The appearance of small round bruises clustered together was supposed to show the marks of fairy fingers pinching. People who spied on the fairies, and so were responsible for an infringement of fairy privacy, or who betrayed their secrets, were particularly liable to be pinched, and it was also a penalty for careless, dirty ways since the fairies applauded neatness. In Ben Jonson's Entertainment at Althorpe we have:

Shee, that pinches countrey wenches

If they rub not cleane their benches,

And with sharper nayles remembers,

When they rake not up their embers.

And in Marston's Mountebanks Masque we have:

If lustie Doll, maide of the Dairie,

Chance to be blew-nipt by the fairie.

In fact, in the early 17th century, pinching was one of the fairy characteristics most commonly remembered.

See Blights and illnesses attributed to the fairies.