Mr. Hunt, in his popular "Romances of the West of England," tells us that Bal Lane in Germoe was a famous haunt of the fairies in old time, and that at certain seasons of the year they held a great fair there. The fairy folk in local superstitions seem to have been divided into three species--the piskies, fairies of the moors, dells and surface of the earth generally; the knockers or knackers, fairies of the mines, whom the miners heard knocking in the depths of the earth, indicating by their knocks the presence of rich veins of ore, or if of a malignant disposition luring the miners by their knockings to vain efforts after non-existent mineral wealth. The third order of fairies was that of the Buccas, an amphibious species, to whom down to recent times offerings of fish were made. It is pleasant to gather from the learned author of "The Faery Faith in Celtic Countries" that the superstitions of the Cornish are of a much brighter character than those of the other branches of the Celtic race; the superstitious beliefs of their near kinsmen, the Bretons, being of a specially gloomy character. The pobol vean, it seems, are much more cheery folk, in spite of all their pranks, than gloomy Ankou, king of the dead, and his attendant ghosts. Having said that the Cornish folklore is not of a gloomy character is to say perhaps all that can be said in praise of it. I have alluded to the foregoing tales and beliefs because in the course of a generation or so they will have completely faded from the popular mind. Our people seem eager to have done with the past, and to reach forward to the future, fraught with new conditions and new thought. When we compare the present with the past, we can only be thankful for all that change has brought within recent generations in physical surroundings and moral outlook. Let us hope that her future gifts, which give promise of being prodigal, will be as beneficent as those of the recent past, for we still require much at her hands. The danger seems to lie in wandering into a materialistic desert, for it is but too true that "Man can not live by bread alone." [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [61] I am aware that the term Sanctuary came to be applied very loosely, and came to mean sometimes little more than Churchland or even a Tithe Barn. The Rev. Thomas Taylor, of St. Just, suggests with regard to the Kenneggie "Church Close" and "Sanctuary" that these fields may have been fragments of the ancient Manor of Methleigh, which passed from the See of Exeter to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, who alienated it from the Church. [62] "Park Blood" might be "Park Blod," the field of flowers. "Blodon" in the 12th century vocabulary is "Flos," and "Blot" is the same as "farina." In Welsh "blawd" is "flour" and "blodon" "flower." In later Cornish "blez" is "flour" and "bledzahn" is "flower." There still survives a dialect word "blouth." _Mr. H. Jenner_ [63] Mr. H. Jenner. [64] See Daniell's "History of Cornwall." INDEX.