Observations placeholder
Keightley, Thomas - Brownies
Identifier
011271
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Thomas Keightley – The World Guide to Gnomes, Fairies, Elves and other Little people
He is attached to particular families with whom he has been known to reside, even for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house and doing everything done by his northern and eastern brethren. He is to a certain degree disinterested; like many great personages, he is shocked at anything approaching the name of a bribe, yet like them, allows his scruples to be overcome if the thing be done in a genteel, delicate and secret way.
Thus offer Brownie a piece of bread, a cup of drink, or a new coat and hood and he flouted it and perhaps in his huff quitted the place for ever, but leave a nice bowl of cream and some fresh honeycomb in a snug private corner and they soon disappear
…............
a version of one legend says that the good man of a farm house having left out some clothes one night for Brownie, he was heard to say
'Gie Brownie coat, gie Brownie sark
Ye'se get nae mair o' Brownie's wark!