The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 17

IN PENZANCE: AN ARCHITECT'S TESTIMONY

Penzance from earliest times has undoubtedly been, as it is now, the capital of the Land's End district, the Sacred Land of Britain. And in Penzance I had the good fortune to meet those among its leading citizens who still cherish and keep alive the poetry and the mystic lore of Old Cornwall; and to no one of them am I more indebted than to Mr. Henry Maddern, F.I.A.S. Mr. Maddern tells me that he was initiated into the mysteries of the Cornish folk-lore of this region when a boy in Newlyn, where he was born, by his old nurse Betty Grancan, a native Zennor woman, of stock probably the most primitive and pure in the British Islands. At his home in Penzance, Mr. Maddern dictated to me the very valuable evidence which follows:--

_Two Kinds of Pixies._--'In this region there are two kinds of pixies, one purely a land-dwelling pixy and the other a pixy which dwells on the sea-strand between high and low water mark.[66] The land-dwelling pixy was usually thought to be full of mischievous fun, but it did no harm.

There was a very prevalent belief, when I was a boy, that this sea-strand pixy, called _Bucca_,[67] had to be propitiated by a _cast_ (three) of fish, to ensure the fishermen having a good _shot_ (catch) of fish. The land pixy was supposed to be able to render its devotees invisible, if they only anointed their eyes with a certain green salve made of secret herbs gathered from Kerris-moor.[68] In the invisible condition thus induced, people were able to join the pixy revels, during which, according to the old tradition, time slipped away very, very rapidly, though people returned from the pixies no older than when they went with them.'

_The Nurse and the Ointment._--'I used to hear about a Zennor girl who came to Newlyn as nurse to the child of a gentleman living at Zimmerman-Cot. The gentleman warned her never to touch a box of ointment which he guarded in a special room, nor even to enter that room; but one day in his absence she entered the room and took some of the ointment.

Suspecting the qualities of the ointment, she put it on her eyes with the wish that she might see where her master was. She immediately found herself in the higher part of the orchard amongst the pixies, where they were having much _junketing_ (festivity and dancing); and there saw the gentleman whose child she had nursed. For a time she managed to evade him, but before the _junketing_ was at an end he discovered her and requested her to go home; and then, to her intense astonishment, she learned that she had been away twenty years, though she was unchanged.

The gentleman scolded her for having touched the ointment, paid her wages in full, and sent her back to her people. She always had the one regret, that she had not gone into the forbidden room at first.'

_The Tolcarne Troll._--'The fairy of the Newlyn Tolcarne[69] was in some ways like the Puck of the English Midlands. But this fairy, or troll, was supposed to date back to the time of the Phoenicians. He was described as a little old pleasant-faced man dressed in a tight-fitting leathern jerkin, with a hood on his head, who lived invisible in the rock. Whenever he chose to do so he could make himself visible. When I was a boy it was said that he spent his time voyaging from here to Tyre on the galleys which carried the tin; and, also, that he a.s.sisted in the building of Solomon's Temple. Sometimes he was called "the Wandering One", or "Odin the Wanderer". My old nurse, Betty Grancan, used to say that you could call up the troll at the Tolcarne if while there you held in your hand three dried leaves, one of the ash, one of the oak, and one of the thorn, and p.r.o.nounced an incantation or charm. Betty would never tell me the words of the charm, because she said I was too much of a sceptic. The words of such a Cornish charm had to pa.s.s from one believer to another, through a woman to a man, and from a man to a woman, and thus alternately.'[70]

_Nature of Pixies._--'Pixies were often supposed to be the souls of the prehistoric dwellers of this country. As such, pixies were supposed to be getting smaller and smaller, until finally they are to vanish entirely. The country pixies inhabiting the highlands from above Newlyn on to St. Just were considered a wicked sort. Their great ambition was to change their own offspring for human children; and the true child could only be got back by laying a four-leaf clover on the changeling. A _winickey_ child--one which was weak, frail, and peevish--was of the nature of a changeling. Miner pixies, called "knockers", would accept a portion of a miner's _croust_ (lunch) on good faith, and by knocking lead him to a rich mother-lode, or warn him by knocking if there was danger ahead or a cavern full of water; but if the miner begrudged them the _croust_, he would be left to his own resources to find the lode, and, moreover, the "knockers" would do all they could to lead him away from a good lode. These mine pixies, too, were supposed to be spirits, sometimes spirits of the miners of ancient times.'[71]

_Fairies and Pixies._--'In general appearance the fairies were much the same as pixies. They were small men and women, much smaller than dwarfs.

The men were swarthy in complexion, and the women had a clear complexion of a peach-like bloom. None ever appeared to be more than five-and-twenty to thirty years old. I have heard my nurse say that she could see scores of them whenever she picked a four-leaf clover and put it in the wisp of straw which she carried on her head as a cus.h.i.+on for the bucket of milk. Her theory was that the richness of the milk was what attracted them. Pixies, like fairies, very much enjoyed milk, and people of miserly nature used to put salt around a cow to keep the pixies away; and then the pixies would lead such mean people astray the very first opportunity that came. According to some country-people, the pixies have been seen in the day-time, but usually they are only seen at night.'

A CORNISH EDITOR'S OPINION

Mr. Herbert Thomas, editor of four Cornish papers, _The Cornishman_, _The Cornish Telegraph_, _Post_, and _Evening Times_, and a true Celt himself, has been deeply interested in the folk-lore of Cornwall, and has made excellent use of it in his poetry and other literary productions; so that his personal opinions, which follow, as to the probable origin of the fairy-belief, are for our study a very important contribution:--

_Animistic Origin of Belief in Pixies._--'I should say that the modern belief in pixies, or in fairies, arose from a very ancient Celtic or pre-Celtic belief in spirits. Just as among some savage tribes there is belief in G.o.ds and totems, here there was belief in little spirits good and bad, who were able to help or to hinder man. Belief in the supernatural, in my opinion, is the root of it all.'

A CORNISH FOLK-LORIST'S TESTIMONY

In Penzance I had the privilege of also meeting Miss M. A. Courtney, the well-known folk-lorist, who quite agrees with me in believing that there is in Cornwall a widespread Legend of the Dead; and she cited a few special instances in ill.u.s.tration, as follows:--

_Cornish Legend of the Dead._--'Here amongst the fishermen and sailors there is a belief that the dead in the sea will be heard calling if a drowning is about to occur. I know of a woman who went to a clergyman to have him exorcize her of the spirit of her dead sister, which she said appeared in the form of a bee. And I have heard of miners believing that white moths are spirits.'[72]

EVIDENCE FROM NEWLYN

In Newlyn, Mrs. Jane Tregurtha gave the following important testimony:--

_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 sh.e.l.l 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 Devons.h.i.+re, where he has frequently made sketches of pixies from descriptions given to him by peasants:--

_Devons.h.i.+re Pixies._--'Throughout all the west of Devons.h.i.+re, 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

'Uncle Billy Pender,' as our present witness is familiarly called, is one of the oldest natives of Mousehole, being eighty-five years old; and most of his life has been pa.s.sed on the ocean, as a fisherman, seaman, and pilot. After having told me the usual things about piskies, fairies, spirits, ghosts, and the devil, Uncle Billy Pender was very soon talking about the dead:--

_Cornish Legend of the Dead._--'I was up in bed, and I suppose asleep, and I dreamt that the boy James came to my bedside and woke me up by saying, "How many lights does Death put up?" And in the dream there appeared such light as I never saw in my life; and when I woke up another light like it was in the room. Within three months afterwards we buried two grand-daughters out of this house. This was four years ago.'

When this strange tale was finished, Uncle Billy Pender's daughter, who had been listening, added:--'For three mornings, one after another, there was a robin at our cellar door before the deaths, and my husband said he didn't like that.'

Then Uncle Billy told this weird Breton-like tale:--'"Granny" told about a boat named _Blucher_, going from Newlyn to Bristol with six thousand mackerel, which put in at Arbor Cove, close to Padstow, on account of bad weather. The boat dragged her anchors and was lost. "Granny"

afterwards declared that he saw the crew going up over the Newlyn Slip; and the whole of Newlyn and Mousehole believed him.'

TESTIMONY BY TWO LAND'S END FARMERS

In the Sennen country, within a mile of the end of Britain, I talked with two farmers who knew something about piskies. The first one, Charles Hutchen, of Trevescan, told me this legend:--

_A St. Just Pisky._--'Near St. Just, on Christmas Day, a pisky carried away in his cloak a boy, but the boy got home. Then the pisky took him a second time, and again the boy got home. Each time the boy was away for only an hour' (probably in a dream or trance state).

_Seeing the Pisky-Dance._--Frank Ellis, seventy-eight years old, of the same village of Trevescan, then gave the following evidence:--'Up on Sea-View Green there are two rings where the piskies used to dance and play music on a moonlight night. I've heard that they would come there from the moors. _Little people_ they are called. If you keep quiet when they are dancing you'll see them, but if you make any noise they'll disappear.' Frank Ellis's wife, who is a very aged woman, was in the house listening to the conversation, and added at this point:--'My grandmother, Nancy Maddern, was down on Sea-View Green by moonlight and saw the piskies dancing, and pa.s.sed near them. She said they were like little children, and had red cloaks.'

TESTIMONY FROM A SENNEN COVE FISHERMAN

John Gilbert Guy, seventy-eight years old, a retired fisherman of Sennen Cove, offers very valuable testimony, as follows:--

_'Small People'._--'Many say they have seen the _small people_ here by the hundreds. In Ireland they call the _small people_ the fairies. My mother believes there were such things, and so did the old folks in these parts. My grandmother used to put down a good furze fire for _them_ on stormy nights, because, as she said, "_They_ are a sort of people wandering about the world with no home or habitation, and ought to be given a little comfort." The most fear of _them_ was that they might come at night and change a baby for one that was no good. My mother said that Joan Nicholas believed the fairies had changed her baby, because it was very small and cross-tempered. Up on the hill you'll see a round ring with gra.s.s greener than anywhere else, and that is where the _small people_ used to dance.'

_Danger of Seeing the 'Little People'._--'I heard that a woman set out water to wash her baby in, and that before she had used the water the _small people_ came and washed their babies in it. She didn't know about this, and so in was.h.i.+ng her baby got some of the water in her eyes, and then all at once she could see crowds of _little people_ about her. One of them came to her and asked if she was able to see their crowd, and when she said "Yes," the _little people_ wanted to take her eyes out, and she had to clear away from them as fast as she could.'

TESTIMONY FROM A CORNISH MINER

William Shepherd, a retired miner of Pendeen, near St. Just, where he has pa.s.sed all his life, offers us from his own experiences under the earth the evidence which follows:--

_Mine Piskies._--'There are mine-piskies which are not the "knockers".

I've heard old men in the mines say that they have seen them, and they call them the _small people_. It appears that they don't like company, for they are always seen singly. The "knockers" are spirits, too, as one might say. They are said to bring bad luck, while the _small people_ may bring good luck.'