Never really thought to do this, but since tumblr seems to be pretty interested in fae I have a legend that I know pretty well to share; the wee folk.
I think this may be similar to the fair folk, but I’m not sure, so correct me if I’m wrong because I might be lmao.
The wee folk live in peat bogs. Peat is traditionally cut into bricks and used as fuel for fires. There was good money in being a peat cutter as most every family relied on peat cutters.
In this story the peat cutter is employed by a cruel and selfish rich man, who doesn’t care about the stories that the people tell him. The rich man naturally has a large house and with a large house, he has a massive fireplace which needs a lot of peat to light up. However even though he has all these riches, he is still a miserable old miser.
The rich man hires the peat cutter, a poor man who has a small family and a small house.
Now the rich man enjoys throwing his weight around; always is happy to prove others wrong to make himself seem smarter.
Upon hiring the peat cutter, the rich man tells him to cut as much peat as possible from the large peat bog in the woods near his house. The peat cutter, foreseeing a decent pay from it happily obliges and off he walks into the forest.
After not too long, the peat cutter comes across the mentioned peat bog and gets to work. It is long and tiring work but he eventually manages to reach the center of the bog.
As the peat cutter cuts into the deepest part of the bog, a small, high pitched scream echoes around the area. Surprised, the peat cutter stops and looks around. At his feet, standing barely bigger than his palm, is a small man, one of the wee folk.
The wee man, shaking with rage asks why the peat cutter is destroying his roof. The peat cutter is bewildered. All his life he had heard stories of faeries and ghoulies, but he had never actually met one. The peat cutter says that he has been paid to cut the peat from the bog, and needs the money for his family. The wee man says that he can forgive the unknowing, and that he will forgive the peat cutter just this once, and makes him promise not to come back to the bog with the intention to cut it all away. After making this promise, the wee man vanishes.
Surprised and slightly afraid, the peat cutter decides to leave as he does not want to be at the wrath of a fae, and leaves for the rich mans house as darkness falls.
As he arrives at the rich mans house, he noticed that a party is in full swing, and that there are many equally rich guests there. The peat cutter knocks on the door and is promptly let in.
The rich man is an impatient man, always looking to have things done as soon as he demands them and as soon as he sees the peat cutter he is as enraged as he is drunk. He storms up to the peat cutter and angrily asks what has taken so long, and why he has not cut enough peat for his excessive fireplace. The peat cutter recounts his tale.
The rich man does not believe in the fae; in anything he cannot see and profit off of and he does not believe the peat cutters story. Further more he refuses to pay the peat cutter for all of his work until he ‘tells the truth’. Adamantly the peat cutter sticks to his story of the small man living in the bog.
The rich man, being of excessive wealth and alcohol-amplified poor judgement makes the peat cutter a deal. He says that, if the peat cutter can prove his story the rich man will hand over his house and all of his riches to him. Reluctantly, the peat cutter agrees and hands over his tosg.
With all of the party guests in tow, the peat cutter leads the rich man to the bog.
It doesn’t take long to arrive to the bog and when they do, the rich man instantly goes to dig up the deepest part of the peat. The peat cutter steps back into the shadows.
As soon as the tosg makes contact with the peat, the same high pitched scream echoes through the clearing. The same wee man appears and with him, is what appears to be a group of party guests. The wee man is even more enraged than before and seeing the rich man with the tosg in hand speaks with a loud booming voice and says that he had warned the previous peat cutter, but since the warning had been ignored, the only step was to punish the offender.
In a flash the rich man is gone, transported inside the house of the wee folk.
Night and day he is made to dance for them as part of their ceilidh’s and he is fed the worst food off of their tables. He cannot sleep, for when he shows signs of exhaustion, the wee folk make him dance faster and faster.
After countless nights and days with no rest, the original wee man states that he hoped the rich man had learned his lesson and that he should not return to this place again. And again in a flash, he is once again standing in the clearing as the sun rises through the trees.
The rich man makes his way through the forest and eventually finds his way back to his house, where an elderly man sits on a chair outside.
Bewildered the rich man asks explains who he is, and demands to know why the elderly man is sitting in his garden.
The elderly man doesn’t recognise him, but states that he has owned the house ever since the previous owner handed over all of his possessions to him before being taken by the wee folk 60 years ago.
I first heard this story when i was 6, told to me by my grandmother after I had made a mess of myself kicking up a peat bog near my house.
Overall I’m not actually sure if this is exactly how the story went. In my grandmothers version the peat cutter and the rich man had names, but I can’t for the life of me remember them. In her version the wee folk also spoke in rhymes and swore a lot more than I’ve written here. But this is baisically how her story went.
I believe this story is also in a popular kids book which also reference the nuckelavee (my favourite fae) but i think I lost that book too lmao
Sorry if this is incorrect and/or doesn’t make sense, I wrote this at half four in the morning.
Edit: when I wake up more I’m gonna write about the nuckelavee because the RWBY episode made me obsessed with it again
