Anne Jefferies and the fairies

Printed under 27 December · St Teath, Cornwall

Lore and belief

Moses Pitt wrote an account of his family’s former servant Anne Jefferies, born at St Teath in Cornwall in 1626. In 1645, as she sat knitting in an arbour, six small people dressed in green came over the hedge, and the fright made her seriously ill. After that they kept appearing to her, always in even numbers, and she stopped eating ordinary food and was fed by the fairies from harvest until Christmas Day, when she came to table and ate roast beef. Pitt said she gave him a piece of fairy bread, the most delicious he ever tasted, but she was later put in gaol as an impostor.

She forsook eating our victuals, and was fed by these fairies from the harvest time to the next Christmas

From Hone's Year Book, cols. 1535-1536. Read the original

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