Upton Snodsbury Fairies

The following story concerning a fairy encounter was published in ‘English Fairy and Other Folk Tales’ (1890) by Edwin Sidney Hartland. ‘As a countryman was one day working in a field in Upton Snodsbury, he all of a sudden heard a great outcry in a neighbouring piece of ground, which was followed by a low, mournful voice, saying: “I have broke my bilk, I have broke my bilk;” and thereupon the man picked up the hammer and nails which he had with him, and ran to the spot from whence the outcry came, where he found a fairy lamenting over his broken bilk, which was a kind of cross-barred seat; this the man soon mended, and the fairy, to make him amends for his pains danced round him till he wound him down into a cave, where he was treated with plenty of biscuits and wine; and it is said that from thence-forward that man always did well in life’