fleetch

Updated: May 27, 2025

Wullie sits down at the fire, and awa' wi' her yarn gaes the wife; but scarce had she steekit the door, and wan half-way down the close, when the bairn cocks up on its doup in the cradle, and rounds in Wullie's lug: 'Wullie Tylor, an' ye winna tell my mither when she comes back, I'se play ye a bonny spring on the bagpipes. I wat Wullie's heart was like to loup the hool for tylors, ye ken, are aye timorsome but he thinks to himsel': 'Fair fashions are still best, an' 'It's better to fleetch fules than to flyte wi' them'; so he rounds again in the bairn's lug: 'Play up, my doo, an' I'se tell naebody. Wi' that the fairy ripes amang the cradle strae, and pu's oot a pair o' pipes, sic as tylor Wullie ne'er had seen in a' his days muntit wi' ivory, and gold, and silver, and dymonts, and what not.

Edwin Sidney Hartland - The Science of Fairy Tales: An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology