Pisky fine and pisky gay,
Pisky’s got a bright new coat,
Pisky now will run away.
And I can just remember one bit of another story: A pisky looked into a house and said:—
All alone, fair maid?
No, here am I with a dog and cat,
And apples to eat and nuts to crack.’
Tintagel Folk-Beliefs.—A retired rural policeman of the Tintagel country, where he was born and reared, and now keeper of the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery at Newlyn, offered this testimony from Tintagel:—‘In Tintagel I used to sit round the fire at night and hear old women tell so much about piskies and ghosts that I was then afraid to go out of doors after darkness had fallen. They religiously believed in such things, and when I expressed my doubts I was driven away as a rude boy. They thought if you went to a certain place at a certain hour of the night that you could there see the piskies as little spirits. It was held that the piskies could lead you astray and play tricks on you, but that they never did you any serious injury.’ Of the Arthurian folk-legend at Tintagel he said:—‘The spirit of King Arthur is supposed to be in the Cornish chough—a beautiful black bird with red legs and red beak.’
We now leave Great Britain and cross the English Channel to Little Britain, the third of the Brythonic countries.
VII. IN BRITTANY
Introduction by Anatole le Braz, Professor of French Literature, University of Rennes, Brittany; author of La Légende de la Mort, Au Pays des Pardons, &c.
[English Translation of Introduction]
Mon cher Monsieur Wentz,