_The 'Little Folk'._--'The old people thoroughly believed in the _little folk_, and that they gambolled all over the moors on moonlight nights. Some pixies would rain down blessings and others curses; and to remove the curses people would go to the wells blessed by the saints. Whenever anything went wrong in the kitchen at night the pixies were blamed. After the 31st of October [or after Halloween] the blackberries are not fit to eat, for the pixies have then been over them' (cf. the parallel Irish belief, p. 38). _Fairy Guardian of the Men-an-Tol._[73]--'At the Men-an-Tol there is supposed to be a guardian fairy or pixy who can make miraculous cures. And my mother knew of an actual case in which a changeling was put through the stone in order to get the real child back. It seems that evil pixies changed children, and that the pixy at the Men-an-Tol being good, could, in opposition, undo their work.' _Exorcism._--'A spirit was put to rest on the Green here in Newlyn. The parson prayed and fasted, and then commanded the spirit to _teeme_ (dip dry) the sea with a limpet shell containing no bottom; and the spirit is supposed to be still busy at this task.' _Piskies as Apparitions._--When I talked with her in her neat cottage at Newlyn, Miss Mary Ann Chirgwin (who was born on St. Michael's Mount in 1825) told me this:--'The old people used to say the piskies were apparitions of the dead come back in the form of little people, but I can't remember anything more than this about them.' AN ARTIST'S TESTIMONY One of the members of the Newlyn Art School was able to offer a few of his own impressions concerning the pixies of Devonshire, where he has frequently made sketches of pixies from descriptions given to him by peasants:-- _Devonshire Pixies._--'Throughout all the west of Devonshire, anywhere near the moorlands, the country people are much given to belief in pixies and ghosts. I think they expect to see them about the twilight hour; though I have not found anybody who has actually seen a pixy--the belief now is largely based on hearsay.' TESTIMONY FROM THE HISTORIAN OF MOUSEHOLE To Mr. Richard Harry, the historian of Mousehole, I am indebted for these remarks about the nature and present state of the belief in pixies as he observes it in that region:-- _The Pixy Belief._--'The piskies, thought of as little people who appear on moonlight nights, are still somewhat believed in here. If interfered with too much they are said to exhibit almost fiendish powers. In a certain sense they are considered spiritual, but in another sense they are much materialized in the conceptions of the people. Generally speaking, the belief in them has almost died out within the last fifty years.' A SEAMAN'S TESTIMONY