Enys Tregarthen

“ As one stands by its dark waters, looking away towards the bare granite-crowned hills and listening to the wind sighing among the reeds and rushes and the coarse grass, one can realize to the full the weird legends connected with it, and one can see in imagination the huge figure of Tregeagle bending over the pool, dipping out the water with his poor little limpet-shell.
The Tregeagle legends are still believed in. When people go out to Dozmare Pool, they do not mention Tregeagle’s name for fear that the Giant will suddenly appear and chase them over the moors! ”

“ The Little Men and the Little Women were all dressed up to the nines in the way of clothes, and although he could not have described the cut of their coats or the style of their gowns, he knew that all the Little Women were lovely, that dear little faces peeped out of quaint bonnets, that they carried frails in their hands, and that Piskey-purses hung by their sides in the same way that his great-grannie’s big cotton purse bag hung under her gown. ”

“ And through the keyhole the old woman looked, and saw, to her amazement, scores and scores of green-coated little men, whiskered like a man, on the oak table, standing round the junket-bowl ladling out the rich, thick junket with their tiny little hands, and half a dozen other little chaps were up in the window-sill passing out her delicious sugar biscuits to the Tiny Moormen, who were even more whiskered and bearded than their distant relations, the Piskeys. ”

“ But he is still alive. If you should see a bird with a red beak and legs flying over King Arthur’s Castle as day is beginning to break, you may be quite certain that he is King Arthur. If he has seen your laugh he will be sure to tell you. He is very kind and good, as all the world knows.’
‘Which is still called King Arthur’s Seat.’
‘I am glad the Good King is not dead,’ said the little Piskey. ”

“ The moment the clock had done striking Robin saw to his great delight the two little men on their two little horses leave the housetop and leap into the street, and go galloping round and round the market-place as his parents assured him they did when they heard the clock strike twelve.
The little horses galloped so funnily, and the tiny riders sat so bolt upright on their quaint little steeds, that Robin laughed to see them, and said they looked exactly like the wooden toy horses and horsemen in his father’s shop. ”

“ You are looking worse than a cat in a fit.’
‘Am I?’ said the poor little Piskey. ‘I am feeling very queer. It was a queerness that made me fall on my little stumjacket. Am I ill like those great men and women creatures we sometimes entice into the bogs with Piskey-lights?’
‘We have never heard of a Piskey getting ill or sick,’ said a little brown Piskey, ‘have we?’ turning to speak to the Little Fiddler, who had come over to his companions, bringing his fiddle with him. ”

“ Have you seen my little lost laugh?’
‘No; but Granfer Night-rider may have,’ answered the little Night-rider. ‘He has wonderful eyes for seeing things that are lost.’
‘Is Granfer Night-rider here?’ asked the Piskey, sending his glance in the direction of the colt, which was almost smothered with Night-riders, some standing on his side as he lay, others still in the stirrups they had made in his tail and mane. ”

“ As he grew near the remains of this ancient church, which were clearly seen in the moonshine, he thought he heard someone laughing, but he was not quite sure, for the sea was roaring on the beach below the common, and the waves were making a loud noise as they dashed up the great headland of Trevose.
‘I was mistaken; ’twas nobody laughing,’ said Jan to himself, and he walked on again, singing as before; and he sang till he came near a gate, which opened into a field leading to his cottage, but when he got there he could not see the gate or the gateway. ”

“ But as I do not happen to know the Lantern Man, will you please come with me to Rough Tor Marsh and ask him if he has seen my laugh?’
‘What next will you ask me to do?’ cried the mole. ‘No, I cannot go with you. I am far too busy to go tramping round the country with a little Brown Piskey like you, in search of a laugh. I have a tunnel to make across Castle Gardens for my dear [14] little baby wants to run about in, and I must do it before the sun shines over the Tors. If you really want to find your laugh, you must go and ask the Lantern Man yourself. ”

“ Ever so many times the colt galloped round the sandy common, leaping over the hillocks in his mad gallop, and each time he passed, the little Piskey stood out in the moonshine and called out, but the Night-riders took not the slightest notice, nor pulled up the colt to see what he wanted. ”

“ My little hands are the only things left of me to show who I once was.’
‘I am very sorry for you,’ said the Piskey, with [12] strong note of sympathy in his voice, so entirely new to him that he scarcely knew it was himself speaking; for Piskeys, although they are merry and gay, are often selfish in the extreme. ‘I am more sorry for you than I can say,’ he went on. ‘It cannot be nice to be only a want, when once you were a beautiful lady. I am a Piskey,’ as the little dark mole was silent. ”

“ The little Piskey was saying good-bye to that [16] delightful spot, with its soft turf and the beautiful Piskey-ring on which he had danced times without number; for the poor, lonely little fellow did not know if he should ever come back again. Then he broke off a bit of a knapweed stem for a staff to help him on his journey to Rough Tor Marsh,2 and before the moon had laid down a lane of silver fire on the rippling waters between Tintagel Head and Trevose, the little Piskey had set out on his travels in search of his laugh. ”

“ The child dreamt as she was ordered, and when she had put a bit of the cake on the doorstep for the Piskeys, she saw in her dream a crowd of Dinky Men in quaint little green coats, and caps as red as bryony berries, and tiny fellows in red cloaks and green hats, come and take up the cake with solemn faces and bent heads, and carry it away over the moors towards the Piskey Circle. When they had gone, she stood on the doorstep looking out over the moors, white with the feathers the old Sky Woman had thrown down ”

“ They even went out on to the moor, and turned their gaze towards the Roche Rocks to see if they could see the little sky-bird. After listening ten minutes or longer to the lark and other birds, and to the Piskeys laughing, they returned to the cottage.
Fine weather seldom lasts long in winter-time, and when Christmas Eve came it was bitterly cold. A bitter wind blew over the moors from the north, which brought snow in its wake, and Phillida said the Old Woman was up in the sky picking her goose and throwing down the feathers as fast as she could throw them. ”

“ A Piskey’s laugh is a gay little laugh, and as unfettered as the song of a lark, and anybody hearing it is bound to feel happy and gay, no matter how wisht he happens to be before. Perhaps that is the [78] reason the old saying ‘laughing like a Piskey’ is so often quoted in the Cornish land.
Old Tamsin and little Phillida always felt better when the Dinky Men came and laughed outside their door. ”

“ I do wish I could see them doing your work, Aunt Betsy. It would be something to tell father and mother when I go home.’
‘I don’t expect you will have the good fortune to see the Piskeys,’ said the old woman. ‘They are little invisible Men and Women, and nobody ever sees them unless they happen to be Piskey-eyed. As you have never heard about these dear Wee [170] Folk till now, it is quite certain you have not the gift.’
‘Are you Piskey-eyed, Aunt Betsy?’ asked Nannie eagerly. ”

“ He disappeared into a Piskey-hole the Piskeys had dug in the cliff, which led down into an underground passage between the Island and the mainland, and very soon he reappeared from another hole in Castle Gardens, a few feet from where the little Piskeys were anxiously awaiting him.
‘Why are you not fiddling, dancing and laughing?’ asked the little Whitebeard, winking his eyes on the silent little Piskey crowd, standing near their little brother Piskey who was looking so queer. ‘You are wasting precious time standing here doing nothing. ”

“ The wicked Little People envied us our little beauty, and have stolen her away, and left one of their own ugly brats in her place. They raised a Fairy Whirlwind to hide from me what they were doing, the wicked, wicked little things!’
Mrs. Davies never knew how long she stood staring down in hopeless misery upon the ugly babe the Small People had left there on the potato ridge in place of her own; but in the end she took it up in her arms and carried it down to the cottage. ”

“ I am not going to use bad language now,’ as Jim took up a stone to throw at him. ‘You would not understand it if I did. I am also “high learnt” in the needs of the body, and I shall be ever so grateful for a bit more of your pasty. It isn’t nice to have an aching void inside one’s little feather stumjacket.’
‘I suppose it can’t be,’ said the lad, dropping the stone and breaking off a large piece of his pasty to toss to the bird. ”

“ The Piskey made haste to follow his nose, and he scrambled up a sand-bank, and hastened as fast as his feet could take him over the sandy common, till he came to the place where Giant Tregeagle was sitting making sand-ropes to bind his trusses of sand which lay all around him. He was sitting by a hillock, his great head showing just above it, when the Piskey came near. ”

“ The child, who was healthy and strong, did not mind the cold, and she liked watching the feathers of the great Sky Goose whirling down on the hills and moors; but she was somewhat afraid the Dinky Men would not come over the snow to order her [87] dreams. But her grandmother told her that she was certain the Small People no more minded the cold than she did, and would be sure to come in through the keyhole when they were in bed and asleep.
If Phillida did not mind the severe weather, Tamsin did. She could hardly keep herself warm in spite of a great fire that blazed on the hearthstone. ”

“ The Dinky Men were as touchy as nesting-birds, Tamsin declared, and said that if either she or Phillida spied upon them when they were having their frolics they would, perhaps, forsake Tregoss Moor, which would have been a great misfortune. It was lucky, she said, to have the Small People living near a house. So she and her grandchild were content to watch them dancing from a respectable distance. ”

“ I’ll take you near there in my Barge.’ [31]
‘In your Barge?’ echoed the little Piskey, looking over his shoulder to the long stretch of country between him and the sea, and then at the great pool set like a cup on the top of the moors, with no visible outlet.
‘You are wondering how I can take you to the great outer sea,’ said the Tiny Bargeman. ‘For your satisfaction I will tell you that there is an underground waterway that leads down to Trebetherick Bay, close to St. Minver sand-hills. ”

“ They made up their minds that they would punish the old turf-cutter for taking away their nice soft green Piskey-bed by doing him out of his junket and biscuits, and they told some distant relations of theirs, the Fairy Moormen, to keep an eye upon the spence-window, and whenever they saw Grannie Nankivell bring a bowl of junket and a dish of biscuits into her spence, they must come with all speed and tell them. ”

“ It is like nothing I have ever seen before except in a Piskey’s face when he laughs. It is like a laugh gone mad, and it is enough to kill a man with laughing only to watch its antics. It made me laugh till I ached when I first noticed it. ”

“ The little fairy riders, or ‘night-riders,’ as we Cornish call them, are, I believe, peculiar to North and East Cornwall. They do not seem to have been a kind Little People. They never had any consideration for the horses and colts which they took out of farmers’ stables near their haunts, but rode them over the moors and commons till they were ready to drop, and then left them to perish or to find their way back to their stables as best they could. ”

“ If I can’t have you living, I’ll have you dead. I came down to Hawker’s Cove to shoot something to startle the natives of Padstow Town, and they will be startled, shure ’nough, if I shoot a beautiful little vixen like you and take home to them.’ [61]
‘Shoot me if you will, but marry you I will not,’ said the beautiful maiden, with a scornful laugh. ”

“ Tamsin was very poor, and could only earn enough to pay the rent of her cottage and to keep herself and little grandchild, who was an orphan, in grail-bread and coarse clothes. This she did by spinning wool, which she sold to a wool-merchant at St. Columb, a small market-town some miles away. She was advanced in years, and getting more unfit to spin every year, she told herself; and the less wool she spun the less money she had to spend on food and clothes for herself and Phillida. ”

“ Not a great way from Tamsin’s cottage was a large Piskey Circle where the Tregoss Piskeys danced when the nights were fine and the moon was up, and often when they danced the old grandmother and her little grandmaid would come out on the step of their door and watch them. ”

“ Christmas was on its way, and Phillida, like most children, looked forward to it; why, she could hardly have told, except that it was the Great Festival of the Nativity, and that Grannie always told her of the nice Christmasses she had had when [80] she was a croom3 of a cheeld, and that her mother always made her a Christmas cake, with a little bird on top, to remind her of the Great White Birds which sang when the Babe was born. ”

“ The one of Giant Tregeagle came, I think, from the same source, but it is too far back to remember. I only know it was one of the stories of my childhood, as were also the Mole legend and some of the Piskey-tales, handed down from a dim past by our Cornish forebears.
‘The legends about the Little People are very old, and some assert to-day that the tales about the Piskeys are tales of a Pigmy race who inhabited Cornwall in the Neolithic Period, and that they are answerable for most of the legends of our Cornish fairies. If this be so, the older stories are legends of the little Stone Men. ”