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:

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—

Should the happy possessor of one of these industrious, unpaid fairy servants (who never object to taking food left for them by friends) express his thanks aloud, thus showing that he sees him, or try to reward him for his services by giving him a new suit of clothes, he leaves the house never to return, and in the latter case may be heard to say:

Or in another version:

Mr. Cornish, the Town Clerk of Penzance, mentioned at an antiquarian meeting recently held in that town, “that there was a brownie still existing in it; that a gentleman, whose opinion he would take on many matters, had told him that he had often seen it sitting quietly by the fireside.” When mischievously inclined pisky often leads benighted people a sad dance; like Will of the Wisp, he takes them over hedges and ditches, and sometimes round and round the same field, from which they in vain try to find their way home (although they can always see the path close at hand), until they sit down and turn their stockings the wrong side out, as an old lady, born in the last century, whom I well knew, once told me she had done. To turn a pocket inside out has the same effect. But to quote the words of a late witty Cornish doctor, “Pisky led is often whiskey led.”

Mr. T. Q. Couch in his before-mentioned book has two or three amusing stories of their merry pranks. One is called “A Voyage with the Piskies.” A Polperro lad meeting them one night as he was going on an errand heard them say in chorus, “I’m for Portallow Green” (a place in the neighbourhood). Repeating the cry after them, “quick as thought he found himself there surrounded by a throng of laughing piskies.” The next place they visited was Seaton Beach, between Polperro and Plymouth; the third and last cry was “I’m for the King of France’s cellar.” Again he decided on joining them, dropped the bundle he was carrying on the sands, and “immediately found himself in a spacious cellar, engaged with his mysterious companions in tasting the richest wines.” Afterwards they strolled through the palace, where in a room he saw all the preparations made for a feast, and could not resist the temptation of pocketing one of the rich silver goblets from the table. The signal for their return was soon given, and once more he found himself on Seaton Beach, where he had just time to pick up his bundle before he was whisked home. All these voyages were made in the short space of five minutes. When on his return he told his adventures they were listened to with incredulity until he produced the goblet, which proved the truth of his tale. After having been kept for generations this trophy has disappeared. “These little creatures seem sometimes,” Mr. Couch says, “to have delighted in mischief for its own sake. Old Robin Hicks, who formerly lived in a house at ‘Quay Head’ (Polperro), has more than once, on stormy winter nights, been alarmed at his supper by a voice sharp and shrill—‘Robin! Robin! your boat is adrift.’ Loud was the laughter and the tacking of hands (clapping) when they succeeded in luring Robin as far as the quay, where the boat was lying safely at its moorings.”

Another of his legends is about a fisherman of his district, John Taprail, long since dead, who was, on a frosty night, aroused from his sleep by a voice which called to him that his boat was in danger. He went down to the beach to find that some person had played a practical joke on him. As he was returning he saw a group of piskies sitting in a semicircle under a much larger boat belonging to one of his neighbours. They were dividing a heap of money between them by throwing a piece of gold alternately into each of the hats which lay before them. John was covetous, and forgot that piskies hate to be spied upon; so he crept up and pushed his hat slily in with the others. When the pile was getting low he tried to get off with his booty without their detecting the fraud. He had got some distance before the cheat was discovered; then they pursued him in such hot haste that he only escaped with his treasure by leaving his coat-tails in their hands. “The pisky’s midwife” is common,—a mortal who has been decoyed into fairyland discovers it by accidentally rubbing her eye with a bit of soap whilst washing the baby. Like those who have stolen and applied the green ointment, she loses the sight of it by a blow from an angry pisky’s fist. She meets and recognizes the father at a fair where, as usual, he is pilfering, and foolishly asks after the welfare of mother and child. But all these stories in West Cornwall would be told of the “small people,” as well as the well-known “Colman Grey” (of course the name varies), which relates how a farmer one day found a poor, half-starved looking bantling, sitting alone in the middle of a field, whom he took home and fed until he grew quite strong and lively. A short time after a shrill voice was suddenly heard calling thrice upon “Colman Grey.” Upon which the imp cried “Ho! ho! ho! my daddy is come!” flew through the keyhole, and was never heard of after. Unbaptised children were, in this county at the beginning of the century, said to turn, when they died, into piskies; they gradually went through many transformations at each change, getting smaller until at last they became “Meryons”1 (ants) and finally disappeared. Another tradition is that they were Druids, who, because they would not believe in Christ, were for their sins condemned to change first into piskies; gradually getting smaller, they too, as ants, at last are lost. It is on account of these legends considered unlucky to destroy an ant’s nest, and a piece of tin put into one could, in bygone days, through pisky power be transmuted into silver, provided that it was inserted at some varying lucky moment about the time of the new moon.

Moths were formerly believed in Cornwall to be departed souls, and are still, in some districts, called piskies.

There is also a green bug which infests bramble-bushes in the late autumn that bears the same name, and one of the reasons assigned for blackberries not being good after Michaelmas is that pisky spoils them then. Pisky is in some places invoked for luck at the swarming of bees.

It was once a common custom in East Cornwall, when houses were built, to leave holes in the walls by which these little beings could enter; to stop them up would drive away good luck. And in West Cornwall knobs of lead, known as pisky’s paws or pisky feet, were placed at intervals on the roofs of farm-houses to prevent the piskies from dancing on them and turning the milk sour in the dairies.

Country people in East Cornwall sometimes put a prayer book under a child’s pillow as a charm to keep away piskies. I am told that a poor woman, near Launceston, was fully persuaded that one of her children was taken away and a pisky substituted, the disaster being caused by the absence of a prayer book on one particular night.—H. G. T., Notes and Queries, December, 1850.

Small round stones, known as “Pisky Grinding Stones,” are occasionally found in Cornwall; they are most probably parts of old spindles.

If piskies are kind and helpful little beings, spriggans or sprites are spiteful creatures, never doing a good turn for anyone. It is they who carry off poor babies from their mothers, when they have been obliged to leave them for a few hours alone, putting their own ugly, peevish brats in their cradles, who never thrive under the foster-mother’s care, in spite of all the trouble they may bestow upon them. Mr. Bottrell tells the story of a spriggan, a married man with a family, who took the place of a poor woman’s child one evening when she was at work in the harvest field. For although an innocent baby held in the arms is thought in Cornwall to protect the holder from mischief caused by ghosts and witches, it has no power over these creatures, who are not supposed to have souls. The scene of this legend was under Chapel Carn Brea, on the old road from Penzance to St. Just in Penwith. The mother, Jenny Trayer by name, was first alarmed on her return one night from her work in the harvest field by not finding her child in its cradle, but in a corner of the kitchen where in olden days the wood and furze for the then general open fires were kept. She was however too tired to take much notice, and went to bed, and slept soundly until the morning. From that time forth she had no peace; the child was never satisfied but when eating or drinking, or when she had it dandling in her arms. The poor woman consulted her neighbours in turn as to what she should do with the changeling (as one and all agreed that it was). One recommended her to dip it on the three first Wednesdays in May in Chapel Uny Well,2 which advice was twice faithfully carried out in the prescribed manner. The third Wednesday was very wet and windy, but Jenny determined to persevere in this treatment of her ugly bantling, and holding the brat (who seemed to enjoy the storm) firmly on her shoulders, she trudged off. When they got about half-way, a shrill voice from behind some rocks was heard to say,

Not seeing anyone, the woman was of course alarmed, and her fright increased when the imp made answer in a similar voice,

After this adventure, she took the advice of another neighbour, who told her the best way to get rid of the spriggan and have her own child returned was “to put the small body upon the ashes’ pile, and beat it well with a broom; then lay it naked under a church stile; there leave it and keep out of sight and hearing till the turn of night; when nine times out of ten the thing will be taken away and the stolen child returned.” This was finally done; all the women of the village after it had been put upon a convenient pile “belabouring it with their brooms,” upon which it naturally set up a frightful roar. After dark it was laid under the stile, and there next morning the woman “found her own ‘dear cheeld’ sleeping on some dry straw,” most beautifully clean and wrapped in a piece of chintz. “Jenny nursed her recovered child with great care, but there was always something queer about it, as there always is about one that has been in the fairies’ power—if only for a few days.”

There are many other tales of changelings, but they resemble each other so much that they are not worth relating. In the one before quoted from Mr. Bottrell he gives a third charm for getting a child restored, as follows: “Make by night a smoky fire, with green ferns and dry. When the chimney and house are full of smoke as one can bear, throw the changeling on the hearthstone; go out of the house, turn three times round; when one enters, the right child will be restored.” Spriggans, too, guard the vast treasures that are supposed to be buried beneath our immense carns and in our cliff castles. No matter if the work be carried on by night or by day, they are sure to punish the rash person who ventures to dig in hopes of securing them. When he has got some way down, he finds himself surrounded by hundreds of ugly beings, in some cases almost as tall as he, who scare the unhappy man until he loses all control over himself, throws down his tools, and rushes off as fast as he can possibly go. The fright often makes him so ill that he has to lie for days in bed. Should he ever summon up courage to return to the spot, he will find the pit refilled, and no traces to show that the ground had been disturbed.

Knockers (pronounced knackers) are mine fairies, popularly supposed to be (as related elsewhere) the souls of the Jews who crucified Christ, sent by the Romans to work as slaves in the tin mines. In proof of this, they are said never to have been heard at work on Saturdays, nor other Jewish festivals. They are compelled to sing carols at Christmas time. Small pieces of smelted tin found in old smelting-works are known as “Jews’ bowels.” These fairies haunt none but the richest tin mines, and many are reputed to have been discovered by their singing and knocking underground; and miners think when they hear them that it is a sign of good luck, because when following their noises they often chance on lodes of good ore. When a miner goes into an “old level” and sees a bright light, it is a sure sign that he will find tin there. Knockers like spriggans are very ugly beings, and, if you do not treat them in a friendly spirit, very vindictive. “As stiff as Barker’s knee” is a common saying in Cornwall; he having in some way angered the knockers, either by speaking of them disrespectfully or by not leaving (as was formerly the custom) a bit of his dinner on the ground for them (for good luck), they in revenge threw all their tools in his lap, which lamed him for the rest of his life. Mr. Bottrell tells a similar story of a man named Tom Trevorrow, who when he was working underground heard the knockers just before him, and roughly told them “to be quiet and go.” Upon which, a shower of stones fell suddenly around him, and gave him a dreadful fright. He seems however to have quickly got over it, and soon after, when eating his dinner, a number of squeaking voices sang,

But Tom took no notice and ate up every crumb, upon which the knockers changed their song to

After this such persistent ill-luck followed him that he was obliged to leave the mine.

Bucca is the name of a spirit that in Cornwall it was once thought necessary to propitiate. Fishermen left a fish on the sands for bucca, and in the harvest a piece of bread at lunch-time was thrown over the left shoulder, and a few drops of beer spilled on the ground for him, to ensure good luck. Bucca, or bucca-boo, was, until very lately (and I expect in some places still is) the terror of children, who were often when crying told “that if they did not stop he would come and carry them off.” It was also the name of a ghost; but now-a-days to call a person a “great bucca” simply implies that you think him a fool. There were two buccas—