Miscellanea. 213
Pixies are fond of water, and some children whom I knew used to go down to the side of a stream to watch for them there. Pre- cautions have to be taken against changelings, and at Chudleigh mothers used to tie their babies to them in bed at night for fear of the pixies. At Bishopsteignton the women on an average used to be very small, and folks said it was because the pixies had changed them when they were babies.
A keeper and his wife used to live at Chudleigh, near the rocks, whose holes the pixies " bide " in. This couple had two children, and one morning when the wife had dressed the eldest she let her run away while she dressed the baby. Presently her husband came and asked her " where the little maid was to ? " For she was gone and was not to be found. They searched high and low for days ; the neighbours came to help, and at last bloodhounds were to be sent for. But one morning some young men thought they would go and help themselves to some nuts from a clump of nut-trees not far from the keeper's house, and at the farther side they came suddenly on the child, undressed, but well and happy, and not at all starved, playing with her toes, or toads ; I do not know which. The pixies were supposed to have stolen the child, and are still firmly believed to have been responsible for her dis- appearance.
The pixies are quick to revenge a slight, as the following " bit " shows. In the course of ploughing a field a pixies' oven^ was once discovered and the man told the plough-boy to pick it up. But the boy broke it (it was wooden), saying that "They old pixies shouldn't bake no more bread." Immediately he was set upon by invisible enemies and so severely pinched that he was forced to go home to bed, his bruises being so bad that he could not even open his eyes for days.
Another version tells that the oven, already broken, for want of a nail, was put in sight of the ploughman and that he mended it. Afterwards he found a mug of cider put out for him in the field by the pixies. He offered a drink to the boy, who spoke dis- respectfully of the pixies and was thereupon attacked by them.
Pixies sometimes act the part usually assigned to brownies and assist in household work. Here are two stories, resembling a very well-known one of Grimm's, but with different endings.
' (^Liery, oven-peel. — Ed,
