But the only true Cornish fairy is the Pisky, of the race which is the _Pobel Vean_ or Little People, and the Spriggan is only one of his aspects. The Pisky would seem to be the 'Brownie' of the Lowland Scot, the _Duine Sith_ of the Highlander, and, if we may judge from an interesting note in Scott's _The Pirate_, the 'Peght' of the Orkneys. If _Daoine Sith_ really means 'The Folk of the Mounds' (barrows), not 'The People of Peace', it is possible that there is something in the theory that Brownie, _Duine Sith_, and 'Peght', which is Pict, are only in their origin ways of expressing the little dark-complexioned aboriginal folk who were supposed to inhabit the barrows, cromlechs, and _allées couvertes_, and whose cunning, their only effective weapon against the mere strength of the Aryan invader, earned them a reputation for magical powers. Now _Pisky_ or _Pisgy_ is really _Pixy_. Though as a patriotic Cornishman I ought not to admit it, I cannot deny, especially as it suits my argument better, that the Devon form is the correct one. But after all there has been always a strong Cornish element in Devon, even since the time when Athelstan drove the Britons out of Exeter and set the Tamar for their boundary, and I think the original word is really Cornish. The transposition of consonants, especially when _s_ is one of them, is not uncommon in modern Cornish English. _Hosged_ for _hogshead_, and _haps_ for _hasp_ are well-known instances. If we take the root of _Pixy_, _Pix_, and divide the double letter _x_ into its component parts, we get _Piks_ or _Pics_, and if we remember that a final _s_ or _z_ in Cornish almost always represents a _t_ or _d_ of Welsh and Breton (cf. _tas_ for _tad_, _nans_ for _nant_, _bos_ for _bod_), we may not unreasonably, though without absolute certainty, conjecture that _Pixy_ is _Picty_ in a Cornish form.[63]