at
their pranks, when some of the fairies who composed a troupe of
performers in front of one of the booths regarded him very earnestly.
He felt certain that they had penetrated his secret, but ere he could
make off one of them threw a stick at him with such violence that it
struck and burst the offending left eye.

Fairies in all lands have a constitutional distaste for being
recognized, but those of Brittany appear to visit their vengeance upon
the members with which they are actually beheld. "See what thieves the
fairies are!" cried a woman, on beholding one abstract apples from a
countrywoman's pocket. The predatory elf at once turned round and tore
out the eye that had marked his act.

A Cornish woman who chanced to find herself the guardian of an
elf-child was given certain water with which to wash its face. The
liquid had the property of illuminating the infant's face with a
supernatural brightness, and the woman ventured to try it upon
herself, and in doing so splashed a little into one eye. This gave her
the fairy sight. One day in the market-place she saw a fairy man
stealing, and gave the alarm, when the enraged sprite cried:

"Water for elf, not water for self.
You've lost your eye, your child, and yourself."

She was immediately stricken blind in the right eye, her fairy
foster-child vanished, and she and her husband sank into poverty and
want.

Another Breton tale recounts how a mortal woman was given a polished
stone in the form of an egg wherewith to rub a fairy child's eyes. She
applied it to her own right eye, and became possessed of magic sight
so far as elves were concerned. Still another case, alluded to in the
_Revue Celtique_,[30] arose through 'the sacred bond' formed between a
fairy man and a mortal woman where both stood as godparents to a
child. The association enabled the woman to see magically. The fairy
maiden Rockflower bestows a similar gift on her lover in a Breton tale
from Saint-Cast, and speaks of "clearing his eyes like her own."[31]

_Changelings_

The Breton fairies, like others of their race, are fond of kidnapping
mortal children and leaving in their places wizened elves who cause
the greatest trouble to the distressed parents. The usual method of
ridding a family of such a changeling is to surprise it in some
manner so that it will betray its true character. Thus, on suspicion
resting upon a certain Breton infant who showed every sign of
changeling nature, milk