wo serving girls in Tavistock said that the pixies were very kind to them,
and would drop silver for them into a bucket of clean water, which they took
care to place for them in the chimney-corner every night. Once it was
forgotten, and the pixies forthwith went up to the girls' room and loudly
complained of the neglect. One oif them, who happened to be awake, jogged the
other, and proposed going down to rectify the omission, but she said, "for her
part, she would not stir out of bed to please all the pixies in Devonshire".
The other went down and filled the bucket, in which, by the way, she found
next morning a hanful of silver pennies.As she was returning, she heard the pixies debating how they might punish the other, and they agreed to give her a lame leg for a term of seven years, then to be cured by a herb groing on Dartmoor, whose name of seven syllables she could not recall. Next morning Molly, the lazy wench, arose dead lame, and so continued till the end of the perious, when, one day, as she was picking up a mushroom a strange-looking boy started up and insisted on striking her leg with a plant which he held in his hand. He did so, and she was cured, and became the best dancer in the town.
MOTIF: f332 f361.14