lad bought both, and married the miser’s niece, and they lived happily till they died.
THE CRAIG-Y-DON BLACKSMITH.
Once upon a time an old blacksmith lived in an old forge at Craig-y-don, and he used to drink a great deal too much beer.
One night he was coming home from an alehouse very tipsy, and as he got near a small stream a lot of little men suddenly sprang up from the rocks, and one of them, who seemed to be older than the rest, came up to him, and said,
“If you don’t alter your ways of living you’ll die soon; but if you behave better and become a better man you’ll find it will be to your benefit,” and they all disappeared as quickly as they had come.
The old blacksmith thought a good deal about what the fairies had told him, and he left off drinking, and became a sober, steady man.
One day, a few months after meeting the little people, a strange man brought a horse to be shod. Nobody knew either the horse or the man.
The old blacksmith tied the horse to a hole in the lip of a cauldron (used for the purpose of cooling his hot iron) that he had built in some masonry.