The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 16

'"On the first day of the new moon the boy remembered his promise, and returned to the other country; and there was great rejoicing in the beautiful palace when he arrived. Einion, for that was the boy's name, and Olwen, for that was the girl's name, now wanted to marry; but they had to go about it quietly and half secretly, for the _fair-folk_ dislike ceremony and noise. When the marriage was over, Einion wished to go back with Olwen to the upper world. So two snow-white ponies were given them, and they were allowed to depart.

'"They reached the upper world safely; and, being possessed of unlimited wealth, lived most handsomely on a great estate which came into their possession. A son was born to them, and he was called Taliessin. People soon began to ask for Olwen's pedigree, and as none was given it was taken for granted that she was one of the _fair-folk_. 'Yes, indeed,'

said Einion, 'there is no doubt that she is one of the _fair-folk_, there is no doubt that she is one of the very _fair-folk_, for she has two sisters as pretty as she is, and if you saw them all together you would admit that the name is a suitable one.' And this is the origin of the term _fair-folk_ (_Tylwyth Teg_)."'

From Wales we go to the nearest Brythonic country, Cornwall, to study the fairy-folk there.

VI. IN CORNWALL

Introduction by HENRY JENNER, Member of the Gorsedd of the Bards of Brittany; Fellow and Local Secretary for Cornwall of the Society of Antiquaries; author of _A Handbook of the Cornish Language_, &c.

In Cornwall the legends of giants, of saints, or of Arthur and his knights, the observances and superst.i.tions connected with the prehistoric stone monuments, holy wells, mines, and the like, the stories of submerged or buried cities, and the fragments of what would seem to be pre-Christian faiths, have no doubt occasional points of contact with Cornish fairy legends, but they do not help to explain the fairies very much. Yet certain it is that not only in Cornwall and other Celtic lands, but throughout most of the world, a belief in fairies exists or has existed, and so widespread a belief must have a reason for it, though not necessarily a good one. That which with unconscious humour men generally call 'education' has in these days caused those lower cla.s.ses, to whom the deposit of this faith was entrusted, to be ashamed of it, and to despise and endeavour to forget it. And so now in Cornwall, as elsewhere at that earlier outbreak of Philistinism, the Reformation,

From haunted spring and gra.s.sy ring Troop goblin, elf and fairy, And the kelpie must flit from the black bog-pit, And the brownie must not tarry.

But, in spite of Protestantism, school-boards, and education committees, 'pisky-pows' are still placed on the ridge-tiles of West Cornish cottages, to propitiate the piskies and give them a dancing-place, lest they should turn the milk sour, and St. Just and Morvah folk are still 'pisky-led' on the Gump (_an un Gumpas_, the Level Down, between Chun Castle and Carn Kenidjack), and more rarely St. Columb and Roche folk on Goss Moor. It will not do to say that it is only another form of 'whisky-led'. That is an evidently modern explanation, invented since the subst.i.tution of strange Scottish and Irish drinks for the good 'Nantes' and wholesome 'Plymouth' of old time, and it does not fit in with the phenomena. It was only last winter, in a cottage not a hundred yards from where I am writing, that milk was set at night for piskies, who had been knocking on walls and generally making nuisances of themselves. Apparently the piskies only drank the 'astral' part of the milk (whatever that may be) and then the neighbouring cats drank what was left, and it disagreed with them. I cannot vouch for the truth of the part about the piskies and the 'astral' milk--I give it as it was told to me by the occupant of the cottage, who was not unacquainted with 'occult' terminology--but I do know that the milk was consumed, and that the cats, one of which was my own, were with one accord unwell all over the place. But for the present purpose it does not matter whether these things really happened or not. The point is that people thought they happened.

Robert Hunt, in his _Popular Romances of the West of England_, divided the fairies of Cornish folk-lore into five cla.s.ses: (1) the Small People; (2) the Spriggans; (3) the Piskies; (4) the Buccas, Bockles, or Knockers; (5) the Brownies. This is an incorrect cla.s.sification. The _Pobel Vean_ or Small People, the Spriggans, and the Piskies are not really distinguishable from one another. Bucca, who properly is but one, is a deity not a fairy, and it is said that at Newlyn, the great seat of his worship, offerings of fish are still left on the beach for him. His name is the Welsh _pwca_, which is probably 'Puck', though Shakespeare's Puck was just a pisky, and it may be connected with the general Slavonic word _Bog_, G.o.d; so that if, as some say, _buccaboo_ is really meant for _Bucca-du_, Black Bucca, this may be an equivalent of _Czern.o.bog_, the Black G.o.d, who was the Ahriman of Slavonic dualism, and _Bucca-widn_ (White Bucca), which is rarer, though the expression does come into a St. Levan story, may be the corresponding _Bielobog_.

_Bockle_, which personally I have never heard used, suggests the Scottish _bogle_, and both may be diminutives of _bucca_, _bog_, _bogie_, or _bug_, the last in the sense in which one English version translates the _timor nocturnus_ of Psalm XC. 5, not in that of _cimex lectularius_. But _bockle_ and _brownie_ are probably both foreign importations borrowed from books, though a 'brownie' _eo nomine_ has been reported from Sennen within the last twenty years.

The Knockers or Knackers are mine-spirits, quite unconnected with Bucca or bogles. The story, as I have always heard it, is that they are the spirits of Jews who were sent by the Romans to work in the tin mines, some say for being concerned in the Crucifixion of our Lord, which sounds improbable. They are benevolent spirits, and warn miners of danger.

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 _allees 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]

Without begging any question concerning the origin, ethnology, or h.o.m.ogeneity of those who are called 'Picts' in history, from the times of Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus and Claudian until Kenneth MacAlpine united the Pictish kingdom with the Scottish, we can nevertheless accept the fact that the name 'Pict' has been popularly applied to some pre-Celtic race or races, to whom certain ancient structures, such as 'vitrified forts'

and 'Picts' houses' have been attributed. In Cornwall there are instances of prehistoric structures being called 'Piskies' Halls' (there is an _allee couverte_ so called at Bosahan in Constantine), and 'Piskies' Crows' (_Crow_ or _Craw_, Breton _Krao_, is a shed or hovel; 'pegs' craw' is still used for 'pig-sty'); and there are three genuine examples of what would in Scotland be called 'Picts' Houses' just outside St. Ives in the direction of Zennor, though only modern antiquaries have applied that name to them. In the district in which they are, the fringe of coast from St. Ives round by Zennor, Morvah, Pendeen, and St. Just nearly to Sennen, are found to this day a strange and separate people of Mongol type, like the Bigaudens of Pont l'Abbe and Penmarc'h in the Breton Cornouailles, one of those 'fragments of forgotten peoples' of the 'sunset bound of Lyonesse' of whom Tennyson tells. They are a little 'stuggy' dark folk, and until comparatively modern times were recognized as different from their Celtic neighbours, and were commonly believed to be largely wizards and witches. One of Mr.

Wentz's informants seems to attribute to Zennor a particularly virulent brand of pisky, and Zennor is the most primitive part of that district.

Possibly the more completely unmixed ancestors of this race were 'more so' than the present representatives; but, be this as it may, if _Pixy_ is really _Picty_, it would seem that, like the inhabitants of the extreme north of the British Isles, the south-western Britons eventually applied the fairly general popular name of the mysterious, half dreaded, half despised aboriginal to a race of preternatural beings in whose existence they believed, and, with the name, transferred some of the qualities, attributes, and legends, thus producing a mixed mental conception now known as 'pisky' or 'pixy'.

There seems to have been always and everywhere (or nearly so) a belief in a race, neither divine nor human, but very like to human beings, who existed on a 'plane' different from that of humans, though occupying the same s.p.a.ce. This has been called the 'astral' or the 'fourth-dimensional'

plane. Why 'astral'? why 'fourth-dimensional'? why 'plane'? are questions the answers to which do not matter, and I do not attempt to defend the terms, but you must call it something. This is the belief to which Scott refers in the introduction to _The Monastery_, as the 'beautiful but almost forgotten theory of astral spirits or creatures of the elements, surpa.s.sing human beings in knowledge and power, but inferior to them as being subject, after a certain s.p.a.ce of years, to a death which is to them annihilation'. The subdivisions and elaborations of the subject by Paracelsus, the Rosicrucians, and the modern theosophists are no doubt amplifications of that popular belief, which, though rather undefined, resembles the theory of these mystics in its main outlines, and was probably what suggested it to them.

These beings are held to be normally imperceptible to human senses, but conditions may arise in which the 'astral plane' of the elementals and that part of the 'physical plane' in which, if one may so express it, some human being happens to be, may be in such a relation to one another that these and other spirits may be seen and heard. Some such condition is perhaps described in the story of Balaam the soothsayer, in that incident when 'the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha', and possibly also in the mysterious 'sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees' which David heard; but no doubt in these cases it was angels and not elementals. It may also be allowable to suggest, without irreverence, that the Gospel stories of the Transfiguration and Ascension are connected with the same idea, though the latter is expressed in the form of the geocentric theory of the universe.

The Cornish pisky stories are largely made up of instances of contact between the two 'planes', sometimes accidental, sometimes deliberately induced by incantations or magic eye-salve, yet with these stories are often mingled incidents that are not preternatural at all. How, when, and why this belief arose, I do not pretend even to conjecture; but there it is, and though of course the holders of it do not talk about 'planes', that is very much the notion which they appear to have.

I do not think that the piskies were ever definitely held to be the spirits of the dead, and while a certain confusion has arisen, as some of Mr. Wentz's informants show, I think it belongs to the confused eschatology of modern Protestants. To a pre-Reformation Cornishman, or indeed to any other Catholic, the idea was unthinkable. 'Justorum animae in manu Dei sunt, et non tanget illos tormentum malitiae: visi sunt oculis insipientium mori: illi autem sunt in pace,' and the transmigration of the souls of the faithful departed into another order of beings, not disembodied because never embodied, was to them impossible. Such a notion is on a par with the quaint but very usual hope of the modern 'Evangelical' Christian, so beautifully expressed in one of Hans Andersen's stories, that his departed friends are promoted to be 'angels'. There may be, perhaps, an idea, as there certainly is in the Breton Death-Faith, that the spirits of the faithful dead are all round us, and are not rapt away into a _distant_ Paradise or Purgatory.

This may be of pre-Christian origin, but does not contradict any article of the Christian faith. The warnings, apparitions, and hauntings, the 'calling of the dead' at sea, and other details of Cornish Death-Legends, seem to point to a conception of a 'plane' of the dead, similar to but not necessarily identical with that of the elementals.

Under some quite undefined conditions contact may occur with the 'physical plane', whence the alleged incidents; but this Cornish Death-Faith, though sometimes, as commonly in Brittany, presenting similar phenomena, has in itself nothing to do with piskies, and as for the unfaithful departed, their destination was also well understood, and it was not Fairyland. There are possible connecting links in the not very common idea that piskies are the souls of unbaptized children, and in the more common notion that the _Pobel Vean_ are, not the disembodied spirits, but the living souls and bodies of the old Pagans, who, refusing Christianity, are miraculously preserved alive, but are condemned to decrease in size until they vanish altogether. Some authorities hold that it is the race and not the individual which dwindles from generation to generation.

This last idea, as well as the name 'pixy', gives some probability to the conclusion that, as applied to Cornwall, Mr. MacRitchie's theory represents a part of the truth, and that on to an already existing belief in elementals have been grafted exaggerated traditions of a dark pre-Celtic people. These were not necessarily pygmies, but smaller than Celts, and may have survived for a long time in forests and hill countries, sometimes friendly to the taller race, whence come the stories of piskies working for farmers, sometimes hostile, which may account for the legends of changelings and other mischievous tricks.

This is how it appears to one who knows his Cornwall in all its aspects fairly well, but does not profess to be an expert in folk-lore.

BOSPOWES, HAYLE, CORNWALL, _July_ 1910.

Our investigation of the Fairy-Faith in Cornwall covers the region between Falmouth and the Land's End, which is now the most Celtic; and the Tintagel country on the north coast. It is generally believed that ancient Cornish legends, like the Cornish language, are things of the past only, but I am now no longer of that opinion. Undoubtedly Cornwall is the most anglicized of all Celtic lands we are studying, and its folk-lore is therefore far from being as virile as the Irish folk-lore; nevertheless, through its people, racially mixed though they are, there still flows the blood and the inspiration of a prehistoric native ancestry, and among the oldest Cornish men and women of many an isolated village, or farm, there yet remains some belief in fairies and pixies.

Moreover, throughout all of Old Cornwall there is a very living faith in the Legend of the Dead; and that this Cornish Legend of the Dead, with its peculiar Brythonic character, should be parallel as it is to the Breton Legend of the Dead, has heretofore, so far as I am aware, not been pointed out. I am giving, however, only a very few of the Cornish death-legends collected, because in essence most of them are alike.

A CORNISH HISTORIAN'S TESTIMONY

I was privileged to make my first call in rural Cornwall at the pretty country home of Miss Susan E. Gay, of Crill, about three miles from Falmouth; and Miss Gay, who has written a well-known history of Falmouth (_Old Falmouth_, London, 1903), very willingly accorded me an interview on the subject of my inquiry, and finally dictated for my use the following matter:--

_Pixies as 'Astral Plane' Beings._--'The pixies and fairies are little beings in the human form existing on the 'astral plane', who may be in the process of evolution; and, as such, I believe people have seen them.

The 'astral plane' is not known to us now because our psychic faculty of perception has faded out by non-use, and this condition has been brought about by an almost exclusive development of the physical brain; but it is likely that the psychic faculty will develop again in its turn.'

_Psychical Interpretation of Folk-Lore._--'It is my point of view that there is a basis of truth in the folk-lore. With its remnants of occult learning, magic, charms, and the like, folk-lore seems to be the remains of forgotten psychical facts, rather than history, as it is often called.'

PEASANT EVIDENCE FROM THE CRILL COUNTRY

Miss Gay kindly gave me the names of certain peasants in the Crill region, and from one of them, Mrs. Harriett Christopher, I gleaned the following material:--

_A Pisky Changeling._--'A woman who lived near Breage Church had a fine girl baby, and she thought the piskies came and took it and put a withered child in its place. The withered child lived to be twenty years old, and was no larger when it died than when the piskies brought it. It was fretful and peevish and frightfully shrivelled. The parents believed that the piskies often used to come and look over a certain wall by the house to see the child. And I heard my grandmother say that the family once put the child out of doors at night to see if the piskies would take it back again.'

_Nature of Piskies._--'The piskies are said to be very small. You could never see them by day. I used to hear my grandmother, who has been dead fifty years, say that the piskies used to hold a fair in the fields near Breage, and that people saw them there dancing. I also remember her saying that it was customary to set out food for the piskies at night.

My grandmother's great belief was in piskies and in spirits; and she considered piskies spirits. She used to tell so many stories about spirits [of the dead] coming back and such things that I would be afraid to go to bed.'

EVIDENCE FROM CONSTANTINE

Our witnesses from the ancient and picturesque village of Constantine are John Wilmet, seventy-eight years old, and his good wife, two most excellent and well-preserved types of the pa.s.sing generation of true Cornish stock. John began by telling me the following tale about an _allee couverte_--a tale which in one version or another is apt to be told of most Cornish megaliths:--

_A Pisky-House._--'William Murphy, who married my sister, once went to the pisky-house at Bosahan with a surveyor, and the two of them heard such unearthly noises in it that they came running home in great excitement, saying they had heard the piskies.'

_The Pisky Thrasher._--'On a farm near here, a pisky used to come at night to thrash the farmer's corn. The farmer in payment once put down a new suit for him. When the pisky came and saw it, he put it on, and said:--

Pisky fine and pisky gay, Pisky now will fly away.

And they say he never returned.'

_Nature of Piskies._--'I always understood the piskies to be little people. A great deal was said about ghosts in this place. Whether or not piskies are the same as ghosts I cannot tell, but I fancy the old folks thought they were.'

_Exorcism._--'A farmer who lived two miles from here, near the Gweek River, called Parson Jago to his house to have him quiet the ghosts or spirits regularly haunting it, for Parson Jago could always put such things to rest. The clergyman went to the farmer's house, and with his whip formed a circle on the floor and then commanded the spirit, which made its appearance on the table, to come down into the circle. While on the table the spirit had been visible to all the family, but as soon as it got into the ring it disappeared; and the house was never haunted afterwards.'

AT ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT, MARAZION

Our next place for an investigation of the surviving Cornish Fairy-Faith is Marazion, the very ancient British town opposite the isle called St.

Michael's Mount. (From Constantine I walked through the country to this point, talking with as many old people as possible, but none of them knew very much about ancient Cornish beliefs.) It is believed, though the matter is very doubtful, that Marazion was the chief mart for the tin trade of Celtic Britain, and that the Mount--sacred to the Sun and to the Pagan Mysteries long before Caesar crossed the Channel from Gaul--sheltered the brilliantly-coloured sailing-ships of the Phoenicians.[64] In such a romantic town, where Oriental merchants and Celtic pilgrims probably once mingled together, one might expect some survival of olden beliefs and customs.

_Piskies._--To Mr. Thomas G. Jago, of Marazion, with a memory extending backwards more than seventy years, he being eighty years old, I am indebted for this statement about the pisky creed in that locality:--'I imagine that one hundred and fifty years ago the belief in piskies and spirits was general. In my boyhood days, piskies were often called "the mites" (little people): they were regarded as little spirits. The word _piskies_ is the old Cornish brogue for pixies. In certain gra.s.s fields, mushrooms growing in a circle might be seen of a morning, and the old folks pointing to the mushrooms would say to the children, "Oh, the piskies have been dancing there last night."'

Two more of the oldest natives of Marazion, among others with whom I talked, are William Rowe, eighty-two years old, and his married sister seventy-eight years old. About the piskies Mr. Rowe said this:--'People would go out at night and lose their way and then declare that they had been pisky-led. I think they meant by this that they fell under some spiritual influence--that some spirit led them astray. The piskies were said to be small, and they were thought of as spirits.'[65] Mr. Rowe's sister added:--'If we as children did anything wrong, the old folks would say to us, "The piskies will carry you away if you do that again."'

_Witch-Doctors._--I heard the following witch-story from a lawyer, a native of the district, who lives in the country just beyond Marazion:--'Jimmy Thomas, of Wendron parish, who died within the last twenty-five years, was the last witch-doctor I know about in West Cornwall. He was supposed to have great power over evil spirits. His immediate predecessor was a woman, called the "Witch of Wendron", and she did a big business. My father once visited her in company with a friend whose father had lost some horses. This was about seventy to eighty years ago. The witch when consulted on this occasion turned her back to my father's companion, and began talking to herself in Cornish.

Then she gave him some herbs. His father used the herbs, and no more horses died: the herbs were supposed to have driven all evil spirits out of the stable.'