The Cattle Jobber With the One Good Eye

Adapted from "The Cattle Jobber of Awanascawil," from Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World, collected by Jeremiah Curtin (London: David Nutt in the Strand, 1895, pp. 36-41).

A cattle jobber was heading to the fair near Awnascawil when he came across a troupe of fairies dancing and partying along the way. He fell in with the company after drinking some of their magic mead. He soon found himself on the road into a lonesome pasture where there was a great fairy fort. They entered the fort through a hole in the ground, like a burrow into a badger's house. Once inside, the jobber saw that it was a grand palace with thick tapestries and vast amounts of gold and jewels strewn about in confusion.

The company drank and ate long into the night and the jobber joined them, eating as heartily as the rest of them. As morning dawned, they departed their underground castle, leaving only their piper behind them. "Don't let this man out of your sight," the fairies warned as they left.

The jobber noticed that when they were heading away, they all dipped their fingers into a box that was laid by the door and rubbed their eyes. When the jobber figured the fairy host was indeed far enough away, he decided to take on the piper and make his getaway. So he pulled up his boots and ran his fingers through his rumpled hair to make himself presentable to the outside world.

"What are you up to?" asked the fairy piper.

"I'm leaving here because I've been down below long enough," replied the jobber.

"Not at all," said the piper, rising from his bench and approaching the cattle jobber. "You won't be going anywhere."

With that, the two began wrestling and all the furniture in the hall was upturned and the tapestries torn from the walls. In the fight, the jobber knocked the piper head over heels and broke his back on a chest of diamonds and emeralds.

The jobber then ran for the door, dipped his fingers into the box and rubbed one eye just as he saw the fairies do earlier. Immediately, he could see all the fairies in the world round about him with the one eye that had been rubbed. But the other eye was blind to the fairies although it could see everything else.

The jobber continued on his way to the fair and stopped for the night in a house, where he asked for a drink. 

"You're welcome to it," said the woman of the home. "But I need to go to the barn and get some milk. Something is the matter with our child. Since two days before yesterday, he has been screeching and hollering so that neither I nor my husband have been able to get any sleep or do our chores."

"I'll look after the baby while you milk the cows," said the jobber, settling down by the cradle to rock it. He noticed that the crying was not that of an ordinary child, so when the woman left the room, the jobber peeked under the blankets. Sure, enough, it wasn't a baby there. It was the fairy piper whom the jobber had bested in the wrestling match three days earlier.

The wife and her husband were very young and this was their first child so they hadn't known the difference in the crying.

"Why are you here, you rascal?" roared the jobber when he saw the fairy in the cradle.

"Oh, after you broke my back, the other fairies turned me out of the fort because they thought I could no longer play the pipes," the crippled fairy lamented. "So they put me here and took the real child back with them."

"Well, hold your tongue and give the good people who live here a chance to sleep and do their chores," warned the jobber.

"Ouch, it's the rocking that hurts my back and causes me to cry. Don't expose me now because I have no other place to go until I heal," pleaded the injured fairy.

"Then be quiet or I'll tell these people all about you," said the jobber. So changeling fairy/child was quiet again.

When the woman came back, she wondered why the child was not crying.

"I told him that he would be in great trouble if he didn't stop hollering," said the piper. "I guess that frightened him into being still." So both she and her husband were glad for the peace and quiet and invited the jobber to spend the night. He agreed to keep watch all through the wee hours so the couple could get some sleep.

About midnight, the jobber was getting sleepy so he asked the piper to play a tune to help him stay awake.

"It's difficult for me to play, with my back and all," replied the piper. "But I'll try if you bring me my pipes. They are above the fireplace in the loft."

The jobber retrieved the pipes and handed them to the piper who began to play. The music was sweet and wonderful, so fine it seemed to raise the dead and set them to dancing. The music woke the wife and husband who came down to the kitchen.

"Who was that playing?" they asked. ''Twas I," said the jobber. "I often play the pipes when I am traveling. It keeps me company." The fairy piper hid under his covers so the couple couldn't see that it was actually him that had been playing.

The next morning, the good woman brought in several loads of turf for the fire and went again outside to do her chores. The jobber told the piper that he was going to throw him into the fire to get rid of him. "That will make the fairies return the proper baby to its rightful place," said the jobber.

He went to the door to see where the woman went but she was nowhere to be found. When he turned back, the fairy piper had vanished, leaving only his clothes. 

The jobber was quite frightened then, fearing that he would have to answer for the child's disappearance. Of course, when the mother came came back, she did wonder what became of the baby.

So the jobber told her everything from start to finish and they went outside to search for the missing fairy. Outside by the gate, they were surprised to see the real child. Naturally, everyone was very glad that the baby had been safely returned.

The jobber bid the family goodbye and left the farm, continuing on down the road to the fair. On his way, he again encountered the same fairy band, seeing them through his enchanted eye. A great horde of them were in the fields, tearing up all the potato sprouts and ruining all that stood in their way. 

"Shame on you," he cried, shaking his fist at them. "All you do is cause more trouble."

One fairy recognized the jobber and ran over to him. He poked his finger into the man's magic eye, blinding the jobber on this one side. The fairy returned to the mob and said, "Do you remember the man who turned on us and injured our piper?"

"Yes," they responded. "Well," the one fairy went on. "That was him over there on the road. I went and took the sight from his eye and he'll never see us again."

Which is what happened and the jobber went through the rest of his life with only one good eye, never again seeing a fairy.

(Adapted from "The Cattle Jobber of Awanascawil," from Tales of the Fairies and of the Ghost World, collected by Jeremiah Curtin (London: David Nutt in the Strand, 1895, pp. 36-41).