Pisco

“ He considered it a proud discovery, (of which few of his neighbours were in the secret,) that ardent spirits could be made from barley, reared on the hills at comparatively little expense for the grain-grower; while the usual sugar-cane spirit, or “agua ardiente,” extracted by the help of the inferior copper, or the still worse earthen stills of the interior, had no superiority over it. On the other hand, the “pisco,” or finer flavoured Italia, both of which are procured from the fermented juice of the grape, could only be got, and at great expense of land-carriage, from the coast. ”

“ But when they had quitted the ravine, and had left the Destatore's Cross behind them, the Piccinino began to hum, in a voice as sweet and pure as the breath of the night, a ballad in the Sicilian dialect, of which the refrain was:
"Wine makes madness, love makes folly; my nectar is the blood of cowards, my mistress is my rifle."
After this outburst of bravado, addressed to himself as well as to the ears of any Neapolitan police who might happen to be within hearing, the Piccinino began to talk with Michel in a remarkably self-possessed and tranquil strain. ”

“ There were, however, pike in the pool when he reached it—great sluggish beauties, lazily lying under the gleaming, swaying leaves of the water-lilies. For once, he was in luck, to use his own words: ‘As our bait traversed the deep back-water, we felt the indescribable thrill, or rather shock, which proceeds from a decided run, and a three-pound pike fights as gamely as a ten-pounder.’ The small fish caught, he trudged on in the waning afternoon sunshine to the second pool; startling a kingfisher, which flashed out of the reeds behind him like a veritable gem of living colour. ”

“ Teach me to fish in the lake.
Piscator. Without doubt, my fair young lady, it must be as you desire. And yet, it is not every woman that would have the courage to cross the pond in a skiff that rocks to every ripple.
Discipula. Trust me for that. You should know that I am not wont to be frightened at trifles.
Piscator. Truly, it is so; and I do not question your courage. Then on any day that you will appoint, God willing, I will give you a sail; or indeed, this morning, if duty does not incline you in another direction, and you will step with me into my little boat yonder. ”

“ In all times, alas! the sparrow has yielded to the fascination of the vulture.
In all this the Piccinino gave way to an inborn passion for increasing the difficulties of an adventure to his profit, or simply for amusement. To be sure, he had no better way of enticing Abbé Ninfo to his house than by offering a bait to his lust. But he might well have chosen some other woman than the innocent Mila to play, with the aid of some slight resemblance or of a similar costume, the part of the person who was to appear in his garden. ”

“ The Piskies, or Pigseys, of Cornwall, were naughty and unsociable. Their great trick was to entice people into marshes, by making themselves look like a light held in a man's hand, or a light in a friendly cottage window. ”

“ Tell me, my boy, have you never heard of the Piccinino and his band since you have been in Sicily?"
"It seems to me that I have. Yes, yes, uncle, my sister Mila has some fantastic stories about this Piccinino, who is the principal subject of conversation among the young silk-weavers of Catania. He is a redoubtable brigand, they say, who kidnaps women and kills men at the very gates of the city. I have never believed these fables."
"There is some truth at the bottom of all the popular legends," rejoined the monk. "The Piccinino exists and plies his trade. ”

“ And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a material firmament ”

“ The Piccinino had an impressionable brain and a fickle humor. His whole life was a constant alternation of meditation and curiosity. The simple and graceful conversation of Mila, her kindly thoughts, the generous outflow of her affections, and an indefinable touch of grandeur of soul, courage, and cheeriness of temperament, which she inherited from her father and uncle, gradually fascinated the brigand. ”

“ THE LOST CHILD OF ST. ALLEN They never talk of fairies in Cornwall; what "foreigners" call fairies the Cornish call "piskies," or "small people." And all about the Duchy piskies still abound for those who are fitted to see them. The old folk will still tell you many strange stories of the piskies. ”

“ Thus, walking or riding, one seldom sees the immediate foreground, but a changing background of soft valleys, an endless patchwork of varied green rising to the mountains in the interior of the island, or sinking to the blue sea, beyond which the mountain Pico rears its graceful outline across the bay.
From the street below comes up a constant hum of loud voices, often rising so high that one runs to see the fight commence, and by the time one has crossed the room it has all subsided and everybody is walking off in good-humor. ”

“ At the end of the ventilating corridor, which ran from end to end of the upper floor, he opened a double door, the inner one being bound with iron, and ushered Mila into the truncated tower which he had incorporated into his house, so to speak, and where he had fitted up a dainty and mysterious boudoir.
No princess ever possessed one more sumptuous, more sweetly perfumed or adorned with rarer objects. But no artisan had ever put his hand to it. The Piccinino himself had concealed the walls beneath hangings of Oriental silk stitched with gold and silver. ”

“ If the patient be a woman, the grave chosen must be that of the last young man buried, and that of the last young woman in the case of a man patient.
Piskies.—An old woman, the wife of a respectable farmer at a place called "Colmans," in the parish of Werrington, near Launceston, has frequently told my informant before-mentioned of a "piskey" (for so, and not pixy, the creature is called here, as well as in parts of Devon) which frequently made its appearance in the form of small child in the kitchen of the farm-house, where the inmates were accustomed to set a little stool for it. ”

“ The gentle little Piskies or Pixies of Devonshire, who are of the Brownie race, and very different from the malicious Piskies in Cornwall, were likewise great dandies, and sure to decamp as soon as ever they obtained a fresh cap [71] or petticoat. Indeed, they dropped violent hints on the subject. Think of a sprite-of-all-work, recorded as being too proud to accept any regular payment even in fruit or grain, standing up brazenly before his mistress, his sly eyes fixed on her, drawling out this absurd, whimpering rhyme (for Piskies scorned to talk prose!) ”

“ I uttered a feeble cry and ran on.’
‘I know exactly what it was,’ said Jasper, with a grave smile. ‘There is a pixy lives in the Raven Rock; he has a smithy far down in the heart of the cliff, and there he works all winter at a vein of pure gold, hammering and turning the golden cups and marsh marigolds with which [105] to strew the pastures and watercourses in spring. But it is dull for the pixy sitting alone without light; he has no one to love and care for him, and, though the gold glows in his forge, his little heart is cold. ”

“ In some remarkable and incomprehensible manner the good old name of Pike has fallen into disuse, and is now applied in this country to a fish that is not a pike at all, but a perch, Lucio perca, the Pike Perch, Big-eyed Pike, or Glass Eye of the Lakes; while the name Pickerel, which is merely the diminutive of Pike, is appropriated to the most gigantic and ferocious monsters of the deep. ”

“ Lord God! you will die of the heat. Our roads are so rough! Come to the house; I will pour the first glass for you, and then I will go, as your lordship kindly permits me to do so."
"My cousin will not go away until you are in the house," said Mila, in obedience to a meaning glance from the Piccinino.
The abbé, seeing that he could not get rid of his obsequious host except by complying with his wish, passed through the arbor without an opportunity to address a word or a glance to Mila; for the Piccinino, still playing the part of a respectful peasant and zealous host, walked between them. ”

“ It was once a common custom in East Cornwall, when houses were built, to leave holes in the walls by which these little beings could enter; to stop them up would drive away all luck. And in West Cornwall knobs of lead, known as pisky's pows or pisky feet, were placed at intervals on the roofs of farm-houses to prevent the piskies from dancing on them and turning the milk sour in the dairies.
Country people in East Cornwall sometimes put a prayer book under a child's pillow as a charm to keep away piskies. ”

“ The only person who ever took him seriously—up to a certain point—was Pablito. Piscis and Pablito were born to inspire each other with mutual love and admiration. The point of union between the two kindred spirits was "the cult of the horse-god." Piscis, through his father, was an adept in that line from a child; and as the best mount in Sarrio, he was the object of Pablito's warmest admiration, and the son of Don Rosendo being the richest young fellow of the place, there was, according to Piscis, no person in the world more deserving of respect and admiration. ”

“ She was a mythical pike, one of those old-time fish about which the late lamented angler had told wonderful tales in his day. Even the regular mane of scales of a finger’s length, from the back of the neck down over the pectoral fins, was not wanting.
But her eye was evil, a mixture of yellow and green, cold and deceitful as the foam of the bog-waves; it always shone with a fierce hunger, and even on the rare occasions when the hunger was appeased, the expression of that eye was one of insatiable voracity. ”

“ The Piccinino turned slowly toward Michel, and stared at him as if he had not previously seen him; then, taking from his belt a richly-mounted stiletto, he presented it to him with an almost imperceptible smile of irony and contempt, as if to say: "You are old enough and strong enough to defend yourself."
Michel, annoyed at being placed in such a position, was about to make a sharp retort, when Fra Angelo cut him short, placing his iron hand on his shoulder. ”

“ Now I will tell you a story about a pike. We are apt to think fishes very stupid; that they have no feeling. A gentleman in England, a surgeon and a naturalist, told me of what he had himself seen. A pike had struck its head against a tenter hook on a post in the pond where he was swimming. His agony was so great that he darted backward and forward with the greatest rapidity, then buried his head in the mud, then whirled his tail round and round, and threw himself up into the air to the height of two or three feet, and, at last, he threw himself out of the pond upon the grass. ”

“ And now, as a punishment, he works, they say, and must work until the day of judgment, living on insects only.
A poor and unmeaning explanation! I prefer the old Italian fable: Picus, son of Time or Saturn, was an austere hero, who scorned the deceitful love and illusions of Circe. To avoid her, he took to himself wings, and flew into the forest. If he bears no longer a human figure, he has—what is better—a foreseeing and prophetic genius; he knows that which is to come, he sees that which is to be.
A very grave opinion upon the woodpecker is pronounced by the Indians of North America. ”

“ Where you and I discover sea-pinks only, and hear only the wash of the waves, she would go on midsummer nights and find flowers of every colour spread, and hundreds of little lights moving among them, and fountains and waterfalls and swarms of small ladies and gentlemen, dressed in green and gold, walking and sporting among them, or reposing on the turf and telling stories to the most ravishing soft music. This was as much as she would relate; but it is certain that the piskies were friends of hers. ”

“ Piscator. It may be so; it is a good reason, and I will believe that it is so, since you have supposed it. This is as good a place as any, and here we will cast our lines; and there is so little wind stirring, that we shall only need to furl our sails, and the boat will remain at rest. Now then, here is your rod, nicely put together, with a fly on the hook. A pike will rise as quick at an artificial fly as at a live one; a greedy fish is that pike; and if we should have occasion, I have other kinds of bait. ”

“ Piscator. The Perch is a very good and very bold biting fish. He is one
of the fishes of prey that, like the Pike and Trout, carries his teeth in his
mouth, which is very large: and he dare venture to kill and devour
several other kinds of fish. ”

“ At length he arose, and coming to the great iron rungs that surrounded it, he yawned, and the boys started back in affright from the terrible mouth and teeth, but he soon returned to the sand.
"Pixy's mane is prettier than the lion's," said Fritz. "Oh, my Pixy!"
"Yesterday it was your gold-piece, now it is Pixy," grumbled Franz impatiently. "You should be glad that your dog is running in the open air, instead of being fastened up in a cage." ”

“ They could see the Piskey Circle quite distinctly from the doorstep, and the Piskey-lights which the Piskeys held in their hands when they danced. But they never saw the Piskeys, for the Dinky Men, as Phillida called them, were very shy, and did not often let themselves be seen by human eyes. The old woman and the child never ventured near their Circle when the Small People were having their high flings, partly from a feeling of delicacy, and partly for fear of driving them away. ”