Читать книгу Legends & Romances of Brittany - Льюис Спенс - Страница 54

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A fisherman of Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, walking home to his cottage from his boat one evening along the wet sands, came, unawares, upon a number of fairies in a houle. They were talking and laughing gaily, and the fisherman observed that while they made merry they 81 rubbed their bodies with a kind of ointment or pomade. All at once, to the old salt’s surprise, they turned into ordinary women. Concealing himself behind a rock, the fisherman watched them until the now completely transformed immortals quitted their haunt and waddled away in the guise of old market-women.

FAIRIES IN A BRETON ‘HOULE’

The fisherman waited until they were well out of sight, and then entered the cavern, where the first object that met his gaze was the pot of ointment which had effected the marvellous change he had witnessed. Taking some of the pomade on his forefinger, he smeared it around his left eye. He afterward found that he could penetrate the various disguises assumed by the fairies wherever he met them, and that these were for the most part adopted for the purposes of trickery. Thus he was able to see a fairy in the assumed shape of a beggar-woman going from door to door demanding alms, seeking an opportunity to steal or work mischief, and all the while casting spells upon those who were charitable enough to assist her. Again, he could distinguish real fish caught in his net at sea from merwomen disguised as fish, who were desirous of entangling the nets or otherwise distressing and annoying the fishermen.

But nowhere was the disguised fairy race so much in evidence as at the fair of Ploubalay, where he recognized several of the elusive folk in the semblance of raree-showmen, fortune-tellers, and the like, who had taken these shapes in order to deceive. He was quietly smiling at their pranks, when some of the fairies who composed a troupe of performers in front of one of the booths regarded him very earnestly. He felt certain that they had penetrated his secret, but ere he could make off one of them threw a stick at him with such 82 violence that it struck and burst the offending left eye.

Fairies in all lands have a constitutional distaste for being recognized, but those of Brittany appear to visit their vengeance upon the members with which they are actually beheld. “See what thieves the fairies are!” cried a woman, on beholding one abstract apples from a countrywoman’s pocket. The predatory elf at once turned round and tore out the eye that had marked his act.

A Cornish woman who chanced to find herself the guardian of an elf-child was given certain water with which to wash its face. The liquid had the property of illuminating the infant’s face with a supernatural brightness, and the woman ventured to try it upon herself, and in doing so splashed a little into one eye. This gave her the fairy sight. One day in the market-place she saw a fairy man stealing, and gave the alarm, when the enraged sprite cried: