T. S.
Leeds.
FOLK LORE.
Lancashire Fairy Tale.—The nursery rhymes in one of your late Numbers remind me of a story I used to be told in the nursery. It was, that two men went poaching, and having placed nets, or rather sacks, over what they supposed to be rabbit-holes, but which were in reality fairies' houses, the fairies rushed into the sacks, and the poachers, content with their prey, marched home again. A fairy missing another in the sack, called out (the story was told in broad Lancashire dialect) "Dick (dignified name for a fairy), where art thou?" To which fairy Dick replied,
"In a sack,
On a back,
Riding up Barley Brow."
The story has a good moral ending, for the poachers were so frightened that they never poached again.
T. G. C.