The Weardale Fairies

Further and further from home she roamed, oblivious to the distance she was walking, when suddenly she heard music and laughter.

The joyous sound drew her on until she came across a rock with a hole in it through which she could see, to her utter astonishment, a group of little fairies dancing and laughing inside the rock.

The little girl took fright and ran as fast as she could back to the safety of the farm. The farmer and his wife feared the worst, their daughter had seen the fairies, and no one saw the fairies without them coming after them.

They sought the advice of a local wise woman, who told them to “Keep the house absolutely silent this evening. The fairies will come for your child at midnight. But if you keep quiet, they won’t be able to touch her”.

So the parents scurried about their farmhouse, making sure that not one single noise would be heard from the household that night. The log fire was dampened down, the clocks were stopped so as not to chime, and the young girl was told to keep still in her bedroom. Unfortunately, no one had remembered the farm dog outside!

As soon as the fairies arrived, the dog set about barking at them. And when the parents rushed to check on their daughter, she was gone, taken off by the very fairies she had watched through the crack in the rock earlier that day.

The distraught father sought help again from the wise woman. This time she advised him to take three gifts to pacify the fairies - something which gave light without burning, a piece of an animal’s body taken without the shedding of blood, and a chicken which had no bone in its body.

Impossible, thought the distraught father. But it wasn’t so! A glow-worm found in a hedgerow satisfied the first challenge. Grasping hold of a lizard as it wriggled free from his grasp, shedding its own skin in the process, solved challenge number two. Finally he remembered his country lore that a newly laid egg would contain a chick inside which was so young, it wouldn’t have any bones.

The farmer ran to the rock where the fairies lived, and one by one fed the gifts through the crack, listening to the muffled noise and cackling laughter of the fairies, but nothing happened. He turned away in despair, thinking he would never get his daughter back.

But then… standing right behind him, was his daughter! Alive, safe and well.