Yallery Brown
A farmhand heard crying under a stone and freed a tiny creature. It offered to help him. That was the beginning of his ruin.
What was reported
In a Lincolnshire tale, a young farmhand named Tom Tiver hears a sound like a baby crying under a big flat stone. When he lifts it, he finds a tiny creature, no bigger than a year-old child, with long golden hair and beard wrapped round it like clothes. It calls itself Yallery Brown and offers to help him in return, so long as Tom never thanks it.
Soon Tom's work does itself, but his fellow workers' tools break and their work is ruined, and he's blamed. When he finally thanks Yallery Brown, hoping to be rid of it, the creature laughs and curses him to bad luck for the rest of his life.
Explanations offered
The story was collected by the folklorist Marie Clothilde Balfour in the 1890s. It's one of the darkest English fairy tales, a warning that help from the fairies always comes at a price.
- When
- Collected in the 1890s
- Where
- Lincolnshire, England, UK
- Witnesses
- Lincolnshire folklore
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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