Editor’s Note: Katharine Briggs reports this story and writes that it came from ‘Morayshire’ and ‘Miss Charlotte Macdonald’. The story revolves around the word Masell = myself.

There was a brave young man who undertook to spend the night in a mill to which the fairies were known to come. His companions, whose dare he had accepted, threw a dead duck down the chimney to frighten him. But he plucked the duck, lit a fire, and began to roast it, turning it with a stick. Presently a fairy, a little man, came up to him and said, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Masell.’

‘But what’s your name?’

‘Masell.’

And on and on he went, asking the same question, and getting the same answer, until the young man grew tired of it, and hit the fairy with the hot, greasy stick. The little fairy yelled with pain, and ran out, and the man heard the other fairies crowding round him, and saying:

‘Who did it, Saunock?’

‘Masell, masell.’

‘Ach,’ said the fairies, and away they went with him, leaving the young man to roast his duck in peace (Briggs B1 314).