Research source

There was one time, it is said, a servant girl, who was for her cleanly, tidy habits, greatly beloved by the…

Date of account: Nineteenth-century comparative survey
Source: The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Reference: The Fairy Mythology Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries · selected passage 115
Rights: public_domain
Language: English with translated traditional material
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

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

There was one time, it is said, a servant girl, who was for her cleanly, tidy habits, greatly beloved by the Elves, particularly as she was careful to carry away all dirt and foul water to a distance from the house, and they once invited her to a wedding. Every thing was conducted in the greatest order, and they made her a present of some chips, which she took good-humouredly and put into her pocket. But when the bride-pair was coming there was a straw unluckily lying in the way, the bridegroom got cleverly over it, but the poor bride fell on her face. At the sight of this the girl could not restrain herself, but burst out a-laughing, and that instant the whole vanished from her sight.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This 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 only

Lattice 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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