“It’s your chin. It’s still a little crooked.”
His hand went immediately to the feature. “It is not.”
I shrugged. “Perhaps it’s my imagination.”
While he prodded at his jaw, I looked back at the crowd, the assembled scholars arguing quietly with one another or sitting mulishly with their arms crossed, as if already going over their criticisms in their heads. I drew a deep breath, my grip tightening on my notes. Then we stepped onto the stage.
This particular tale is one of the oldest in Ireland, and is told throughout the northwestern counties in varying iterations. Appended here for future reference. —E.W.
The Golden Ravens
or, The Serving Girl and Her Faerie Housekeepers
There once was a kingdom in the bleak and mountainous north of Ireland called Burre, which was ruled by an old queen with twelve sons and daughters, including one who was half Folk. This prince was the youngest of the lot and least likely to inherit the throne; thus, in typical faerie fashion, he went about improving his odds in a roundabout way that nevertheless proved quite effective. He released the queen’s three golden ravens into the wild, which had been gifted to her by a powerful witch for luck, and this caused a great sorrow to spread over the land. The queen’s other children began squabbling amongst themselves, culminating in treacherous intrigues and assassinations.
After the golden ravens were released, the ordinary peasants of Burre also met with one misfortune after another. Crops failed, and cursed children were common. One of these was the adopted daughter of a poor serving woman. The daughter was unnaturally clumsy and brought disorder with her wherever she went, which made the serving woman’s lot very hard. The mother and daughter were dismissed from position after position, being unable to keep any house clean despite their best efforts.
One bleak winter the mother died, leaving her barely grown daughter to fend for herself. Everyone in town knew the daughter’s reputation, and she could not find any work. In desperation, she ventured far into the wild white mountains until she came upon a castle owned by a duchess, the queen’s sister. Living in such a remote location, the duchess and her family were always short-staffed, and so the duchess hired the serving girl on the spot.
The duchess set the serving girl a simple task: scrub the floor of the kitchen, particularly minding the corners where spiders had built their nests. But this task was not simple for the cursed serving girl, and no sooner had she scrubbed the floor to a shine than she tripped and upset the spice rack. The spice spilled everywhere, mingling with the damp of the newly washed floor to form a fragrant mud. The serving girl at once set to cleaning it all again, but it was no use: she seemed able only to move the muck from one place to another. She went to bed weeping, certain she would be dismissed again.
But when she came into the kitchen in the morning, she found the duchess in a state of delight. The kitchen gleamed as it had never gleamed before, even the corners, every last spider having been relocated to a luxuriously intricate web high in the rafters. The duchess and her family begged to know how the serving girl had made the floor shine so, like a winter pond in the starlight, and what on earth had she done to the spices, which filled the kitchen with scent as if newly ground?
The serving girl realized that the castle must be home to the oíche sidhe, the little faerie housekeepers. They must have plucked up each grain of spice one by one with their clever fingers and dried them with their breath. The girl kept her mouth shut, overwhelmed by her good luck.
As the days passed, the family’s respect for the serving girl only grew. Never had they had such shining floors, windows of such purity as if made of air, such fragrant, spotless bedding. They did not know that they only had such things because the oíche sidhe had to work twice as hard to clean up the mess made by the serving girl, who could not cross a floor without leaving behind a muddy trail, nor open a window without smearing it with handprints, nor pin the bedding up to dry outside without it being blown across the fields and into some muddy puddle.
But then began a series of strange events. After the serving girl dusted the portraits, somehow managing to summon more dust than had been there before, the portraits the next morning were not only free of dust but everyone in them had their hair combed and their clothes brushed and straightened. After the serving girl washed the duchess’s dogs, they were found the next day with their hair in elaborate ringlets. Rearranging furniture would cause rooms and windows to change shape, taking on a rigid and unnatural symmetry. Laundry was the worst of all; after the serving girl had washed it to the best of her lamentable abilities, clothes not only cleaned themselves to spotlessness but grew threads of gold and buttons of ivory, or sometimes became new garments altogether, pyjamas growing into evening gowns and wool socks to silken stockings. If the serving girl cleaned the chicken coop, the chickens would appear the next morning with their beaks polished and their feathers pomaded, looking very self-satisfied. The duchess and her husband began watching the serving girl with concerned looks and encouraging her to take frequent breaks for tea and a lie-down. They did not send her away, though—indeed, they more than doubled her pay to ensure she would never wish to leave.
The serving girl began to fear that she was driving the oíche sidhe mad with her impossible messes—she knew the poor creatures did so abhor disorder. Further evidence of this came unexpectedly and unpleasantly in the form of sudden wet smacks to her face when she was working, rather like being struck with a small, invisible mop. The serving girl lived in terror that the oíche sidhe would murder her one day.
Eventually, the serving girl snuck out into the woods where an old witch lived and begged for help. In exchange for one of the pomaded chickens, the witch informed her that the serving girl’s curse originated in the royal family with the youngest prince, and that only he could undo it.
Fortunately, the serving girl knew the queen and all her children were due to pay a visit to the queen’s sister soon. The night before their arrival, the serving girl took her shabbiest dress, freshly stained with kitchen grease, and tore it to shreds, which she scattered over the floor.
When the serving girl awoke in the morning, she found in place of her old dress the loveliest and most eccentric gown imaginable. It was quite clear that the oíche sidhe were indeed going mad, for the dress was at odds with itself, one moment deciding to be murky pond green and the next ocean blue or harvest brown. It was festooned with baubles and ribbons like a Christmas tree, including a crystal that showed flashes of strangers’ futures and a live hedgehog, which with its tiny claws climbed from pocket to pocket as the mood took it （the dress had an infinite number of pockets）。
Dubious, the girl donned the dress and went downstairs. The castle was full of royal attendants and various hangers-on, all bustling about importantly, and in her ridiculous dress, everyone assumed she was a relation of the duchess. She asked one of the ladies’ maids where the youngest prince could be found, and she was told: in the garden.
She found the prince wandering the garden with a displeased look on his face, for those whose blood is half Folk and half mortal exist in a state of perpetual displeasure—the typical games of the Folk leave them perplexed, while they find mortal pursuits dull. In truth, the prince was only scheming to obtain the throne for want of anything better to do with himself.