Fairy Ointment

Posted on Deerhorn Shamanic Services blog

Once upon a time there was, in the town of Tavistock, an old woman who was a midwife.

One night, she had just got into bed when rap, rap, rap came on her cottage door. The summoner was a strange, squint-eyed, ugly little fellow, but she dared not resist the command to come and attend upon his wife.

A large coal-black horse stood at the door. The ill-looking old fellow whisked her up on a high pillion in a minute, seated himself before her, and away went the horse and riders, as if sailing through the air, rather than trotting on the ground. How she got to the place of her destination she could not tell; but it was a great relief to her fears when she found herself set down at the door of a neat cottage, saw a couple of tidy children, and remarked her patient to be a decent-looking woman.

A fine, bouncing babe soon made its appearance, and the mother gave the nurse a certain ointment with directions that she should rub it on the child’s eyelids.

The nurse performed her task, though she thought it an odd one. She wondered what it could be for; and thought that, as no doubt it was a good thing, she might just as well try it upon her own eyes as well; so she made free to rub one of them, and when, Oh! ye powers of fairyland, what a change was there!

The neat, but homely cottage, and all who were in it, seemed all on a sudden to undergo a mighty transformation; some for the better, some for the worse. The new-made mother appeared as a beautiful lady attired in white; the babe was seen wrapped in swaddling clothes of a silvery gause. It looked much prettier than before, but still maintained the elfish cast of the eye, whilst two or three children more had undergone a metamorphosis into a couple of little flat-nosed imps.

The woman got away as fast as she could, saying nothing about the magic ointment.

On the next market day, when she went to sell her eggs, who should she see but the same, wicked looking little fellow, busied in pilfering sundry articles from stall to stall.

So up she went, and inquired carelessly after his wife and child, and hoped both were as well as could be expected.

“What!” exclaimed the old pixy thief, “do you see me today?”

“See you! To be sure I do, as plain as I see the sun in the skies; and I see you are busy into the bargain.”

“Do you so!” cried he. “Pray with which eye do you see all this?”

“With the right eye to be sure.”

“The ointment! The ointment!” exclaimed the old fellow. “Take that for meddling with what did not belong to you – you shall see me no more.”

He struck her eye as he spoke, and from that hour till the day of her death she was blind on the right side, thus dearly paying for having gratified an idle curiosity in the house of a pixy.

    Anna Eliz Bray, Traditions, Legends, Superstitions, and Sketches of Devonshire on the Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy vol. 1 (London: H.G. Bohn, 1838) (Abridged)

Source: Deerhorn Shamanic Services https://deerhornshamanic.com/2024/08/01/none-of-my-business/