Clean Hearth – The first recipe in old days for encouraging fairy visits and gaining fairy favours was to leave the hearth swept and the fire clear. This seems some indication of the contention that domestic fairies were of the type of the Lares, the ancestral spirits who were the ghosts of those who had been buried under the hearth according to the primitive custom in pre-classical times.
Clean Water – A bowl of clear, fair water had to be left in any place where the fairy ladies were supposed to resort with their babies to wash them by the fire. Dirty water or empty pails were commonly punished by pinching or lameness.
Cheerful – A cheerful wayfarer, a cheerful giver and a cheerful worker are all likely to gain the patronage of the fairies, who dislike nothing so much as grumbling and moaning.