The farmer's son followed, and warning the hangman not to touch the
ring, he directed him to stretch his hands forwards in hopes of
catching hold of some one. In a few minutes the wind blew the
chaplain's cassock against the hangman's fingers, and he caught the
parson round the waist. The farmer's son then seized him in like
fashion, and each holding firmly by the other, the fiddler, the judge,
the sheriff, the gaoler, the parson, the hangman, and the farmer's son
all got safely out of the charmed circle.
"Oh, you scoundrel!" cried the judge to the fiddler; "I have a very
good mind to hang you up on the gallows without further ado."
But the fiddler only looked like one possessed, and upbraided the
farmer's son for not having the patience to wait three minutes for
him.
"Three minutes!" cried he; "why, you've been here three months and a
day."
This the fiddler would not believe, and as he seemed in every way
beside himself, they led him home, still upbraiding his companion,
and crying continually for his fiddle.
His neighbours watched him closely, but one day he escaped from their
care and wandered away over the hills to seek his fiddle, and came
back no more.
His dead body was found upon the downs, face downwards, with the
fiddle in his arms. Some said he had really found the fiddle where he
had left it, and had been lost in a mist, and died of exposure. But
others held that he had perished differently, and laid his death at
the door of the fairy dancers.
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