Mothers sometimes brought the cradle to the field in the harvest time and left it at the ridge end, when the little inmate would be liable to be exchanged for one of fairy breed. To deter children who gleaned behind the reapers from interfering with the stooks, it was customary to tell them that baits of ‘fairy butter’ were placed among the sheaves, and if they were tempted to touch and eat it the fairies would kidnap them. Of ‘fairy butter,’ Mr. Denham in a letter relates: ‘A story is told here (Pierse Bridge) how that, some women going into the field to work rather earlier one morning than usual, now some fifty or sixty years ago, found as much as nearly a pound upon the top of a gate post, how they carefully gathered it into a basin, and how they each and all partook, and found it to be the ‘nicest butther that ony o’ them had iver taasted.’Denham 138