From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
But the veritable Pixydom lies south of the Tamar. In Cornwall, that
stretch of deserted moors furrowed on either side by little
river-valleys, that rocky promontory which seems to belong more to the
kingdom of the sea than to England, the Celtic imagination has rioted
at will. There were giants in the land in bygone days, for the
wanderer among those strangely sculptured crags of granite, slate, and
serpentine chances at every turn on a Giant's Cradle or a Giant's
Chair, Giant's Spoon, Giant's Bowl, Giant's Key, Giant's Hat, Giant's
Table, Giant's Well, Giant's Pulpit, Giant's Grave. Cornishmen have
heard the music and seen the fairy dances, spied on fairy banquets,
and peeped in on fairy funerals. The Small People have been gay and
kindly neighbours, sometimes whisking away a neglected baby and
returning the little mortal all pink and clean, wrapped in leaves and
blossoms, "as sweet as a nut." These are the spirits of Druids, or of
other early Cornwall folk, who, as heathen, may not go to heaven, but
are too innocent for hell. So they are suffered to live on in their
old happy haunts, but ever dwindling and dwindling, till it is to be
feared that bye and bye, what with all the children growing stupid
over schoolbooks, and all the poets writing realistic novels, the
Small People will twinkle out of sight. The Spriggans, lurking about
the cairns and cromlechs, where they keep guard over buried treasures,
could better be spared. They are such thievish and mischievous trolls,
with such extraordinary strength in their ugly bits of bodies, it is
more likely they are the diminished ghosts of the old giants. The
Piskies are nearly as bad, as any bewildered traveller who has been
Pisky-led into a bog would testify. The only sure protection against
their tricks is to wear your garments inside out. Many a Cornish
farmer has found a fine young horse all sweated and spent in the
morning, his mane knotted into fairy stirrups showing plainly how some
score of the Piskies had been riding him over night. And many a
Cornish miner, deep down in the earth, has felt his hair rise on his
head as he heard the _tap_, _tap_, _tap_ of the Knockers, souls of
long-imprisoned Jews sent here by Roman emperors to work the tin-mines
of Cornwall. The Brownies, who used to be so helpful about the house,
have grown shy of late and can be depended on for assistance only when
the bees are swarming. Then the housewife beats on a tin pan, calling
at the top of her voice: "Brownie! Brownie!" till she sees that he has
heard her and is persuading the bees to settle. Offended mermaids have
choked up Cornish harbours and buried sea-coast villages under sand.
If you doubt it, go and look at the little church of St. Piran--the
miners' saint, who came sailing from Ireland on a millstone and
discovered the Cornish tin--the church that for seven centuries was
hidden under the sands and then, as the restless winds sifted and
searched them, rose again to human sight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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