The great enemy of "sperruts" and spectres of all kinds in his day was the Reverend Robert Jago,[64] Vicar of Wendron, at the end of the seventeenth century. The dim traditions of his doughty feats in warring with spectres still vaguely linger, in a condition varying towards evanescence, in the popular mind. A lane leading up from the village of Herland Cross to Pengilly Farm still bears the name of Jew's Lane. In this lane a Jew had hanged himself in rage or despair after some outrage or wrong committed upon him by the Squire Sparnon of that day. Not long after the Jew's suicide the lane was rendered impassable at night by horrible sounds and sights, and recourse was had to the Reverend Robert Jago, who received a fee of five guineas for the business of laying the troublesome ghost. The method of Mr. Jago seems to have been first to draw a circle with a long whiplash upon the ground, whilst repeating certain formulæ and prayers. Having placed himself within the circle, he was safe from the anger of malignant spirits, and was thus able to summon the troubled spirit and banish it from the neighbourhood without danger to himself.
Mr. Wentz, in his "Faery Faith of Celtic Countries," gives the following story, taken from the lips of an aged man—John Wilmet, of Constantine—having reference to Parson Jago and the traditions of ghost-laying that still linger round his name: "A farmer who once lived near the Gweek River called Parson Jago to his house to have him quiet the ghosts and spirits regularly haunting it, for Parson Jago could always put such things to rest. The parson went to the farmer's house, and with his whip formed a circle on the floor, and demanded the spirit, which made its appearance on the table, to come down into the circle. Whilst on the table the spirit was visible to all the family, but as soon as it got into the ring it disappeared and the house was never troubled afterwards."
John Wilmet had also much to tell Mr. Wentz about the piskies or pobol vean that he heard, but did not see, at Bosahn. It is round the piskies, indeed, that the great mass of Cornish folk beliefs cling. Sixty or seventy years ago this belief seems to have been all but universal amongst the country people, and though now fast dying, is by no means extinct. Indeed, a churchwarden of many years standing recently dated a certain event by the winter in which he had been piskie "led." It seems on this occasion when leaving the market town he had taken the wrong turning and walked on rapidly till in the end he found himself more than twelve miles from home. Another Cornishman informed the writer that one night, thinking something was disturbing some of his cattle, he went out into his field to see what was the matter; when he endeavoured to return to the house, owing to the piskies he could not find the gate again, and had to spend several weary hours wandering round and round the hedges in a vain and exasperating search in rain and darkness, at one time floundering in a nettle bed, at another in mud and water over the tops of his boots.
An aged woman, Mrs. Harriet Christoper, informed Mr. Wentz, that a woman who lived near Breage Church had a fine baby, and she thought the piskies came and took it and put a withered child in its place. The withered child lived to be twenty years old, and was no larger when it died than when the piskies brought it. The parents believed that the piskies often used to come and look over the wall by the house to see the child, and she had heard her grandmother say that the family once put the child out of doors at night to see if the piskies would take it back again. The piskies are said to be very small, and you could never see them by day. She used to hear her grandmother, who had been dead fifty years, say that the piskies used to hold a fair in the fields near Breage, and that the people saw them dancing. She also remembered her grandmother saying that it was customary to set out food for the piskies at night.
Mr. Hunt, in his popular "Romances of the West of England," tells us that Bal Lane in Germoe was a famous haunt of the fairies in old time, and that at certain seasons of the year they held a great fair there.
The fairy folk in local superstitions seem to have been divided into three species—the piskies, fairies of the moors, dells and surface of the earth generally; the knockers or knackers, fairies of the mines, whom the miners heard knocking in the depths of the earth, indicating by their knocks the presence of rich veins of ore, or if of a malignant disposition luring the miners by their knockings to vain efforts after non-existent mineral wealth. The third order of fairies was that of the Buccas, an amphibious species, to whom down to recent times offerings of fish were made.
It is pleasant to gather from the learned author of "The Faery Faith in Celtic Countries" that the superstitions of the Cornish are of a much brighter character than those of the other branches of the Celtic race; the superstitious beliefs of their near kinsmen, the Bretons, being of a specially gloomy character. The pobol vean, it seems, are much more cheery folk, in spite of all their pranks, than gloomy Ankou, king of the dead, and his attendant ghosts. Having said that the Cornish folklore is not of a gloomy character is to say perhaps all that can be said in praise of it.
I have alluded to the foregoing tales and beliefs because in the course of a generation or so they will have completely faded from the popular mind. Our people seem eager to have done with the past, and to reach forward to the future, fraught with new conditions and new thought. When we compare the present with the past, we can only be thankful for all that change has brought within recent generations in physical surroundings and moral outlook. Let us hope that her future gifts, which give promise of being prodigal, will be as beneficent as those of the recent past, for we still require much at her hands. The danger seems to lie in wandering into a materialistic desert, for it is but too true that "Man can not live by bread alone."
