The fairies, with their free, joyous temperament and love of beauty and luxury, hold in great contempt the minor virtues of thrift and economy, and, above all things, abhor the close, hard, niggardly nature that spends grudgingly and never gives freely. Indeed, they seem to hold it as their peculiar mission to punish such people, and make them suffer for the sins of the hard heart and niggard hand, as may be seen by the following tale:—

A farmer once lived near the Boyne, close to an old churchyard. He was very rich, and had crops and cattle, but was so hard and avaricious that the people hated him; for his habit was to get up50 very early in the morning and go out to the fields to watch that no one took a cabbage or a turnip, or got a cup of milk when the cows were being milked, for the love of God and the saints.

One morning, as he was out as usual by sunrise spying about the place, he heard a child crying bitterly—

“Oh, mother, mother! I am hungry. Give me something, or I’ll die.”

“Hush, darling,” said the mother, “though the hunger is on you, wait; for the farmer’s cow will be milked presently, and I’ll knock down the pail so the milk will be spilt upon the ground, and you can drink your fill.”6

When the farmer heard this he sent a stout man to watch the girl that milked, and to tie the cow’s feet that she should not kick. So that time no milk was spilled upon the ground.

Next morning he went out again by sunrise, and he heard the child crying more bitterly even than before—

“Mother, mother! I am hungry. Give me to eat.”

“Wait, my child,” said the mother; “the farmer’s maid bakes cakes to-day, and I’ll make the dish to fall just as she is carrying them from the griddle. So we shall have plenty to eat this time.”

Then the farmer went home and locked up the meal, and said—

“No cakes shall be baked to-day, not till the night.”

But the cry of the child was in his ears, and he could not rest. So early in the morning he was out again, and bitter was the cry of the child as he passed the copse—

“Mother, mother!” it said, “I have had no milk, I have had no cake; let me lay down my head on your breast and die.”

“Wait,” said the mother, “some one will die before you, my darling. Let the old man look to his son, for he will be killed in battle before many days are over; and then the curse will be lifted from the poor, and we shall have food in plenty.”

But the farmer laughed. “There is no war in Ireland now,” he said to himself. “How then can my son be killed in battle?” And he went home to his own house, and there in the courtyard was his son cleaning his spear and sharpening his arrows. He was a comely youth, tall and slender as a young oak-tree, and his brown hair fell in long curls over his shoulders.

“Father,” he said, “I am summoned by the king, for he is at war with the other kings. So give me the swiftest horse you have, for I must be off to-night to join the king’s men. And see, I have my spears and arrows ready.”

Now at that time in Ireland there were four great kings, and each of them had two deputies. And the king of Leinster made51 a great feast for the deputies, and to seven of them he gave a brooch of gold each, but to the eighth only a brooch of silver, for, he said, the man is not a princ............