Ye'se noo ha'e your four-oories;
Sin' we've gien Nick a bane to pyke,
Wi' his wheels and his Whuppity Stoories.
"Whuppity Stoorie" is a Scottish fairy tale collected by Robert Chambers in Popular Rhymes of Scotland and John Rhys in Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx.
A man leaves his wife and baby. The woman is desperately poor but hopes her sow will have many piglets when it farrows. One day, the sow is clearly dying. A green gentlewoman offers to cure it, and the woman promises her anything in return. She does, and demands the baby. But, by their law, she can't take the baby for three days, and if the woman finds her name, she can't do it at all.
The woman goes for a walk in the woods. She happens on the green gentlewoman spinning and singing about her name. The next day, the green gentlewoman comes for the baby, and the woman has some fun playing at begging and pleading before she reveals: "In troth, fair madam. I might have had the wit to know that the likes of me is not fit to tie the worst shoestrings of the high and mighty princess, Whuppity Stoorie."
Full text here
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It is classified as an Aarne-Thompson Type 500 "The Name of the Helper".
Compare with "Rumpelstiltskin".
Tropes:
- Antagonist Title: The tale is named after the villain.
- Baby as Payment: The green woman demands the woman's baby in payment in return for saving her sow.
- Be Careful What You Say: The woman says she will give the green gentlewoman anything she wants in return for saving her pig. What she wants, it turns out, is the baby.
- Big Bad: Whuppity Stoorie approaches the woman and offers to cure her pig in exchange for her baby.
- Deal with the Devil: The woman agrees to get her pig healed by the green dame before finding out the green-wearing woman is a supernatural being who wants her baby.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The fairy is an unapologetic, devious asshole, but she will not take the woman's baby until three days have passed per her folk's laws.
- The Fair Folk: When the green woman demands the woman's baby after performing a magic healing, the main character realizes what she is dealing with a fairy."I am not so fond of ceremonies," quoth she; "but now that I have righted your sick beast, let us end our settled bargain. You will not find me an unreasonable, greedy body. I like ever to do a good turn for a small reward. All I ask, and will have, is that baby boy in your bosom."
The goodwife of Kittlerumpit, who now knew her customer, gave a shrill cry like a stuck swine. The green woman was a fairy, no doubt; so she prays, and cries, and begs, and scolds; but all wouldn't do. - Fairy Devilmother: The fairy is a baby-stealing conniving sorceress.
- I Know Your True Name: The green woman explicitly says it's their law that she can't take the child if the woman knows her name.
- Leonine Contract: The fairy takes advantage of the woman's misfortune to trick her into an unfair bargain.
- No Name Given: The names of the woman and her family are unknown.
- Parental Abandonment: The husband leaves for a fair and never returns.
- Rule of Three: The green woman cannot take the woman's baby until three days have passed.
- Sore Loser: The fairy does not take her defeat well at all.If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn't have made the fairy leap higher than she did. Then down she came again plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae, screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches.
- Textile Work Is Feminine: The female fairy is spinning when she sings of her name in the woods.
- Uncertain Doom: The narrator states nobody knows really what happened to the husband. Maybe he abandoned his family or maybe was murdered by bandits.
