Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore

by M. A. Courtney

FAIRIES.

The fairies of Cornwall may be divided into four classes, the Small People, the Pixies (pronounced Piskies or or Pisgies), the Spriggans, and the Knockers. The first are harmless elfish little beings known all over England, whose revels on fine summer nights have often been described by those favoured individuals who have accidentally had the privilege of seeing them. As a rule they, however, wish to think themselves invisible, and in this county it is considered unlucky to call them by the name of fairies. The stories told about them by our old folk differed but slightly from those related elsewhere. There was the well-known cow that gave the finest yield of milk, and retained it all the year round when others of the herd ran dry, but always ceased the flow at a certain time, and if efforts were made to draw more from her, kicked over the the milking-pail. The milkmaid discovered that the cow belonged to the small people, by reason of her wearing in her hat a bunch of flowers having in it a four-leaved clover, which rendered them visible, when she saw them climbing up the cow’s legs and sucking at her teats. The greedy mistress, when the maid told her of this discovery, contrary to advice, washed the poor animal all over with salt water, which fairies particularly dislike (as well as the smell of fish and grease), in order to drive them away. Of course she succeeded in her object, and by so doing brought nothing but ill-luck for ever after on herself and family. When unmolested, fairies bring good fortune to places they frequent; but they are spiteful if interfered with, and delight in vexing and thwarting people who meddle with them. It is well known “that they can’t abear those whom they can’t abide.” Then there were the tales of persons spirited away to fairyland, to wait upon the small people’s children and perform various little domestic offices, where the time has passed so pleasantly that they have forgotten all about their homes and relations, until by doing a forbidden thing they have incurred their master’s anger. They were then punished by being thrown into a deep sleep, and on awakening found themselves on some moor close to their native villages. These unhappy creatures never, after their return, settled down to work, but roamed about aimlessly doing nothing, hoping and longing one day to be allowed to go back to the place from whence they had been banished. They had first put themselves into the fairies’ power by eating or drinking something on the sly, when they had surprised them at one of their moonlight frolics; or by accepting a gift of fruit from the hands of one of these little beings. There are also two or three legends of curious women, who by underhand dealings have got hold of a mysterious box of green ointment belonging to the fairies, which, rubbed on the eyes, gave them the power of seeing them by daylight, when they look old, withered, and grey, and hate to be spied upon by mortals. These women are always interrupted when they have put the ointment on one eye before they have time to anoint both, and by an inadvertent speech they invariably betray their ill-gotten knowledge. They cannot resist making an exclamation when they see a fairy pilfering or up to some mischievous trick. Neither can they keep the secret of the side on which they see, and they are quickly made to pay the penalty of their misdeeds by a well-directed blow from the elf’s fist, which deprives them of the sight of that eye for ever. All these old wives’ tales are fully related by Mr. Bottrell in his three series of Traditions, &c., of West Cornwall.

Fairies haunt the ancient monuments of this county, and are supposed to be the beings who bring ill-luck on the destroyers of them. “Not long ago a woman of Moushal (a village near Penzance) told me that troops of small people, not more than a foot-and-a-half high, used, on moonlight nights, to come out of a hole in the cliff, opening on to the beach, Newlyn side of the village, and but a short distance from it. The little people were always dressed very smart, and if anyone came near them would scamper away into the hole. Mothers often told their children that if they went under cliffs by night the small people would carry them away into ‘Dicky Danjy’s hole.’ ”—Bottrell.

These small people are said to have been half-witted people who had committed no mortal sin, but who, when they died, were not good enough to go to Heaven. They are always thought, in some state, to have lived before.

The small people go about in parties, but pisky in his habits, at least in West Cornwall, is a solitary little being. I gather however, from Mr. T. Q. Couch’s History of Polperro that in the eastern part of the county the name of Pisky is applied indiscriminately to both tribes. He says two only of them are known by name, and quotes the following rhyme:

“Jack o’ the lantern! Joan the wad,

Who tickled the maid and made her mad;

Light me home, the weather’s bad.”

Here in the west he is a ragged merry little fellow (to laugh like a pisky is a common Cornish simile), interesting himself in human affairs, threshing the farmer’s corn at nights, or doing other work, and pinching the maidservants when they leave a house dirty at bed-time. Margery Daw, in our version of the nursery-song, meets with punishment at his hands for her misdoings—