Part 7

When he reached the bottom of the town and the house where the little men and their horses usually stood, he glanced up, and to his surprise saw them standing on the tile-ridge, looking as if they had never left it.

Robin gazed at them till he began to feel cold, and then he went back across the market to his own house; and half an hour later, when his father and mother came home from the party, they found him fast asleep on one of the steps with his toes tucked up under him.

'The funny little horses and little horsemen did hear the clock strike twelve, and galloped round the market and through the town same as you told me,' said Robin in a sleepy voice, when his father picked him up and carried him into the house. 'I saw them with my own eyes, and I ran after them up as far as Church Street. They galloped so funnily and so fast; I am glad I saw them.'

'So am I,' said his father, laughing, thinking his small son had dreamt it as he lay asleep on the step. 'You are the first little chap who ever saw them come down from the roof and gallop, and I fancy you will be the last.'

Little Robin Curgenven may have been the first to see them gallop as his father said, but he may not be the last, for the quaint little horses and horsemen are still on the roof of the house, and it is told that they still gallop through Padstow streets, and round what once was the market, when they hear the church clock strike twelve!

HOW JAN BREWER WAS PISKEY-LADEN

The moon was near her setting as a tall, broad-shouldered man called Jan Brewer was walking home to Constantine Bay to his cottage on the edge of a cliff.

He was singing an old song to himself as he went along, and he sang till he drew near the ruins of Constantine Church, standing on a sandy common near the bay. 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.

'I was so taken up with singing the old song, that I must have missed my way,' he said again to himself. 'I'll go back to the head of the common and start afresh,' which he did; and when he got to the place where his gate ought to have been, he could not find it to save his life.

'I must be clean mazed,' [23] he cried. 'I have never got out of my reckoning before, nor missed finding my way to our gate, even when the night has been as dark as pitch. It isn't at all dark to-night; I can see Trevose Head'--looking across the bay--'and yet I can't see my own little gate! But I en't a-going to be done; I'll go round and round this common till I do find my gate.'

And round and round the common he went, but find his gate he could not.

Every time he passed the ruins of the church a laugh came up from the pool below the ruins, and once he thought he saw a dancing light on the edge of the pool, where a lot of reeds and rushes were growing.

'The Little Man in the Lantern is about to-night,' he said to himself, as he glanced at the pool. 'But I never knew he was given to laughing before.'

Once more he went round the common, and when he had passed the ruins he heard giggling and laughing, this time quite close to him; and looking down on the grass, he saw to his astonishment hundreds of Little Men and Little Women with tiny lights in their hands, which they were flinking [24] about as they laughed and giggled.

The Little Men wore stocking-caps, the colour of ripe briar berries, and grass-green coats, and the Little Women had on old grandmother cloaks of the same vivid hue as the Wee Men's coats, and they also wore fascinating little scarlet hoods.

'I believe the great big chap sees us,' said one of the Little Men, catching sight of Jan's astonished face. 'He must be Piskey-eyed, and we did not know it.'

'Is he really?' cried one of the Dinky [25] Women. ''Tis a pity,' as the Little Man nodded. 'But we'll have our game over him all the same.'

'That we will,' cried all the Little Men and Little Women in one voice; and, forming a ring round the great tall fellow, they began to dance round him, laughing, giggling, tehoing, and flashing up their lights as they danced.

They went round him so fast that poor Jan was quite bewildered, and whichever way he looked there were these Little Men and Little Women giggling up into his bearded face. And when he tried to break through their ring they went before him and behind him, making a game over him, he said!

He was at their mercy and they knew it; and when they saw the great fellow's misery, they only laughed and giggled the more.

'We've got him!' they cried to each other, and they said it with such gusto and with such a comical expression on their tiny brown faces, that Jan, bewildered as he was, and tired with going round the common so many times, could not help laughing, they looked so very funny, particularly when the Little Women winked up at him from under their little scarlet hoods.

The Piskeys--for they were Piskeys--hurried him down the common, dancing round him all the time; and when he got there he felt so mizzy-mazey with those tiny whirling figures going round and round him like a whirligig, that he did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. He was also in a bath of perspiration--'sweating leaking,' he expressed it--and, putting his hand in his pocket to take out a handkerchief to mop his face, he remembered having been told that, if ever he got Piskey-laden, he must turn his coat pockets inside out, when he would be free at once from his Piskey tormentors. He immediately acted on this suggestion, and in a minute or less his coat-pockets were hanging out, and all the Little Men and the Little Women had vanished, and there, right in front of him, he saw his own gate! He lost no time in opening it, and in a very short time was in his thatched cottage on the cliff.

THE SMALL PEOPLE'S FAIR

In the same parish where Jan Brewer was Piskey-laden on Constantine Common there is a beautiful lane called Tresallyn. It has high mossy hedges, where ferns grow in abundance, and where speedwells love to display their multitude of blue blossoms.

This lane is said to be a regular Piskeys' haunt, where all the Wee Folk in the neighbourhood meet. People who have passed through this lane in the evening or late at night have heard the Piskeys laughing; but nobody, as far as we know, except one young fellow, ever had the good fortune to see them, and he, like Jan Brewer, had the gift of seeing what others could not.

Hender Bennett was the name of this young fellow, and he lived at a farm near Tresallyn Lane. One night, after he had been over to Towan, a village about a mile and a half away, to see a young girl whom he was courting, he was returning home through this beautiful old lane, when he was startled by a burst of music quite close to him. The music was so sweet and yet so stirring that he wanted to dance to the tune. He looked about to see whence the sound was coming, but he could see nothing unusual.

It was a glorious night, and the big moon floated like a silver ball in the cloudless blue of the midnight sky, and shone so brightly that he could even see fronds of the ferns standing out quite clearly from the mossy hedge-banks.

As he was looking around, the music grew louder, sweeter, and more stirring, and sending his gaze down the lane to where the trees arched it, he saw a big crowd of Small People holding a fair.

He had heard of Little People's fairs from his great-grannie, but had never hoped to see one, and he was as glad as a bird that he happened to be going down Tresallyn Lane when they were holding one.

The Wee Folk were holding their fair near a gate about a dozen yards or so from where he was standing. As the moon was just then floating over the gate, he could see all the Little People quite plainly, and what they were doing.

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.

There were ever so many little standings or stalls on the grass--one here and one there, like currants in his mother's buns, Hender told himself. Every standing was laid out with all sorts of tempting things pleasing to Small People, on which they gazed with evident delight. They asked the price of this thing and that of the little standing women behind the stalls; and to see the Little People opening their tiny brown Piskey-purses and taking out their fairy money to pay for their purchases was as good as a play.

But what delighted the young fellow most were the Tiny Fiddlers and Pipers; and to watch the way the Fiddlers elbowed their fiddle-sticks and fiddled was worth walking twelve miles any night to see, he said, to say nothing of watching the Little Men and the Little Women dancing to the tunes the Fiddlers fiddled and the Pipers piped. It was merrymaking with a vengeance, he told himself, and the fiddling, the piping, and the merrymaking at Summercourt Fair were nothing to it!

The fair itself was held a few feet away from the standings and the merrymaking, and when Hender could turn away his gaze for a few minutes to look at the Little People's Fair Park, he saw a sight he feared he should never see again. There were scores of fairy horses, and as many bullocks and cows, and flocks of sheep and goats, none of them much bigger than those quaint little animals in toy farmyards; but these were all alive, he could tell, by the prancing of the horses! The sheep were confined within hurdles. There were pigs there as well, only to Hender's eyes they looked exactly like very large sow-pigs, [26] all of which were in small stone enclosures. Moving about among the animals were Little Men who were dressed like farmers, but whether they were farmers or not he could not tell.

It was all so wonderfully interesting to Hender that he stood still like one in a dream, till one of the Little Men in a smart green coat went over to a very pretty Little Lady, who reminded him of his own sweetheart whom he had not very long kissed good-night, and asked her if he might treat her to some fairing, and he took hold of her little hand and led her up to the standing. And when he opened his purse to pay for what he bought for his lady-love Hender had to give vent to his feelings, and he cried out: 'I could not have done it better--no, not even if I had bought a fairing for my own little sweetheart! No fy! I couldn't.'

The words were no sooner spoken when the Small People's fair vanished, Little People and all, and the only thing left to show that a fair had been held were a dozen sow-pigs in a stone enclosure!

THE PISKEYS WHO DID AUNT BETSY'S WORK

In our great-great-grandmothers' days people very seldom went away visiting, and when little Nannie Sando received an invitation from her Aunt Betsy--great-aunt really--who lived quite twenty miles from her home on a lonely moor, near Liskard, there was great excitement in Nannie's home.

Nannie's father did not like the thought of her going away so far from home, and her mother did not like it either, but she said Aunt Betsy was well-to-do, and had a stockingful of gold hidden away somewhere; it would not do for them to offend her by refusing to let the child go. So the invitation was accepted, and Nannie was sent off by coach, and met by her aunt in a donkey-cart in Horn Lane, at Liskard, where the coach put up; and that same evening she reached the little house on the moor.

It was quite a nice little house, with two rooms up and two down, and a large garden behind, sheltered by granite boulders fantastically piled one on top of the other. In front of the house were the moors, which, at the time Nannie came to stay with her aunt, were gorgeous with the bloom of heather and other flowers.

Nice as the house was, and beautiful as the moors were, with their background of Kilmar and other Cornish tors, it was a lonely spot for a child to come and stay at, with only an elderly woman for company. But, then, there was the charm of novelty, and there were delights in the shape of her aunt's donkey and cow, and a big black tom-cat called Tinker, to say nothing of the far-stretching moors, which were so beautiful to look at and run wild on.

When Nannie was leaving to go and stay with Aunt Betsy, her mother, with a view to possessing some of the old lady's golden hoard some day, told her little daughter to be very attentive to her aunt. 'Get up when she does,' she said, 'and help her to do her work, and make yourself very useful;' and the child said she would.

Nannie, when she was going to bed on the evening of her arrival, remembered her mother's injunction, and said to her aunt:

'Please call me when you get up; I want to help you to clean up the houseplace.'

But the old woman did not call her grand-niece, and let her stay in bed till breakfast-time; and when the child came down she found all the work done, and everything clean and shining.

'You never called me, Aunt Betsy,' said Nannie reproachfully. 'Mother did so want me to help you.'

'Did she?' cried the old woman sharply. 'If your mother told you to help me, she had a motive for it. I know your mother's little ways!'

'She said you were getting up in years,' said Nannie innocently, 'and that the young should spare the old as much as they could.'

'The dear little Brown Piskeys spare my old legs,' said the old woman, looking at the child. 'They come in and do my work before the world gets up.'

'The Piskeys!' cried the child. 'Who are the Piskeys? I never heard of them before.'

'You must be a very ignorant little girl not to have heard tell of the Piskeys,' cried Aunt Betsy, lifting her hands in surprise. 'They are dear Little People who take strange likes and dislikes to human beings. If they happen to like people very much, they come into their house and do their work for them. They have taken quite a fancy to me, and come into my house every night and clean up the houseplace, polish the candlesticks till they shine like gold, scour the pots and pans, and wash and clean everything that wants cleaning.'

'How very kind of them!' said Nannie. 'They must be dear Little People. 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 Folk till now, it is quite certain you have not the gift.'

'Are you Piskey-eyed, Aunt Betsy?' asked Nannie eagerly.

Her aunt did not answer, and told her little grand-niece to sit up at table and eat her breakfast.

The child was too full of the Little People to eat much breakfast, and the more she thought about them, the more anxious she became to see those dear Wee Folk, who were so very, very kind to her Aunt Betsy.

The next morning Nannie got up ever so early, with the hope of seeing the Piskeys, but, early as it was, Aunt Betsy was down before her. The work was all done, and the table laid for breakfast, as on the previous day.

'The Piskeys came and did it long before I was up,' remarked her aunt, not noticing the child's face of disappointment, glancing round the big kitchen, with its stone-flagged floor, just washed, and looking as blue as the tors, and up at the dresser, with its china looking as if it had been washed in sunshine, it was so sparkling; and as for the tall brass candlesticks on the high mantelpiece, they were dazzling in their brightness.

'It isn't fair that the Little People should come in and do all your work when I wanted to help,' said Nannie.

'I am used to Piskeys, but not to children,' returned the old woman. 'If you really want to do something for me, you shall go out on the moors and pick me a nosegay of wild flowers. It will make the kitchen look nice, and will complete the work of the Piskeys.'

Nannie was willing, as she had nothing to do, and she put on her sun-bonnet to go.

'The clover is in blossom,' said her aunt, as the child was going out at the door, 'and if you happen to find one with four leaves you may perhaps get Piskey-eyed, and if you also find a Wee's Nest [27] you will have the good fortune to see all the Little People in Cornwall!'

'A Wee's Nest is a thing that is never found,' said Nannie; 'but I'll look for a four-leaved clover till I find it. P'raps you found a four-leaved clover, and that is how you can see the Piskeys,' looking round at her aunt with a smile.

The old woman was not given to answering questions, and she only said that four-leaved clovers were not so easy to find as she imagined.

There was an abundance of flowers everywhere on the moors, and Nannie soon gathered a great big nosegay; but although she looked for a four-leaved clover, she could not find one.

Her aunt was very pleased with the flowers when she took them to her, and told her to put them into an earthenware pot, which she did; and when she had had her dinner, she went on the moors again. Tinker, the great tom-cat, with whom she had already made friends, followed her.

Nannie stayed out on the moors till it was almost bedtime, searching for a four-leaved clover, but she searched in vain.

The next morning, the child, hearing her aunt dressing, got up and dressed too, and, being young and nimble, she was dressed and down first.

When she got to the kitchen, she heard the clatter of pans and a tripping to and fro of tiny feet, and little bursts of laughter came from the big spence at the upper end of the kitchen; but she saw nothing living, except Tinker, cleaning his face in front of the fire, and then she heard a patter of small feet going towards the outer kitchen door, and there was silence.

'You have driven away the Piskeys, you young good-for-nothing!' cried Aunt Betsy, coming into the kitchen, buttoning the sleeve of her gown as she came. 'The Little People don't like to be spied on when they are busy working. You should not have got up so early.'

The old woman seemed as much put out as the Piskeys, and she flew round the kitchen doing the work the Small People had left undone, and would not allow Nannie to help at all, not even to lay the cloth for breakfast.

After breakfast, the child, in order to put her aunt in a better mood, went out on the moors to get another nosegay of wild flowers, and she gathered one of every sort she could find.

As she was picking them, Tinker, the cat, who had followed her again to the moors, put his paw on a clover and mewed; and, fearing a bee had stung him, she looked to see, and quite close to his paw was a white four-leaved clover!

'I shall be able to see the Piskeys now!' said Nannie joyfully; and she and Tinker returned to the house.

Aunt Betsy was out at the back looking for a hen who had stolen her nest, and she did not come in till dinner-time.

Nannie amused herself meanwhile in arranging the flowers, and when she had done that to her own satisfaction, she passed the four-leaved clover over her eyes three times, and looked round the kitchen to see what she could see. She saw nothing unusual, but she thought she saw a tiny brown laughing face peeping round the kitchen door.

When Aunt Betsy came in from watching the hen, the child told her she had found the four-leaved clover, thanks to Tinker.

Her aunt looked at her queerly, and asked her to show the clover which she had found; and when she saw that it was a four-leaved one, she only said: 'But you have not yet found the Wee's Nest, and you must not expect to see the dear little Brown Piskeys unless you do.'

Nannie hoped she would, all the same, and this hope made her so excited she could not sleep; and when daylight began to creep into the sky she got up, and without waiting to put on more than her little petticoat, she crept downstairs, holding the four-leaved clover in her hand. When she got to the door of the kitchen, leading into it from the passage, she opened it softly and peeped in; and to her delight she saw scores and scores of Little People, all as busy as bees in a field of clover. Some were sweeping the flagged stones, some were washing the cloam [28] and scouring the pots and pans, some were polishing the candlesticks with a soft leather, and others were in the big spence scrubbing the stone benches and doing it all as keenly [29] as Aunt Betsy herself, which was most wonderful, she thought, considering how tiny they were. For they were not much bigger than a miller's thumb. [30]

It was the Little Women Piskeys who were the busiest workers. The Little Men were less industrious; and when Tinker came into the kitchen, they stopped their work of cleaning the milk-pans to pull his great bushy tail and his whiskers. One little scamp of a Piskey--perhaps unconscious that Nannie was now Piskey-eyed--put his thumb to his nose, after the manner of naughty little boys, and made a face at her.

The Piskeys were a merry little lot, and laughed at their work as if it were all play, which perhaps it was; and one little red-capped Piskey danced a hornpipe on the table as several of his companions were about to lay the cloth for Aunt Betsy's breakfast. They stood on the edge of the table, waiting for him to finish his dance, and as he did not seem inclined to do this, they caught hold of him by his legs and tickled him.

The little Piskey who was being tickled, and those who tickled him, looked so comical that Nannie laughed, which made them stop and look round.

'There is a little maid watching us from the door!' said one of the Piskeys in a whisper. 'She is Piskey-eyed, the same as Aunt Betsy, and she will be spying upon us now, sure as eggs are eggs. I think we had better forsake this house and go and do work for some other old woman.' And, to Nannie's distress, they went, and ever after Aunt Betsy had to do her own work, which made her so cross that she sent poor Nannie home to her parents at the first opportunity she had; and when she died, which was not a great while after, she left her little hoard of gold to strangers. Nannie's father said 'twas a great pity, but that his wife was to blame, for if she had not urged their little maid to help the old lady to do her work with the unworthy motive of having some of her gold, Nannie would never have wanted to see the Piskeys doing Aunt Betsy's work.

THE PISKEYS WHO CARRIED THEIR BEDS

Many years ago the Piskeys used to dance on a grassy place on the top of the cliffs overlooking Newtrain Bay in the parish of Padstow. They danced there so often that the grass was worn quite bare, and until the cliffs on which they danced were undermined and broken down by the rough sea, the marks of their tiny feet were plainly seen.

An old woman who lived a short distance from Newtrain Cliffs used to tell people interested in fairies that she had often seen them dancing there. 'They danced two and two,' she said, 'and so near the edge of the cliff, you would have thought they would dance over. But they never did; they were far too clever for that.'

Jinnie Chapman was the name of this old woman. She was quite a character in her way, and almost as interesting as the Small People she loved to talk about.