England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Islands -- Fiction
"A stream-work is a moor beside a river, where the mud is full of ore,
washed down from the country above--sometimes from the old mines. The
streamers dig this mud up and wash it through sieves, and so they get
the tin. There was enough of it, my father said, in Luxulyan Couse to
keep a captain and twelve men in good wages and pay for a feast once a
year at the Rising Sun Public House. The supper took place some time in
the week before Christmas, and they called it Pie-crust Night, though I
can't tell you why. Well, one Pie-crust Night, after this yearly
supper--the most enjoyable he had ever known--my father left the Rising
Sun towards midnight, and started to walk to his home in Luxulyan
Churchtown. He had a fair dollop of beer inside of him, but nothing (as
he ever maintained), to excuse what followed, and he got so far as
Tregarden Down without accident. Now, this Tregarden Down, as he always
described it to me, is a lonesome place given over to brackenfern and
strewn about with great granite boulders, and on one of these boulders
my father sat down, because the night was clear and a fancy had come
into his head to count the stars. He sat there staring up and counting
till he reached twenty score, and with that he felt he was getting a
crick in the back of his neck, and brought his eyes down to earth
again. It seemed to him that, even in the dark, a change had come over
the down since he'd been sittin' there, and the whole lie of the ground
had a furrin look. Hows'ever, he hadn't much time to puzzle about this,
for lo and behold! as he stared about him, what should he see under the
lew of the next rock but a party of little people, none of 'em more
than a thumb high, dancing in a ring upon the turf! They broke off and
laughed as soon as my father caught sight of 'em; and, says one little
whipper-snapper, stepping forward and pulling off his cap with a bow,
'Good evening, my man!' 'Sir to you!' says my father. 'There's a good
liquor at the Rising Sun,' says the little man. 'None better,' says my
father. 'I know by a deal better,' says the little man. 'Would you like
to taste it?' 'Would I not?' says my father. 'Well, then,' says the
little man, 'there's a shipfull of wine gone ashore early this night on
Par Sands, and maybe the Par folk haven't had time yet to clear the
cargo. What d'ee say to _Ho! and away for Par Beach!_ Eh?' 'With all
the pleasure in life,' says my father, thinkin' it a joke; so '_Ho! and
away for Par Beach!_' he calls out, mimicking the little man. The words
weren't scarcely out of his mouth before a wind seemed to catch him up,
though gently, from his seat on the boulder, and in two twinklings he
was standin' on Par Sands. There was a strong sea running, and out
beyond the edge of the tide my father spied a ship breaking up. But if
she broke up fast, her cargo was meltin' faster, for a whole crowd of
folk had gathered on the sands, and were rolling the casks of wine up
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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