Near a pixy field in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor, there lived, on a
time, an old woman who possessed a cottage and a very pretty garden,
wherein she cultivated a most beautiful bed of tulips. The pixies, it
is traditionally averred, so delighted in this spot that they would
carry their elfin babes thither, and sing them to rest. Often, at the
dead hour of the night, a sweet lullaby was heard, and strains of the
most melodious music would float in the air, that seemed to owe their
origin to no other musicians than the beautiful tulips themselves, and
whilst these delicate flowers waved their heads to the evening breeze,
it sometimes seemed as if they were marking time to their own singing.
As soon as the elfin babes were lulled asleep by such melodies, the
pixies would return to the neighbouring field, and there commence
dancing, making those rings on the green which showed, even to mortal
eyes, what sort of gambols had occupied them during the night season.
At the first dawn of light the watchful pixies once more sought the
tulips, and, though still invisible they could be heard kissing and
caressing their babies. The tulips, thus favoured by a race of genii,
retained their beauty much longer than any other flowers in the garden,
whilst, though contrary to their nature, as the pixies breathed over
them, they became as fragrant as roses, and so delighted at all was the
old woman who kept the garden that she never suffered a single tulip to
be plucked from its stem.
At length, however, she died, and the heir who succeeded her destroyed
the enchanted flowers, and converted the spot into a parsley–bed, a
circumstance which so disappointed and offended the pixies, that they
caused all the parsley to wither away, and, indeed, for many years
nothing would grow in the beds of the whole garden. These sprites,
however, though eager in resenting an injury, were, like most warm
spirits, equally capable of returning a benefit, and if they destroyed
the product of the good old woman’s garden when it had fallen into
unworthy hands, they tended the bed that wrapped her clay with
affectionate solicitude. They were heard lamenting and singing sweet
dirges around her grave; nor did they neglect to pay this mournful
tribute to her memory every night before the moon was at the full,
for then their high solemnity of dancing, singing, and rejoicing took
place to hail the queen of the night on completing her circle in the
heavens. No human hand ever tended the grave of the poor old woman who
had nurtured the tulip bed for the delight of these elfin creatures;
but no rank weed was ever seen to grow upon it. The sod was ever green,
and the prettiest flowers would spring up without sowing or planting,
and so they continued to do until it was supposed the mortal body was
reduced to its original dust.