The Brownie’s Departure After a Gift of Clothes
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
A recurring motif in British household-spirit stories describes a brownie leaving after being given clothing. The gift may be offered in gratitude for domestic work, yet the outcome is not the continued service that the household expects.
Versions differ in their wording and explanation. The motif is useful evidence of how storytellers imagined an uneasy relationship between unseen household help, reward and obligation. It should not be read as a uniform rule followed in every region.
Evidence: collected folklore narratives. Source trail: nineteenth-century collections of Scottish and northern English fairy and brownie lore, including works by Robert Chambers and Walter Scott.