Be sure to keep your house clean now that midsummer is so close as according to John Aubrey author of Remains of Gentilism 1688
"They are wont to please the fairies (that they might show them no shrewd turns) by sweeping clean the hearth and setting by it a dish whereon was set a mess of milk sopped with white bread; and did set their shoes by the fire, and many times on the morrow they should find a threepence in one of them. But if they did speak of they never had it again."
Farewell rewards and fairies
Good housewives now may say
For now foul sluts in dairies
Do fare as well as they
And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do
Yet who of late for cleanliness
Finds sixpence in her shoe?
The Faeryes Farewell 1625 Richard Corbet
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