On her seventeenth birthday, Betty Stoggs was up with the sun. She sat down and began peeling apples, trying to cut an all-in-one-piece peeling. After thirteen apples and two nicked fingers, she succeeded. She closed her eyes, threw the peel over her right shoulder, and chanted: "Apple tree! Apple tree! Show my true love's name to me!"
Turning around, she found the peel curled into a perfect J on the hearth. Delighted, she decided she must marry a man whose name began with J. She considered the J's she knew and settled on Big Jan, a miner. Being pretty and rosy, she soon wed him.
Life with Jan's mother was tedious, so Betty scowled until Jan built her a cottage of her own on the moor at Towednack. At first, Betty was happy, but soon she grew lonely and the cottage grew dirty. Jan brought her a black kitten, Tabby, for company. Betty was delighted, and for a while, all was well.
But loneliness returned. Betty pouted and declared she needed a baby. "Well, if that's what will please ye," said Jan. Before winter, a son, Wee Jan, was born. Betty loved him but was lax in her care, often leaving him dirty and alone with the cat while she went to town.
One midsummer afternoon, she lingered too long. Returning at dusk, she found the cottage door open, in a shambles, with no sign of Wee Jan or Tabby. A desperate search ensued. At dawn, alone on the moor, Betty heard a faint sound. She found Tabby under a bush, licking a clean, sleeping Wee Jan, who was wrapped in bright chintz and pillowed on herbs.
The neighbors believed fairies, who love chintz, had taken and nearly cleaned the baby to keep him, but the sunrise scared them away, leaving a tiny dirty mark on his foot—a fairy mark. From then on, Betty became a careful, cheerful mother and homemaker. She kept the freckle-like spot as a lucky reminder of all she had to be happy about.