North Cornwall Fairies and LegendsTregarthen, Enys
Science
North Cornwall Fairies and Legends
Tregarthen, Enys
Folklore -- England -- Cornwall (County); Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
One very bright moonlight night in the early autumn, when the
Piskey-stools [31] were thick on Newtrain Cliffs, old Jinnie came
again to watch the Piskeys; and when she got there, there were not any
to be seen. She could not understand it, and she went and looked at
the Piskey-stools to see if they were sitting on any of them having
a chat, which they sometimes did when they were tired of dancing;
but every Piskey-stool on the cliffs was unoccupied.
As she was wondering what had become of the Piskeys, she heard
shrieks of tiny laughter, like the giggles of kittiwakes, coming up
from Newtrain Bay under the cliffs; and she hastened down the steep
road leading to the bay--which was romantic-looking, and almost shut
in by tall cliffs--as fast as her old legs would take her.
When she got to the bottom of the road, she met four little Piskeys
coming up, carrying a large Piskey-bag between them; and being very
anxious to know what they were going to do with the dark-brown thing,
she said:
'My little dears, will you kindly tell me what you are going to do
with the Piskey-bag?'
They were evidently too surprised to answer the old woman at once,
for she had never spoken to them before, and they stared up at her
open-mouthed.
'To sleep in when the cold weather comes,' answered a Piskey at last.
'They are ever so comfortable to snuggle under when the snow is on
the ground,' said another little Piskey.
'Sleep in them, do you?' cried old Jinnie, greatly interested. 'To
think of it now! I expect they are as warm as the blanketing the
blanket-weavers weave in their looms at Padstow. But I never knew
before you slept in the bags; I thought you kept your money in them.'
'We don't, then,' cried the Piskeys, grinning all over their little
elf faces, which were almost as brown as the Piskey-bag they were
carrying. 'We use the tiny young bags to keep our money in, not big
ones like this.'
'Up we go!' cried one of the Piskeys to his companions, giving the one
nearest him a poke in his ribs; and the four little Brown Men began
to ascend the steep road, carrying the Piskey-bag by its four tails,
swinging it to and fro, and shrieking with laughter as they swung it.
Jinnie watched them for a few minutes, and then went down to the pebbly
beach, where she saw dozens of little Brown Men in companies of four,
each company bearing a Piskey-bag between them.
There was a long string of these Little People from the water's edge
to where she met them, which was about a dozen yards from the foot
of the steep road.
The little Brown Men took no notice of her, and swung the bags just as
did the first quartette, seemingly unconscious that she was watching
them, and laughed and joked among themselves as they swung them.
Old Jinnie followed them up the beach and road, and she wondered to
herself where they were going to take the bags; but she never knew,
for when they reached the top of the cliff where they danced, they
vanished, Piskey-bags and all!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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