A story from Formosa (now Taiwan) recorded in the Folk Lore Journal 1887 (Vol 5 p 139) tells how
seven brothers, banished from their home, encountered some unsettling ‘little
people’ on their journey through the forest.
The exiles went forth
into the depth of the forest, and in their wanderings after a new land they
crossed a small clearing, in which a little girl, about a span* in height, was
seated peeling [sweet] potatoes. ‘Little sister,’ they queried, ‘how come you here?
where is your home?’ ‘I am not of homes
nor parents,’ she replied. Her surprised questioners then asked if she could
direct them to a pathway; she answered
after the following enigmatic manner: ‘If you find your swords girded on the
right you are the proper road; if you find them on the left you are going
astray.’
The puzzled brothers shook their heads and again entered
the thick forest. After them came the voice of the little girl singing,
‘You think that I am fatherless, motherless, small,
Devoid of that wisdom which parents install;
Yet was I when fathers and mothers were not,
And will be when mankind itself is forgot.’
They
had not gone far when they saw a little man cutting canes, and farther on to
the right a curious-looking house, in front of which sat two diminutive women
combing their hair. Things looked so queer that the travellers hesitated about
approaching nearer, but eager to find a way out of the forest they determined
in their extremity to question the strange people. The two women, when
interrogated, turned sharply round, showing eyes of a flashing red; then
looking upward, their eyes became dull and white, and they immediately ran into
the house, the doors and windows of which at once vanished, the whole taking on
the form and appearance of a large, isolated boulder.
* ‘span’: the distance between the thumb and little finger of a outspread hand.
Picture credit:
'Goblins' by Brian Froud: https://www.ferniebrae.com/brian-froud
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