The Piskeys are said to have ‘a kind of music,’ and to dance to the strains of fairy fiddles.

There are Piskey-rings on many of the Cornish cliffs and headlands. The country people say the Piskeys make them in the night. The rings, anyhow, spring up suddenly like mushrooms!

The legend of the mole is still current in North Cornwall, and its tiny hands are shown as evidence that it was once a very proud and vain lady, who said that the ground was not fit for her dainty feet to walk on. As a punishment for her overwhelming vanity and pride, she was turned into a mole to walk underground.

There is more than one quaint conceit about Jack-o’-the-Lantern or the little Man-o’-the-Lantern. Some say he walks about carrying a lantern, others that he goes over the moors in his lantern. He is the Piskey Puck.

There are many weird stories told about Giant Tregeagle. I have given one of the simplest, but only as far as it has to do with North Cornwall. It is said that his shadow still flits over the moorlands in the neighbourhood of Dozmare Pool, and that the pool itself is the Mother of Storms, being moved by supernatural influences.

There has always been a tradition that an underground waterway led from Dozmare Pool to the sea, but there is no tradition that Merlin ever came out of the place where the Lady of the Lake put him, or that he was the Bargeman of the moorland lake.

The little fairy riders, or ‘night-riders,’ as we Cornish call them, are, I believe, peculiar to North and East Cornwall. They do not seem to have been a kind Little People. They never had any consideration for the horses and colts which they took out of farmers’ stables near their haunts, but rode them over the moors and commons till they were ready to drop, and then left them to perish or to find their way back to their stables as best they could. They made stirrups out of the colts’ manes and tails.

The legend that King Arthur never died is still extant, and it is said that he haunts the dark Tintagel cliffs and the ruins of the old castle where he was born in the form of a red-legged chough.

The above legend is doubtless a myth, but it is a fact that a wailing cry is sometimes heard on the Doombar after a fearful gale and loss of life on that fateful bar, like a woman bewailing the dead.

In the neighbourhood of St. Columb the children used to be told that when they were in bed and asleep the dear little Piskeys would pass over their noses and order their dreams. One of the strange conceits about the Piskeys was told to me not long ago by a native of Cornwall. He said he had heard the old Granfers and Grannies say that the Piskeys were the spirits of still-born and unbaptized children, which will perhaps explain the curious belief that Small People were not good enough for heaven nor bad enough for hell. The gay little Piskeys seem to have their wistful moments and yearnings for higher things. They are said to listen at windows and doors in moorland villages when Christian people are saying their prayers.

It was the custom in some parts of Cornwall to put a piece of dough in the shape of a bird on the top of the children’s Christmas Eve buns, to remind the children that the white-winged Angels sang when the Babe of Bethlehem was born. If I remember rightly, the buns were eaten hot from the oven.

This is a well-known legend. The Crow Pound, where little St. Neot impounded the pilfering crows, was in existence not a great while ago. It is now a field.

Wherever the snow falls in North Cornwall, especially at Padstow, little children cry one to the other that the Old Woman is up in the sky plucking her goose.

The quaint little figures on the housetop in the old town of Padstow are visible to all the passers-by, and sometimes strangers ask why they were put there—a difficult question to answer, as nobody knows for certain. Perhaps they were placed on the ridge of the house for the Piskeys to dance on, or for the fairy riders to ride. Or maybe they were put there in the days of the Civil Wars, as a token that the house on which the little steeds and the little horsemen were perched was a refuge for King Charles’ cavaliers. There is no tradition about the small horses and their riders, but the children were always told, as the tale says, that when they heard the clock strike twelve they galloped round the market and town.

It used to be held, and is still told, that the Piskeys came in through the keyhole and ate up the good things. Children, when they knew that cakes were made and asked to have some, were told that the Piskeys had eaten them all. They had a special liking for junkets and sugar biscuits.

Some of the Piskeys were kindly disposed, and were credited with doing kindly acts, and it is said that they often came into the cottages in the night-time and cleaned them. When the cottages looked very clean and neat it was said that the Piskeys had done it.

Legends about Piskey-led people are as plentiful as blackberries. The present one comes from the neighbourhood of Constantine.