North Cornwall Fairies and LegendsTregarthen, Enys
Science
North Cornwall Fairies and Legends
Tregarthen, Enys
Folklore -- England -- Cornwall (County); Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
It was all so wonderfully interesting to Hender that he stood still
like one in a dream, till one of the Little Men in a smart green coat
went over to a very pretty Little Lady, who reminded him of his own
sweetheart whom he had not very long kissed good-night, and asked her
if he might treat her to some fairing, and he took hold of her little
hand and led her up to the standing. And when he opened his purse to
pay for what he bought for his lady-love Hender had to give vent to
his feelings, and he cried out: 'I could not have done it better--no,
not even if I had bought a fairing for my own little sweetheart! No
fy! I couldn't.'
The words were no sooner spoken when the Small People's fair vanished,
Little People and all, and the only thing left to show that a fair
had been held were a dozen sow-pigs in a stone enclosure!
THE PISKEYS WHO DID AUNT BETSY'S WORK
In our great-great-grandmothers' days people very seldom went away
visiting, and when little Nannie Sando received an invitation from
her Aunt Betsy--great-aunt really--who lived quite twenty miles from
her home on a lonely moor, near Liskard, there was great excitement
in Nannie's home.
Nannie's father did not like the thought of her going away so far from
home, and her mother did not like it either, but she said Aunt Betsy
was well-to-do, and had a stockingful of gold hidden away somewhere;
it would not do for them to offend her by refusing to let the child
go. So the invitation was accepted, and Nannie was sent off by coach,
and met by her aunt in a donkey-cart in Horn Lane, at Liskard, where
the coach put up; and that same evening she reached the little house
on the moor.
It was quite a nice little house, with two rooms up and two down,
and a large garden behind, sheltered by granite boulders fantastically
piled one on top of the other. In front of the house were the moors,
which, at the time Nannie came to stay with her aunt, were gorgeous
with the bloom of heather and other flowers.
Nice as the house was, and beautiful as the moors were, with their
background of Kilmar and other Cornish tors, it was a lonely spot
for a child to come and stay at, with only an elderly woman for
company. But, then, there was the charm of novelty, and there were
delights in the shape of her aunt's donkey and cow, and a big black
tom-cat called Tinker, to say nothing of the far-stretching moors,
which were so beautiful to look at and run wild on.
When Nannie was leaving to go and stay with Aunt Betsy, her mother,
with a view to possessing some of the old lady's golden hoard some
day, told her little daughter to be very attentive to her aunt. 'Get
up when she does,' she said, 'and help her to do her work, and make
yourself very useful;' and the child said she would.
Nannie, when she was going to bed on the evening of her arrival,
remembered her mother's injunction, and said to her aunt:
'Please call me when you get up; I want to help you to clean up
the houseplace.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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