Have you ever felt a sharp pinch while picking a nut off a tree? Chances are Churn Milk Peg was the culprit. A diminutive English fairy hag, her primary job is to protect nuts from being picked before they are ripe, particularly by naughty children. Churn Milk Peg actually does a good turn for children, since unripe nuts can cause bad stomach cramps. Hazelnut thickets are her favorite places to hang out, and she guards hazelnuts above all other nuts. Although a bit lazy and slow moving herself, Churn Milk Peg can’t abide laziness in others. If a child is daydreaming, Churn Milk Peg is likely to give her a good pinch on the arm. She is capricious that way.
You can spot Churn Milk Peg in the thickets by the smoke drifting up from her pipe. As someone whose great grandmother smoked a corncob pipe, I am partial to this attribute of Peg’s. She wears peasant clothes from the 15th century and doesn’t like to lollygag in the same place for too long. Her male counterpart is Melch Dick. Peg gets her name from the pulp of unripe nuts. That squishy phase is called churn milk.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen Churn Milk Peg, but I wonder if she hung around the pecan tree in our school yard when we were kids. Every year when the tree was laden with nuts, we were sent outside to use tall objects to shake down the nuts. Then we’d pick the nuts up off the ground and place them in pillow cases or baskets. That’s just the type of afternoon activity Churn Milk Peg might find amusing.
What a cool tale! It seems the fey folk had a particular faerie to oversee just about everything. I like how Churn Milk Peg specializes in nuts, especially hazelnuts. The next time I eat one, I saw think of her. I also found it fascinating that your grandmother smoked a corncob pipe. What a colorful, wonderful woman she must have been!
I know I would love for the fae of housekeeping and yard tending to pay me a visit! Although I didn’t know my great grandmother who smoked the corn cob pipe, her daughter (my grandmother) was a wonderful person. Genealogy is so fascinating, and it’s a shame we can’t pass down more of the stories and information.
Love it. Had not heard of her before!