The Farmer and the Pixie
Farmer Boggins lives on a lonely farm, surrounded by many fairies and other fairies.
One morning, during threshing time, Farmer Boggins went out to the barn before the others and was surprised to see a large pile of grain threshed during the night. He wondered who did it. When his workers came to work, he questioned them, but none knew anything about it.
The next night, the same thing happened; No one went near the barn, but in the morning, there was a pile of clean grain on the floor.
On the third night, the farmer decided to find out who helped him, so he hid behind the dry grass and watched. The moon shone all over the floor, but for a long time, the farmer did not hear anything.
Then suddenly, he heard the sound of threshing, and there was a little fairy using a thresher to thresh rice. The little man was not a foot tall. He had chestnut-brown skin and only a ragged piece of clothing.
He worked so hard that sweat ran down his forehead, and occasionally, he stopped to wipe it away. Then he would exclaim proudly: “How I sweat! How I sweat!”
The farmer was admired, and for the third time, the little man exclaimed: “How I sweat!” The farmer could no longer keep silent but answered him: “Yes!”
However, as soon as he finished speaking, the fairy disappeared.
The farmer waited a while, but the little man did not return. Finally, farmer Boggins returned home and told his excellent wife everything.
“Stupid!” she exclaimed when he finished the story. “You should never have talked to him. Petty people can’t stand being talked to!”
Well, the mischief is done, and now the only thing left is to think of some way to coax the little fairy back to work.
Early the following day, the good wife woke her husband up.
“Husband,” she said, “did you say that this little man has only one piece of clothing on him?”
“That’s what I said,” the farmer replied.
“Then listen,” his wife said. “Today, I will make him a small suit of clothes. You will take it out and put it in the warehouse where he can see it if he returns. Maybe he will be so satisfied that he will stop being angry and work for you again.”
Well, it seemed like an excellent plan to the farmer, so his wife got to work, and by evening, she had finished sewing a complete set of small clothes the size of a novice monk. Fairy. The farmer took it out to the barn, spread it out under the moonlight, and hid himself where he could observe what would happen.
For a long time, all was quiet, and farmer Boggins was beginning to feel sleepy when suddenly he saw the little elf there. The little man held a flail in his hand and was walking towards a pile of grain. Then he saw the little suit lying there in the moonlight. At first, he stood still, then he put down the flail and picked up his clothes. He looked them over and then put them on.
Once he was dressed, he started dancing and singing:
“How fine I am, how fine I am:
Now I am no one’s employee.”
I sang and jumped across the floor, out of the barn and down the hill.
Then, the farmer became angry. His wife took all the trouble to make the clothes, and the little man took them and left without doing a single job to pay for them. But this is not the end of the matter.
At the bottom of the hill, the farm road crosses a stream, and there is a bridge. The farmer went down to the bridge and hid next to it because he thought that if the fairy left the farm, this was the route he would take.
Sure enough, Boggins hadn’t been hiding there long when he heard a voice and, with it, an entire fleet of fairies. They all looked exactly like the little man the farmer had seen in the barn, but none wore any clothes. Finally, there was a little fairy wearing little clothes, so the farmer knew that he was the one who threw the rice.
As soon as this elf reached the bridge, Farmer Boggins stepped out before him. “Not so fast, my good little friend,” he said. “There’s something I must pay for that outfit you’re wearing.”
Before the farmer could utter a word, he heard the gurgling sound of water behind him and a voice that sounded like his wife’s cried out: “Husband! Husband! Come quickly and help me. Otherwise, I will drown.”
The farmer turned around, and there was a peal of goblin laughter. The stream lies silent and peaceful under the moonlight. There was no one there, and when the farmer returned to the bridge, all the fairies had disappeared from the bridge.
Afterwards, the farmer knew that he had been tricked and had to go home without both the fairy and the clothes. However, his wife was also there. She had never left the house before, and she scolded him very severely for letting herself be tricked by such little men.
But the little fairy never returned to help him get the grain or thank him for the clothes.
