Fairy Tales, Now First Collected/Tale 21
TALE XXI.
THE WHIPPING OF THE LITTLE GIRL.
A girl, about ten years old, daughter of a woman who lived about two miles from Ballasalli, in the Isle of Man, being sent over the fields to the town, for a pennyworth of tobacco for her father, was, on the top of a mountain, surrounded by a great number of little men, who would not suffer her to pass any farther. Some of them said she should go with them, and accordingly laid hold of her; but one, seeming more pitiful, desired they would let her alone; which they refusing, there ensued a quarrel, and the person who took her part fought bravely in her defence. This so incensed the others, that, to be revenged on her, for being the cause, two or three of them seized her, and, pulling up her clothes, whipped her heartily; after which, it seems, they had no further power over her, and she ran home directly, telling what had befallen her, and showing prints of several small hands. Several of the towns-people went with her to the mountain, and, she conducting them to the spot, the little antagonists were gone, but had left behind them proofs (as the good woman said) that what the girl had informed them was true; for there was a great deal of blood to be seen on the stones.[1]