the bargain," she replied. "Do you
so?" cried he; "pray, with which eye do you see all this?" "With the
right eye, to be sure." "The ointment! the ointment!" exclaimed the old
fellow; "take that for meddling with what did not belong to you: you
shall see me no more." He struck her eye as he spoke, and from that
hour till the day of her death she was blind on the right side, thus
dearly paying for having gratified an idle curiosity in the house of a
pixy.[33]

In this tale the midwife acquired her supernatural vision through
gratifying her curiosity; but perhaps in the larger number of instances
it is acquired by accident. Her eye smarts or itches; and without
thinking, she rubs it with a finger covered with the Magical Ointment.
In a Breton variant, however, a certain stone, perfectly polished, and
in the form of an egg, is given to the woman to rub the fairy child's
eyes. In order to test its virtue she applies it to her own right eye,
thus obtaining the faculty of seeing the elves when they rendered
themselves invisible to ordinary sight. Sometimes, moreover, the
eye-salve is expressly given for the purpose of being used by the nurse
upon her own eyes. This was the case with a doctor who, in a north
country tale, was presented with one kind of ointment before he entered
the fairy realm and another when he left it. The former gave him to
behold a splendid portico in the side of a steep hill, through which he
passed into the fairies' hall within; but on anointing one eye with the
latter ointment, to that eye the hill seemed restored to its natural
shape. Similarly in Nithsdale a fairy rewards the kindness of a young
mother, to whom she had committed her babe to suckle, by taking her on a
visit to Fairyland. A door opened in a green hillside, disclosing a
porch which the nurse and her conductor entered. There the lady dropped
three drops of a precious dew on the nurse's left eyelid, and they were
admitted to a beautiful land watered with meandering rivulets and yellow
with corn, where the trees were laden with fruits which dropped honey.
The nurse was here presented with magical gifts, and when a green dew
had baptized her right eye she was enabled to behold further wonders.
On returning, the fairy passed her hand over the woman's eye and
restored its normal powers; but the woman had sufficient address to
secure the wonder-working balm. By its means she retained for many years
the gift of discerning the earth-visiting sp