English Fairy and Other Folk Tales JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 1

edoubted father; whilst two or three children more had undergone a metamorphosis as uncouth as that
recorded by Ovid when the Cercopians were transformed into apes. For there sat on either side of the
bed's head a couple of little fiat-nosed imps, who with "mops and mows," and with many a grimace and
grin, were "busied to no end" in scratching their own polls, or in pulling the fairy lady's ears with their
long and hairy paws. The dame, who beheld all this, fearing she knew not what in the house of
enchantment, got away as fast as she could without saying one word about "striking" her own eye with
the magic ointment, and what she had beheld in consequence of doing so. The sour-looking old fellow
once more handed her up on the coal-black horse, and sent her home in a whip-sissa. Now what a
whip-sissa means is more than I can tell, though I consider myself to be tolerably well acquainted with
the tongues of this "West Countrie." It may mean perhaps, "Whip, says he," in allusion to some gentle
intimation being feelingly given by the rider to the horse's sides with a switch, that he should use the
utmost despatch. Certain it is, the old woman returned home much faster than she went. But mark the
event. On the next market-day, when she sallied forth to sell her eggs, whom should she see but the same
wicked-looking old fellow, busied, like a rogue as he was, in pilfering sundry articles from stall to stall.
"Oh! oh!" thought the dame, "have I caught you, you old thief? But I'll let you see I could set Master
Mayor and the two town constables on your back, if I chose to be telling." So up she went, and with that
bold, free sort of air which persons who have learnt secrets that ought not to be known are apt to assume
when they address any great rogue hitherto considered as a superior, she inquired carelessly after his wife
and child, and hoped both were as well as could be expected.
"What I" exclaimed the old pixy thief, "do you see me to-day?"
"See you! to be sure I do, as plain as I see the sun in the skies; and I see you are busy into the bargain."
"Do you so?" cried he. "Pray with which eye do you see all this?"
"With the right eye, to be sure."
"The ointment! the ointment!" exclaimed the old fellow. "Take that for meddling with what did not
belong to you--you shall see me no more."
He struck her eye as he spoke, and from that hour till the day of her death she was blind on the right side,
thus dearly paying for having gratified an idle curiosity in the house of a pixy.
Footnotes
1 Mrs. Bray, The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, vol 1. p. 174.
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