Part 8

She was a little quick woman, with twinkling dark eyes, and whenever she went over to Newtrain to watch the Piskeys, she wore a black cottage-bonnet over her neat jinnie-guick cap, a blue print apron, and a quaint little black turnover with a wide border of red cones. This turnover she called a 'q' shawl, because the cones on its border were the shape of q's, she said.

It was the great pleasure of her dull, uneventful life to see the Piskeys dancing, which she was simple enough to believe they did to give her pleasure; and she embraced every opportunity to get to the Newtrain Cliffs to watch them.

Jinnie had watched the Small People so often that she knew every one of them by sight, and how many there were that danced.

They never took any notice of the little old woman in the cottage-bonnet, the quaint shawl, and blue print apron, watching them dancing near a low stone hedge green and gold with samphire; and they laughed and talked to each other just the same as if she were not present.

They never danced, as far as Jinnie knew, except when the moon was high, and they left off dancing when the moon set like a ball of fire over the great headlands. But she did not know where they went after the moon had gone down.

One very bright moonlight night in the early autumn, when the Piskey-stools [31] were thick on Newtrain Cliffs, old Jinnie came again to watch the Piskeys; and when she got there, there were not any to be seen. She could not understand it, and she went and looked at the Piskey-stools to see if they were sitting on any of them having a chat, which they sometimes did when they were tired of dancing; but every Piskey-stool on the cliffs was unoccupied.

As she was wondering what had become of the Piskeys, she heard shrieks of tiny laughter, like the giggles of kittiwakes, coming up from Newtrain Bay under the cliffs; and she hastened down the steep road leading to the bay--which was romantic-looking, and almost shut in by tall cliffs--as fast as her old legs would take her.

When she got to the bottom of the road, she met four little Piskeys coming up, carrying a large Piskey-bag between them; and being very anxious to know what they were going to do with the dark-brown thing, she said:

'My little dears, will you kindly tell me what you are going to do with the Piskey-bag?'

They were evidently too surprised to answer the old woman at once, for she had never spoken to them before, and they stared up at her open-mouthed.

'To sleep in when the cold weather comes,' answered a Piskey at last.

'They are ever so comfortable to snuggle under when the snow is on the ground,' said another little Piskey.

'Sleep in them, do you?' cried old Jinnie, greatly interested. 'To think of it now! I expect they are as warm as the blanketing the blanket-weavers weave in their looms at Padstow. But I never knew before you slept in the bags; I thought you kept your money in them.'

'We don't, then,' cried the Piskeys, grinning all over their little elf faces, which were almost as brown as the Piskey-bag they were carrying. 'We use the tiny young bags to keep our money in, not big ones like this.'

'Up we go!' cried one of the Piskeys to his companions, giving the one nearest him a poke in his ribs; and the four little Brown Men began to ascend the steep road, carrying the Piskey-bag by its four tails, swinging it to and fro, and shrieking with laughter as they swung it.

Jinnie watched them for a few minutes, and then went down to the pebbly beach, where she saw dozens of little Brown Men in companies of four, each company bearing a Piskey-bag between them.

There was a long string of these Little People from the water's edge to where she met them, which was about a dozen yards from the foot of the steep road.

The little Brown Men took no notice of her, and swung the bags just as did the first quartette, seemingly unconscious that she was watching them, and laughed and joked among themselves as they swung them.

Old Jinnie followed them up the beach and road, and she wondered to herself where they were going to take the bags; but she never knew, for when they reached the top of the cliff where they danced, they vanished, Piskey-bags and all!

THE FAIRY WHIRLWIND

A young married woman, who was very pretty, lived with her husband in a sweet little cottage by the sea. The cottage was cob-walled, and had a small flower-garden in its front, which was a picture in the early springtime with periwinkles and gilliflowers, and in the summer-time with roses and hollyhocks. There was another garden belonging to the cottage, but it was only for vegetables, and was on the top of a cliff quite five minutes' walk from the cottage.

This young wife and her husband, who was a waggoner, had one little child a few months old. The child was very dear to them both, and they thought she was the sweetest and most beautiful little baby in all the world. The fairies must have been quite of the same opinion, as you will see.

One afternoon the young wife was about to make an Irish stew for her husband's supper, when she found she had not enough potatoes in the house to make it.

As she took her sun-bonnet from its peg to go up to the cliff garden to dig some up, her baby, who was lying in its wooden cradle, puckered its fair little face and began to cry.

'I believe the darling knows I am going out,' cried the fond young mother. 'I can't leave her here all by her little self; I must take her with me.' And when she had put on her bonnet and a basket for the potatoes on her arm, she lifted the baby out of the cradle and took her with her to the cliff, fondling the dear little thing and talking to it as she went.

When she had reached the cliff-garden, she stood on the edge of the cliff with her flaxen-haired babe in her arms, looking out over the sea. It was a lovely June day, and the water was as quiet as a mill-pond and blue as vipers' bugloss, she told her baby. 'Just the sort of weather for my pretty to be out in,' she cried, hugging the child.

Mrs. Davies, as the young woman was called, after gazing out over the sea for a few minutes, laid her baby down on the top of a potato ridge, close to where a succory and a knapweed grew side by side, and interlaced their blue and purple blossoms. When the babe had fixed its eyes upon the flowers and cooed to them in baby fashion, she set to work to dig up the potatoes.

She had not been digging very long when she heard a curious noise behind her, like the sound of soft wind in trees, but there were no trees in the cliff-garden, and not wind enough to move even the potato leaves.

She dropped the biddix [32] to see what it was that made so strange a sound, and as she dropped it she was caught in a whirlwind--a Fairy Whirlwind, she said it was--which whirled her round and round like a whirligig; and as she whirled she was enveloped in a cloud of fine grey pillum, or dust, and she could not see anything beyond her nose.

When the whirlwind went away--and it vanished as suddenly as it came--she found herself close to the edge of the cliff ever so far away from her baby.

Fearing she knew not what for her child, she ran over to it to see if it was quite safe; and to her horror, there, where her own fair little baby had lain, she saw a dark, wizen little creature, with a face wrinkled all over like an old woman's!

'That is not my little maid,' she shrieked; 'it's a changeling! 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.

Her husband was at home by this time, wondering what had become of his wife and child, and you might have knocked him down with a straw when she poured out her woe to him, and showed him the ugly dark babe the fairies had exchanged for their own beautiful babe.

'What must I do with it?' she asked piteously, when her husband turned away from it with grief in his eyes and sorrow in his heart.

'Keep it till the Small People are tired of our little handsome,' he said, 'and be good to it if you can. If we ain't kind to the fairies' cheeld, they won't be kind to ours, that's certain.'

So the young woman and her husband, for the sake of their own flaxen-haired, blue-eyed little darling the Small People had envied and taken away, were very kind to the babe they had left in its place. They hoped, as they took care of it, although they never loved it, that the fairies would quickly grow tired of their child and bring her back; but they hoped in vain.

A year after the Small People had raised a whirlwind, the fairies' cheeld, as Mrs. Davies and her husband called the babe left on the potato ridge in place of their own, pined away and died; but the little human child with its flaxen curls and eyes of Cornish blue was never seen by mortal eyes after the fairies had stolen it.

NOTES

'THE ADVENTURES OF A PISKEY IN SEARCH OF HIS LAUGH.'

The Piskeys are said to have 'a kind of music,' and to dance to the strains of fairy fiddles.

There are Piskey-rings on many of the Cornish cliffs and headlands. The country people say the Piskeys make them in the night. The rings, anyhow, spring up suddenly like mushrooms!

The legend of the mole is still current in North Cornwall, and its tiny hands are shown as evidence that it was once a very proud and vain lady, who said that the ground was not fit for her dainty feet to walk on. As a punishment for her overwhelming vanity and pride, she was turned into a mole to walk underground.

There is more than one quaint conceit about Jack-o'-the-Lantern or the little Man-o'-the-Lantern. Some say he walks about carrying a lantern, others that he goes over the moors in his lantern. He is the Piskey Puck.

There are many weird stories told about Giant Tregeagle. I have given one of the simplest, but only as far as it has to do with North Cornwall. It is said that his shadow still flits over the moorlands in the neighbourhood of Dozmare Pool, and that the pool itself is the Mother of Storms, being moved by supernatural influences.

There has always been a tradition that an underground waterway led from Dozmare Pool to the sea, but there is no tradition that Merlin ever came out of the place where the Lady of the Lake put him, or that he was the Bargeman of the moorland lake.

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. They made stirrups out of the colts' manes and tails.

The legend that King Arthur never died is still extant, and it is said that he haunts the dark Tintagel cliffs and the ruins of the old castle where he was born in the form of a red-legged chough.

'LEGEND OF THE PADSTOW DOOMBAR.'

The above legend is doubtless a myth, but it is a fact that a wailing cry is sometimes heard on the Doombar after a fearful gale and loss of life on that fateful bar, like a woman bewailing the dead.

'THE LITTLE CAKE-BIRD.'

In the neighbourhood of St. Columb the children used to be told that when they were in bed and asleep the dear little Piskeys would pass over their noses and order their dreams. One of the strange conceits about the Piskeys was told to me not long ago by a native of Cornwall. He said he had heard the old Granfers and Grannies say that the Piskeys were the spirits of still-born and unbaptized children, which will perhaps explain the curious belief that Small People were not good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell. The gay little Piskeys seem to have their wistful moments and yearnings for higher things. They are said to listen at windows and doors in moorland villages when Christian people are saying their prayers.

It was the custom in some parts of Cornwall to put a piece of dough in the shape of a bird on the top of the children's Christmas Eve buns, to remind the children that the white-winged Angels sang when the Babe of Bethlehem was born. If I remember rightly, the buns were eaten hot from the oven.

'THE IMPOUNDED CROWS.'

This is a well-known legend. The Crow Pound, where little St. Neot impounded the pilfering crows, was in existence not a great while ago. It is now a field.

'THE OLD SKY WOMAN.'

Wherever the snow falls in North Cornwall, especially at Padstow, little children cry one to the other that the Old Woman is up in the sky plucking her goose.

'THE LITTLE HORSES AND HORSEMEN OF PADSTOW.'

The quaint little figures on the housetop in the old town of Padstow are visible to all the passers-by, and sometimes strangers ask why they were put there--a difficult question to answer, as nobody knows for certain. Perhaps they were placed on the ridge of the house for the Piskeys to dance on, or for the fairy riders to ride. Or maybe they were put there in the days of the Civil Wars, as a token that the house on which the little steeds and the little horsemen were perched was a refuge for King Charles' cavaliers. There is no tradition about the small horses and their riders, but the children were always told, as the tale says, that when they heard the clock strike twelve they galloped round the market and town.

'THE PISKEYS' REVENGE.'

It used to be held, and is still told, that the Piskeys came in through the keyhole and ate up the good things. Children, when they knew that cakes were made and asked to have some, were told that the Piskeys had eaten them all. They had a special liking for junkets and sugar biscuits.

'THE PISKEYS WHO DID AUNT BETSY'S WORK.'

Some of the Piskeys were kindly disposed, and were credited with doing kindly acts, and it is said that they often came into the cottages in the night-time and cleaned them. When the cottages looked very clean and neat it was said that the Piskeys had done it.

'HOW JAN BREWER WAS PISKEY-LADEN.'

Legends about Piskey-led people are as plentiful as blackberries. The present one comes from the neighbourhood of Constantine.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Sad.

[2] A bog near Rough Tor.

[3] A bat.

[4] Pronounced Dozmary.

[5] Nightjar.

[6] The ladybird.

[7] Near Helston.

[8] Tintagel.

[9] China.

[10] Sad.

[11] Coax.

[12] Tiny child.

[13] Whortleberries.

[14] An oven when half heated.

[15] Frame.

[16] The speckled, or ermine, moth.

[17] Cotton-grass.

[18] Tale.

[19] Child-little.

[20] Tale.

[21] A small storeroom for victuals.

[22] Power of utterance.

[23] Mad.

[24] Waving.

[25] Little.

[26] Wood-lice.

[27] Mare's nest.

[28] China.

[29] Well.

[30] A very small bird.

[31] Mushrooms.

[32] A double digging tool--one end pointed, the other flattened.