Two Devonshire serving–maids declared, as an excuse perhaps for
spending more money than they ought upon finery, that the pixies were
very kind to them, and would often drop silver for their pleasure
into a bucket of fair water, which they placed for the accommodation
of those little beings every night in the chimney–corner before they
went to bed. Once, however, it was forgotten; and the pixies, finding
themselves disappointed by an empty bucket, whisked upstairs to the
maids’ bedroom, popped through the keyhole, and began, in a very
audible tone, to exclaim against the laziness and neglect of the
damsels.
One of them, who lay awake and heard all this, jogged her
fellow–servant, and proposed getting up immediately to repair the
fault of omission; but the lazy girl, who liked not being disturbed
out of a comfortable nap, pettishly declared “That, for her part, she
would not stir out of bed to please all the pixies in Devonshire.”
The good–humoured damsel, however, got up, filled the bucket, and
was rewarded by a handful of silver pennies found in it the next
morning. But, ere that time had arrived, what was her alarm, as she
crept towards the bed, to hear all the elves in high and stern debate
consulting as to what punishment should be inflicted on the lazy lass
who would not stir for their pleasure.
Some proposed “pinches, nips, and bobs,” others to spoil her new
cherry–coloured bonnet and ribands. One talked of sending her the
toothache, another of giving her a red nose, but this last was voted
too severe and vindictive a punishment for a pretty young woman. So,
tempering mercy with justice, the pixies were kind enough to let her
off with a lame leg, which was so to continue only for seven years, and
was alone to be cured by a certain herb, growing on Dartmoor, whose
long and learned and very difficult name the elfin judge pronounced in
a high and audible voice. It was a name of seven syllables, seven being
also the number of years decreed for the chastisement.
The good–natured maid, wishing to save her fellow–damsel so long a
suffering, tried with might and main to bear in mind the name of this
potent herb. She said it over and over again, tied a knot in her garter
at every syllable, in order to assist her memory, and thought she had
the word as sure as her own name, and very possibly felt much more
anxious about retaining the one than the other. At length she dropped
asleep, and did not wake till the morning. Now, whether her head might
be like a sieve, that lets out as fast as it takes in, or whether the
over–exertion to remember caused her to forget, cannot be determined,
but certain it is when she opened her eyes, she knew nothing at all
about the matter, excepting that Molly was to go lame on her right leg
for seven long years, unless a herb with a strange name could be got to
cure her. And lame she went for nearly the whole of that period.
At length (it was about the end of the time) a merry, squint–eyed,
queer–looking boy started up one fine summer day, just as she went to
pluck a mushroom, and came tumbling, head over heels, towards her. He
insisted on striking her leg with a plant which he held in his hand.
From that moment she got well, and lame Molly, as a reward for her
patience in suffering, became the best dancer in the whole town at the
celebrated festivities of May–day on the green.