North Cornwall Fairies and LegendsTregarthen, Enys
Science
North Cornwall Fairies and Legends
Tregarthen, Enys
Folklore -- England -- Cornwall (County); Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
He had heard of Little People's fairs from his great-grannie, but had
never hoped to see one, and he was as glad as a bird that he happened
to be going down Tresallyn Lane when they were holding one.
The Wee Folk were holding their fair near a gate about a dozen yards
or so from where he was standing. As the moon was just then floating
over the gate, he could see all the Little People quite plainly,
and what they were doing.
The Little Men and the Little Women were all dressed up to the nines
in the way of clothes, and although he could not have described the cut
of their coats or the style of their gowns, he knew that all the Little
Women were lovely, that dear little faces peeped out of quaint bonnets,
that they carried frails in their hands, and that Piskey-purses hung
by their sides in the same way that his great-grannie's big cotton
purse bag hung under her gown.
There were ever so many little standings or stalls on the grass--one
here and one there, like currants in his mother's buns, Hender told
himself. Every standing was laid out with all sorts of tempting
things pleasing to Small People, on which they gazed with evident
delight. They asked the price of this thing and that of the little
standing women behind the stalls; and to see the Little People opening
their tiny brown Piskey-purses and taking out their fairy money to
pay for their purchases was as good as a play.
But what delighted the young fellow most were the Tiny Fiddlers and
Pipers; and to watch the way the Fiddlers elbowed their fiddle-sticks
and fiddled was worth walking twelve miles any night to see, he
said, to say nothing of watching the Little Men and the Little Women
dancing to the tunes the Fiddlers fiddled and the Pipers piped. It
was merrymaking with a vengeance, he told himself, and the fiddling,
the piping, and the merrymaking at Summercourt Fair were nothing to it!
The fair itself was held a few feet away from the standings and the
merrymaking, and when Hender could turn away his gaze for a few minutes
to look at the Little People's Fair Park, he saw a sight he feared he
should never see again. There were scores of fairy horses, and as many
bullocks and cows, and flocks of sheep and goats, none of them much
bigger than those quaint little animals in toy farmyards; but these
were all alive, he could tell, by the prancing of the horses! The
sheep were confined within hurdles. There were pigs there as well,
only to Hender's eyes they looked exactly like very large sow-pigs,
[26] all of which were in small stone enclosures. Moving about among
the animals were Little Men who were dressed like farmers, but whether
they were farmers or not he could not tell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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