The fairies appear to have lived on thefts of human food. The Celtic fairies were thought to take the foyson or goodness from it, but some lived off the land like mice, carrying away the grain early. Here is a condensed account of a Hampshire farmer's losses by fairy thefts, given by Keightley in The Fairy Mythology (pp.305-306):

A farmer in Hampshire was sorely distressed by the unsettling of his barn. However straightly over-night he laid his sheaves on the threshing-floor for the application of the morning's flail, when morning came, all was topsy-turvy, higgledy-piggledy, though the door remained locked, and there was no sign whatever of irregular entry. Resolved to find out who played him these mischievous pranks, Hodge couched himself one night deeply among the sheaves, and watched for the enemy.

At length midnight arrived, the barn was illuminated as if by moonbeams of wonderful brightness, and through the key-hole came thousands of elves, the most diminutive that could be imagined. They immediately began their gambols among the straw, which was soon in a most admired disorder. Hodge wondered, but interfered not; but at last the supernatural thieves began to busy themselves in a way still less to his taste, for each elf set about conveying the crop away, a straw at a time, with astonishing activity and perseverance. The keyhole was still their port of egress and regress, and it resembled the aperture of a bee-hive, on a sunny day in June. The farmer was rather annoyed at seeing his grain vanish in this fashion, when one of the fairies said to another in the tiniest voice that ever was heard — 'I weat, you weat'. Hodge could contain himself no longer. He leaped out crying, 'The devil sweat ye. Let me get among ye!' when they all flew away so frightened that they never disturbed the barn any more.

In a Suffolk version, Brother Mike, the little fairy's complaint is:

Oh how I du twait,

A carrying o' this air o' wate.

This anecdote ends sadly, with the capture and death of the little fairy. It is one of the most tragic of the stories of captured fairies.

[Motifs: F239.4.3; F365]