"All games, which used to be played at fairs and merry-makings, were there carried on. Still, great part of the small folks diverted themselves in parading up and down, on the green, between the standings and dancing-ground, examining the pretty things displayed. They didn't seem to have any money amongst them to buy anything, yet they often bartered their trinkets and changed them from stall to stall.
"The old woman determined to have some of the pretty things glistening before her, but, among so much that was beautiful, she couldn't make up her mind what to take. Whilst An' Pee was considering, she saw approach the standing a little lady, tired with dancing, leaning her head on her partner, who with his arm round her waist supported her steps. The gentleman taking from the hands of a little dame who kept the stall a golden goblet of the size and shape of a poppy head (capsule) held it to the faint lady's lips. Sipping the contents she recovered in an instant, and, choosing a fan, made of a few goldfinch feathers stuck into a pearl handle, her partner took a pair of diamond buckles from his knees and placed them on the standing by way of pledge. The little couple having tripped off again to the dance, An' Pee thought how well the bright little buckles would look, fixed as brooches, on her Sunday's cap-ribbon or in her neckatee, and determined to secure them at once, fearing they might be gone with the next small body that saw them.
"As there was nothing that she could so readily turn inside-out, and drop on them, as one of her gloves, which reached to her elbows, she drew off one, inside-out, and dropped it, as it seemed to her, right on the buckles. Her hand nearly touched them; but, in trying to grasp them under her glove, a palm of pins or needles, so small that she didn't notice them, stuck into her fingers, and she cried out, 'Oh! Cuss 'e! You little buccas.' That instant all the lights went out, and all the fair, and most of the small people, vanished like shadows among the rocks or sunk into the earth, like muryans (ants) into their holes.
"Yet many of the frolicsome sprights were still about her, as she soon found to her cost.
"Whilst she was still stooping, and groping for her glove and the buckles, she felt a great number of the small tribe—a score or more—leap on her back, neck, and head. At the same time others, tripping up her heels, laid her flat on the ground and rolled her over and over. More than once, when her face was uppermost, she caught a glimpse of Piskey, all in rags as usual, mounted on a year-old colt, his toes stuck in the mane, holding a rush in his hand to guide it. There he sat, putting on the smaller sprights to torment her, making a tee-hee-hee and haw-haw-haw, with his mouth open from ear to ear.
"When she spread out her arms and squeezed herself down, that they shouldn't turn her over, they would squeak and grunt in trying to lift her; but all her endeavours to hinder their game were of no use. Somehow or other over she went, and every time they turned her face downwards some of the small fry would jump on her back and there jig away with 'heel-and-toe' from her head to her feet. In the pitch and pass of their three-handed reels, it was who and who should get on her stays; the steel and whalebone in that, she supposed, served them as a springing-board. In the finishing off of their double shuffles they would leap more than three times their height, turn a summersault over each others' heads, and so make the pass. An' Pee twisted her head on one side, saw what they were at, and tried to beat them off with her stick, but they got it from her hand, laid it across her waist, and mounting on it astride, as many as could, bobbed up and down, singing,
'See-saw-see,
Lie still, old Peepan Pee.
See-saw-see,
Upon old Peepan Pee,
Who should better ride than we?
See-saw-see.'
"The old woman, not to be beaten with such imps, tossed back her feet to kick them off; then they held her legs doubled back and pulled off her shoes; some jumped up and balanced themselves on her upturned toes, whilst others pricked at, and tickled, the soles of her feet till she fell into fits of crying and laughing by turns.
"Pee was almost mad with their torment, when, by good luck, she remembered to have heard that the adder-charm was powerful to drive away all mischievous sprights. She had no sooner pronounced the words than they all fled screeching down the hill, Piskey galloping after; they left her lying on a bed of furze, near a large rock.