The man was walking home to Laxey one night the worse for drink when he came across the fairies. Most Manx people of the time would have kept quiet and passed by, or spoken politely. He did the opposite. He shouted at them and called them imps of the Devil.
They answered by pelting him with gravel, so hard that it broke his skin. That night he was taken ill. The next morning his favourite horse was found dead. His cattle died one after another after that, and within six weeks he was dead himself.
Moore had the story from a guide and dates it to about six years before his book, around 1885. It is presented as a warning. Everybody who told it understood what had gone wrong.
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