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Updated: June 30, 2025
So Anne set out, but as she passed through the kitchen she saw a crust, and she took and munched it as she went along. When she came to the henwife's she asked for eggs, as she had been told to do; the henwife said to her, "Lift the lid off that pot there and see." The lassie did so, but nothing happened.
One Sunday morning, after the other two had gone to church, the old henwife came into the kitchen to Trembling, and said: "It's at church you ought to be this day, instead of working here at home." "How could I go?" said Trembling. "I have no clothes good enough to wear at church; and if my sisters were to see me there, they'd kill me for going out of the house."
Seeing her so vexed and so changed in the face, the old woman asked: "What's the trouble that's on you now?" "Oh! I've lost one of the shoes off my feet," said Trembling. "Don't mind that; don't be vexed," said the henwife; "maybe it's the best thing that ever happened to you." Then Trembling gave up all the things she had to the henwife, put on her old clothes, and went to work in the kitchen.
An adult fox, as a rule, does not pay frequent visits to a farmstead; but Vulp, like his sire, was passionately fond of poultry, and so, in after years, the vixen's instructions caused him to become the dread of every henwife in the district.
So they took pity on the poor Brownie, and asked the nearest henwife what they should do to send it away. "That's easy enough," said the henwife, and told them that a Brownie that's paid for its service, in aught that's not perishable, goes away at once. So they made a cloak of Lincoln green, with a hood to it, and put it by the hearth and watched.
This was a half-witted lad, of very small stature, who had a kind of charge of the poultry under the old henwife; for in a Scottish family of that day there was a wonderful substitution of labour.
Peter O'Figgins, that was cracked but then it was only wid dhrink and larnin' said it; and Katty McTrollop, Lord Bilberry's henwife, was of the same opinion, and from them and others the thing grew and spread until it became right well known that she was nothin' else than a witch, and that the big wart on her neck was nothin' more nor less than the mark the devil had set upon her, to suckle his babies by.
When Trembling sat in the saddle and was going away, the henwife ordered her strictly not to go inside the door of the church, but to rush away as soon as the people rose at the end of Mass, and hurry home on the mare before any man could stop her.
When the sisters came home, the henwife asked: "Have you any news from the church?" "We have indeed," said they, "for we saw the grandest sight to-day. The strange lady came again, in grander array than before. On herself and the horse she rode were the finest colours of the world, and between the ears of the horse was a bird which never stopped singing from the time she came till she went away.
Trembling sat on the golden saddle; and when she was ready to start, the henwife said: "You must not go inside the door of the church, and the minute the people rise up at the end of Mass, do you make off, and ride home as fast as the mare will carry you."
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