Note 39 — Chapter X · Difficulties of the Folklorist

That is practically Chambers’ version of this Scottish story; and as to the name of the fairy Whuppity Stoorie, the first syllable should be the equivalent of English whip, while stoor is a Scotch word for dust in motion: so the editor asks in a note whether the name may not have originated in the notion ‘that fairies were always present in the whirls of dust occasioned by the wind on roads and in streets39.’ But he adds that another version of the story calls the green woman Fittletetot, which ends with the same element as the name Tom Tit Tot and Silly go Dwt. Perhaps, however, the Welsh versions of the story approached nearest to one from Mochdrum in Wigtownshire, published in the British Association’s Papers of the Liverpool Meeting, 1896, p. 613. This story was contributed by the Rev. Walter Gregor, and the name of the fairy in it is Marget Totts: in this we have a wife, who is in great distress, because her husband used to give her so much flax to spin by such and such a day, that the work was beyond human power. A fairy comes to the rescue and takes the flax away, promising to bring it back spun by the day fixed, provided the woman can tell the fairy’s name. The woman’s distress thereupon becomes as great as before, but the fairy was overheard saying as she span, ‘Little does the guidwife ken it, my name is Marget Totts.’ So the woman got her flax returned spun by the day; and the fairy, Marget Totts, went up the chimney in a blaze of fire as the result of rage and disappointment. Here one cannot help seeing that the original, of which this is a clumsy version, must have been somewhat as follows