Elves play pipes while the goblins sing

[cyrano]

For those creative lot among you....
Players in my 7th Sea game are being sent on a quest to allow them to enter the Summer Country, home of the fairies and piskies.
I'm looking for an appropriate quest, and turn to those of you who are not in my game and perhaps have a mean streak in you to offer me suggestions.
My two main qualifications:
It should sound like something you would encounter in a fairy tale of some stripe.
If it would benefit a pragmatic, somewhat otherworldly Scottish family who is setting the quest, that would be especially good.
My players are warned--clicking on comments may reveal spoilers.

Comments

[starherd.livejournal.com]

hi there...
I know nothing about 7th Sea, but if they're looking to enter the Summer Country,
wouldn't they need a door to go through? Or at least a key?
A door/key that only works at a particular time, and otherwise is completely useless,
I'd expect. But first you'd have to find out *about* the door/key, and then when
to use it, and *then* you have to get the door/key... Of course, with all the reuse
of architecture, any kind of nice, ornate door is going to have been lifted from its
appropriate ruins by some well-meaning noble and slapped on a manor house
or church... or catacomb... or at the bottom of a well...
and any key is going to either be very well lost, very well
hidden, or very well placed on someone's keyring in a stained glass window...
If it looks like a regular key at all... it might look like a knife or a statue or a
mummified finger or a Rat King's* tail or something...
And what if, when used at the wrong time (but still a special time), the door/key
takes you somewhere entirely different...? Or lets Something out?

Not that I'm obsessed with doors and keys or anything. :-)
Don't mind me...

* = Rat King = a mass of rats whose tails have become tangled, then broken and
healed so as to be untangleable. At one time thought to be one large multi-headed
rat, hence the name (and appearance of the Rat King in some productions of the
Nutcracker). (There's Mouse Kings and Squirrel Kings, too. Stuff like that.)

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

Okay, here's a slightly expanded tale/tail.
The MacLeods as a family are on pretty good terms with the Fae and can get to the Summer Country already.
Our hapless party wants the MacLeods to let them in. They are going to be sent on a quest to 'prove their worth'.