Lazy Molly
wo
serving
girls
in
Tavistock
said
that
the
pixies were very kind to
them, and would drop
silver for them into a
bucket of clean water,
which they took care to
place for them in the
chimney-corner every
night. Once it was
forgotten, and the pixies
forthwith went up to the
girls' room and loudly
complained of the
neglect. One oif them,
who happened to be
awake, jogged the other,
and proposed going
down to rectify the
omission, but she said,
"for her part, she would
not stir out of bed to
please all the pixies in
Devonshire". The other
went down and filled the
bucket, in which, by the
way, she found next
morning a hanful of
silver pennies.
As she was returning,
she heard the pixies
debating how they might
punish the other, and
they agreed to give her a
lame leg for a term of
seven years, then to be
cured by a herb groing
on Dartmoor, whose
name of seven syllables
she could not recall. Next
morning Molly, the lazy
wench, arose dead lame,
and so continued till the
end of the perious,
when, one day, as she
was picking up a
mushroom a
strange-looking boy
started up and insisted on
striking her leg with a
plant which he held in his
hand. He did so, and she
was cured, and became
the best dancer in the
town.