In earlier days belief in fairies may sometimes have been used to conceal evil deeds. My grandfather used to tell a story about the body of a boy which was found in a bog in Co. Derry about eighty years ago. The body was preserved from decay and no one seemed to know whether it had been in the bog for a long or short period. Old people in the district thought they recognised the mass of yellow curls, and remembered that a little servant-boy from Donegal had disappeared one winter long before. His master said that the fairies had taken him, but some of the neighbours suspected that the master, a difficult man, had killed him. (Foster, Ulster 68)