The Captured Fairies

There once lived in the little village of Hoghton two idle,
good-for-nothing fellows, who, somehow or other, managed to exist
without spending the day, from morn to dewy eve, at the loom. When
their more respectable neighbours were hard at work they generally
were to be seen either hanging about the doorway of the little
ale-house or playing at dominoes inside the old-fashioned hostelry;
and many a time in broad daylight their lusty voices might be heard as
they trolled forth the hearty poaching ditty,

'It's my delight, on a shiny night.'

It was understood that they had reason to sympathise with the
sentiments expressed in the old ballad. Each was followed by a ragged,
suspicious-looking lurcher; and as the four lounged about the place
steady-going people shook their heads, and prophesied all sorts of
unpleasant terminations to so unsatisfactory a career. So far as the
dogs were concerned the dismal forebodings were verified, for from
poaching in the society of their masters the clever lurchers took to
doing a little on their own account, and both were shot in the pursuit
of game by keepers, who were only too glad of an opportunity of
ridding the neighbourhood of such misdirected intelligence. Soon after
this unfortunate event, the two men, who themselves had a narrow
escape, had their nets taken; and, as they were too poor to purchase
others, and going about to borrow such articles was equivalent to
accusing their friends of poaching habits, they were reduced to the
necessity of using sacks whenever they visited the squire's fields.

One night, after climbing the fence and making their way to a
well-stocked warren, they put in a solitary ferret and rapidly fixed
the sacks over the burrows. They did not wait long in anxious
expectation of an exodus before there was a frantic rush, and after
hastily grasping the sacks tightly round the necks, and tempting their
missionary from the hole, they crept through the hedgerow, and at a
sharp pace started for home. For some time they remained unaware of
the nature of their load, and they were congratulating themselves upon
the success which had crowned their industry, when suddenly there came
a cry from one of the prisoners, 'Dick, wheer art ta?' The poachers
stood petrified with alarm; and almost immediately a voice from the
other bag piped out--

'In a sack,
On a back,
Riding up Hoghton Brow.'{8}

The terrified men at once let their loads fall, and fled at the top of
their speed, leaving behind them the bags full of fairies, who had
been driven from their homes by the intruding ferret. Next morning,
however, the two poachers ventured to the spot where they had heard
the supernatural voices. The sacks neatly folded were lying at the
side of the road, and the men took them up very tenderly, as though in
expectation of another mysterious utterance, and crept off with them.

Need it be said that those bags were not afterwards used for any
purpose more exciting than the carriage of potatoes from the
previously neglected bit of garden, the adventure having quite cured
the men of any desire to 'pick up' rabbits.

Like most sudden conversions, however, that of the two poachers into
hard-working weavers was regarded with suspicion by the inhabitants of
the old-world village, and in self-defence the whilom wastrels were
forced to tell the story of the imprisonment of the fairies. The
wonderful narrative soon got noised abroad; and as the changed
characters, on many a summer evening afterwards, sat hard at work in
their loom-house, and, perhaps almost instinctively, hummed the old
ditty,

'It's my delight, on a shiny night,'

the shock head of a lad would be protruded through the honeysuckle
which almost covered the casement, as the grinning youngster, who had
been patiently waiting for the weaver to commence his song and give an
opportunity for the oft-repeated repartee, cried, 'Nay, it isn't thi
delight; "Dick, wheer art ta?"'