Bychan a wyda' hi Little did she know Mai Sìli go Dwt That Silly go Dwt Yw f'enw i. Is my name.
This throws some light on Silly Frit, and we know where we are; but the story is inconsequent, and far from representing the original. We cannot, however, reconstruct it quite on the lines of Grimm's or Clodd's version. But I happened to mention my difficulty one day to Dr. J. A. H. Murray, when he assured me of the existence of a Scottish version in which the fairy is a female. He learnt it when he was a child, he said, at Denholm, in Roxburghshire; and he was afterwards charmed to read it in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1858), pp. 221-5, whence Mr. Clodd has given an abstract of it in his 'Philosophy of Rumpelstiltskin.' Among those popular rhymes the reader will find it as related at length by Nurse Jenny in her inimitable fashion; but the Scotch is so broad, that I think it advisable, at the risk of some havoc to the local colouring, to southronize it somewhat as follows:--
'I see that you are fond of talks about fairies, children; and a story about a fairy and the goodwife of Kittlerumpit has just come into my mind; but I can't very well tell you now whereabouts Kittlerumpit lies. I think it is somewhere in the Debatable Ground; anyway I shall not pretend to know more than I do, like everybody nowadays. I wish they would remember the ballad we used to sing long ago:--
Mony ane sings the gerss, the gerss, And mony ane sings the corn; And mony ane clatters o' bold Robin Hood, Ne'er kent where he was born.
But howsoever about Kittlerumpit: the goodman was a rambling sort of body; and he went to a fair one day, and not only never came home again, but nevermore was heard of. Some said he 'listed, and others that the tiresome pressgang snatched him up, though he was furnished with a wife and a child to boot. Alas! that wretched pressgang! They went about the country like roaring lions, seeking whom they might devour. Well do I remember how my eldest brother Sandy was all but smothered in the meal-chest, hiding from those rascals. After they were gone, we pulled him out from among the meal, puffing and crying, and as white as any corpse. My mother had to pick the meal out of his mouth with the shank of a horn spoon.