'So the fairy queen decided to bestow gifts upon the child; and advised each of the three servants to give, in…
- Date of account
- Published 1911
- Source
- The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
- Reference
- The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries · selected passage 70
- Rights
- public_domain
- Language
- English with translated testimony
- Record updated
- 2026-08-24
Record summary
'So the fairy queen decided to bestow gifts upon the child; and advised each of the three servants to give, in turn, a different gift
Published source text
Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.
Source passage
Source text · mention only'So the fairy queen decided to bestow gifts upon the child; and advised each of the three servants to give, in turn, a different gift. The first one said, "May she be the grandest lady in the world"; the second one said, "May she be the greatest singer in the world"; and the third one said, "May she be the best mantle-maker in the world." Then the fairy queen said, "Your gifts are all very good, but I will give a gift of my own better than any of them: the first time she happens to go out of the house let her come back into it under the form of a rat." The mother heard all that the fairy women said, and so she never permitted her daughter to leave the house.
Historical context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyThis material belongs to a folklore tradition. Story type, collector, community, transmission and literary editing matter when comparing it with other sources.
Modern context
Contextual commentary · mention onlyLattice compares motifs and reported features without assuming that a traditional being is a biological species or that similar stories document one external cause.
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