At the side of the cottage was a small linhey, or outhouse, the door of which the old woman always kept open in inclement weather that the wild creatures of the moors might take shelter from the cold and from the storms that swept over the great exposed moorland spaces.
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. But, poor as she was, she was honest and good, and so was her little orphaned grandchild. They seldom complained, and when things were at their worst, and there was no grail left to make bread, or money to buy any, they told each other they had what bettermost people had not—wide moors to look out upon, and pure moorland air, fragrant with moor-flowers, to breathe into their lungs, little birds to sing to them most of the year, and dear little Piskeys to laugh outside their window in the dusk when they were very wisht.[1]
On the way to Tamsin’s Cottage.
Tamsin was a child of Nature, and she loved the big, lonely moors, gorgeous with broom and gorse in the spring-time and fading bracken in the autumn months, with all her simple heart, and so did little Phillida. They loved all the moor-flowers—even the duller blossoms of the mint and nettle tribes—that made those great, lonely spaces so wonderful and so full of charm. There was not a flower that broke into beautiful life on the moors but had a place in their hearts. They were their near and dear relations, they said, and as for the birds and other creatures that lived on the moorland, they were to them, as to St. Francis, their brothers and sisters, and even the Piskeys—the Cornish fairies—had a warm place in their affections.
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.
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. 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.
The place where the Piskeys made their Circle was very smooth and soft with grass, and the Circle lay upon the close, thick turf like a red-gold ring. Behind the Circle was a small granite boulder, and above the boulder a big furze-bush, which burnt like a fire when the furze was in bloom, and there little yellow-hammers sang their little songs year in and year out.
The Tregoss Moor Piskeys were quite nice for Piskeys, and took a great interest in Phillida and her old grandmother. They never tried to Piskey-lead them into the bogs and stream-works, of which there were many on the moors, nor set up Piskey-lights to slock[2] them into the Piskey Circle, which, we must confess, they did to their betters when they had the chance. They were ever so sorry when they knew the grail-hutch was getting empty, which somehow they always did, and that Grannie Tredinnick, as they called her, because Phillida did, had no money to buy grail to fill it; and they hastened to the cottage and peeped through the window and keyhole to see if they were looking wisht, and if they were they would begin to laugh in order to cheer them up and make them forget how hungry and sad they were.
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 reason the old saying ‘laughing like a Piskey’ is so often quoted in the Cornish land.