Tales of Folk and Fairies
Copyright© 2024 by Katharine Pyle
Dame Pridgett and the Fairies
Dame Pridgett was a fat, comfortable, good-natured old body, and her business in life was to go about nursing sick folk and making them well again.
One day she was sitting by the window, rocking herself and resting after a hard week of nursing. She looked from the window, and there she saw a queer-looking little man come riding along the road on a great fiery, prancing black horse. He rode up to her door and knocked without getting off his horse, and when Dame Pridgett opened the door he looked down at her with such queer pale eyes he almost frightened her.
“Are you Dame Pridgett?” he asked.
“I am,” answered the dame.
“And do you go about nursing sick people?”
“Yes, that is my business.”
“Then you are the one I want. My wife is ill, and I am seeking some one to nurse her.”
“Where do you live?” asked the dame, for the man was a stranger to her, and she knew he was not from thereabouts.
“Oh, I come from over beyond the hills, but I have no time to talk. Give me your hand and mount up behind me.”
Dame Pridgett gave him her hand, not because she wanted to, but because, somehow, when he bade her do so she could not refuse. He gave her hand a little pull, and she flew up through the air as light as a bird, and there she was sitting on the horse behind him. The stranger whistled, and away went the great black horse, fast, fast as the wind;—so fast that the old Dame had much ado not to be blown off, but she shut her eyes and held tight to the stranger.
They rode along for what seemed a long distance, and then they stopped before a poor, mean-looking house. Dame Pridgett stared about her, and she did not know where they were. She knew she had never seen the place before. In front of the house were some rocks with weeds growing among them, and a pool of muddy water, and a few half-dead trees. It was a dreary place. Two ragged children were playing beside the door with a handful of pebbles.
The little man lighted down and helped the old dame slip from the horse; then he led the way into the house. They passed through a mean hallway and into a room hung round with cobwebs. The room was poorly furnished with a wooden bed, a table and a few chairs. In the bed lay a little, round-faced woman with a snub nose and a coarse, freckled skin, and in the crook of her arm was a baby so small and weak-looking the nurse knew it could not be more than a few hours old.
“This is my wife,” said the stranger. “It will be your duty to wait on her and to wash and dress the child.”
The baby was so queer looking that Dame Pridgett did not much care to handle it, but still she had come there as a nurse, and she would do what was required of her.
The little man showed her where the kitchen was, and she heated some water and then went back to the bedroom and took up the baby to wash it. But so strange it all seemed, and she felt so shaken up by her ride that she was awkward in handling the child, and as she bent her head over it, it lifted its hand and gave her such a box on the ear that her head rang with it.
The old dame cried out and almost let the babe fall, she was so thunderstruck.
“What is the matter?” asked the woman from the bed. Then she slipped her hand under her pillow and drew out a box of salve. “Here! Rub the child’s eyes with a bit of this,” she said, “but be sure you do not get any of it on your own eyes, or it will be a bad thing for you, —scarce could be a worse.”
The nurse took a bit of the salve on her forefinger and rubbed the baby’s eyes with it, and then the mother bade her go and wash off any particle of salve that might be left on her finger.
All day Dame Pridgett waited on the mother and child, and when night came she was shown into a room next to theirs where she was to sleep.
The following day the dame was again kept busy with the mother and child. She washed the baby and rubbed the salve on its eyelids as before, and again the mother warned her not to let the least particle of salve touch her own eyes, or it would be the worse for her.
Food was set out for the nurse in a small room beyond her own. She did not know whence it came, nor who prepared it, but she was hungry and ate heartily of it, though it had a strange taste she did not like. The two ragged children came in and ate with her. They did not speak, but stared at her from under their matted hair. The little man she did not see again for some time.
So day followed day, and it was always the same thing over and over for Dame Pridgett, and every day after she had washed the child she rubbed salve on its eyelids. Soon its eyes, that had at first been dull, grew so bright and strong they sparkled like jewels. Dame Pridgett thought it must be a very fine salve. She would have liked to try some of it on her own eyes, for her sight was somewhat dim, but the mother watched her so closely that she never had a chance to use it.
Now, every day, after Dame Pridgett had washed the baby, she left the basin on a chair beside her while she rubbed the salve on the child’s eyes. One day she managed to upset the basin with her elbow as though by accident, though really by design. She gave a cry and bent over to pick up the basin, and as she did so, unseen by her mistress, she rubbed her right eye with the finger that still had some salve left on it.