This tale has much in common with ‘Tiddy Mun’, which is discussed above. It concerns the strangers, or ‘tiddy people’ – baby-sized beings with long arms, legs, and tongues, who wore green clothes and yellow bonnets. The people, we are told, had believed that if you treated them well, they would do the same for you, so offerings of grain and suchlike would be made, and in return the strangers would make the buds open and help with harvest.

However, people forgot to fulfil these obligations, and soon everything started to go ‘arsy-varsy’, i.e. wrong. The people took to opium and booze to rid their minds of trouble, until a local wisewoman encouraged people to return to the old customs, after which things improved.

Recounted by Marie Clothilde Balfour for her three-part ‘Legends of the Cars’, published in Folklore (1891). Balfour lived in Redbourne while collecting the tales, though it is not clear precisely where she was when she heard this. Kevin Crossley-Holland included a version in The Old Stories: Folk Tales from East Anglia and the Fen Country (1997).