Fairies Foiling A Pig Theft

In her ‘Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868’, Mrs Latham recounts the following story. ‘There is an unromantic fairy-tale told in our nurseries the scene of which is laid in West Sussex, how, once upon a time, two men stole a pig, and put it in a sack, and laid the sack down upon the ground just over a hole in which dwelt a fairy, who contrived to step into the sack in the form and in the place of the real grunter. The men were to take it in turns to carry the sack, and as one of them was toiling with his heavy load up a steep ascent he was startled to see a very little figure running close by his side, and asking, in a melancholy voice, “Dick, Dick, where be you?” and much was his alarm increased when a voice from the sack replied, “In a sack, Pick-a-back, Riding up Beeding Hill.” The frightened men of course threw down the sack and ran away, and the good fairy resumed his own form and returned to his home by the pigsty, rejoicing that he had saved the pig from the thieves, it being the property of a man for whom the fairies had a liking.’