North Cornwall Fairies and Legends

A small boy called Jim Nancarrow was sitting one day eating a pasty on top of the Crow Pound, a large enclosure built on a common by the far-famed St. Neot to impound the pilfering crows of the parish that bears his name.

Jim was the son of a thatcher, and he was waiting to accompany his father to a distant hamlet to help him to thatch a cottage. He looked a nice little lad in his clean white smock and nankeen breeches and soft felt hat—much the worse for wear—shading his bright young face and clear blue eyes.

As he was waiting for his father and eating his pasty, which his mother had given him for his dinner, he saw a crow flying over Goonzion Downs, of which the Crow Pound common was a part.

As he watched it he thought of the pilfering crows which, according to the old tale, little St. Neot impounded there from morning till evening on Sundays, that his people might go to church undisturbed by fear of the great black thievish birds which ate up the corn sown in their fields. Jim had often heard this story from the old people of the parish, and whenever he saw a crow he wondered if it were a relation of the wicked crows their patron Saint had impounded.

The crow that the boy was watching was flying in the direction of the Crow Pound, and when it came near it alighted on the top of the wall quite close to the lad.

The crow was lean to look at, and scanty of feathers, and such a sorry-looking bird that Jim broke off a piece of his pasty and threw to him, which he ate as if he were starving.

‘One would think you were one of the pilfering crows of St. Neot’s time,’ said Jim, tossing him another piece of his pasty; and to his surprise, the bird answered back:

‘I am!’

‘Are you?’ cried Jim, staring hard at the crow. ‘Well, you look ancient enough to be one of those birds, though I have always understood that our patron Saint lived ever so long ago, when Alfred the Great was a little chap like me. But p’r’aps crows tell lies as well as pilfer.’

‘If I am not one of the identical crows St. Neot was unkind enough to put into this pound,’ croaked the big black bird, eyeing Jim and his pasty with his bright little eye, ‘I am a descendant of theirs in the direct line. I truly am,’ as the lad stared as if he did not believe the assertion. ‘Those poor impounded crows learnt the language of men during the long hours of their imprisonment, listening to all the little Saint and his people said about them outside this pound, and they passed on their dearly-bought knowledge to their children through long generations.’

‘Then you are quite “high learnt,” as the old Granfer men say,’ cried Jim, gazing up at the bird in open-eyed amazement.

‘I confess I am,’ returned the crow with due modesty, ‘especially in the old Cornish tongue, in which I can swear to any extent. I am not going to use bad language now,’ as Jim took up a stone to throw at him. ‘You would not understand it if I did. I am also “high learnt” in the needs of the body, and I shall be ever so grateful for a bit more of your pasty. It isn’t nice to have an aching void inside one’s little feather stumjacket.’

‘I suppose it can’t be,’ said the lad, dropping the stone and breaking off a large piece of his pasty to toss to the bird.

He was a feeling-hearted little fellow, and the crow’s quaint appeal touched him, and the sorry-looking bird, with his bedraggled tail, had most of his pasty.

‘I have had a good meal for once in my life, and am full fed,’ said the crow, when the last of the pasty was eaten; and he perched on a stone, starred with stonecrop, and fluffed out all the feathers he possessed, and looked with a comical expression at Jim.

‘I am better fed than little St. Neot after his poor little meal of fish,’ he continued, still eyeing the boy, ‘and I am feeling so comfortable that I am inclined for a chat.’

‘Are you?’ cried Jim, who thought this great black crow was a wonderful crow, which he certainly was. ‘I don’t know what to yarn about.’

‘I do, then,’ answered the bird quickly. ‘I suppose you have heard the old whiddle1 how the little St. Neot put the poor crows into this pound.’

‘Yes, I have heard about it from the Granfer men and Grannie women here at Churchtown,’ said Jim, turning his face towards a little village close to the church which he could just see from where he was sitting. ‘But they never made much of a story of it.’

‘Didn’t they? Then perhaps you would like to hear the crows’ version of the old tale,’ said the crow. ‘It will tell you that their morals were not so black as the farmers in this parish made out to the Holy Man.’

‘I don’t mind, if you are quick about it,’ said Jim. ‘I am going to a farm with my father to help him do some thatching when he has finished his dinner.’

‘I cannot be driven after such a heavy meal of pasty,’ croaked the crow; ‘and if I may not take my time, I won’t tell it at all.’

‘As you like,’ cried Jim with fine indifference; but the bird was anxious to tell the whiddle, and he began:

‘We crows always considered it within our right to take what we could,’ said the crow, ‘and pilfering, as the farmers hereabouts were pleased to call it, was the only way the crows had of picking up a living, and they watched their opportunity to take what they needed to satisfy their hunger when the farmers were not about. But back in those far-away days when St. Neot dwelt here to try and make people good, times were dreadfully bad, especially for crows. The people were all tillers of the land in those days, and lived by the sweat of their brow, as crows did by pilfering. There was no other way open to them, and the farmers had their eyes on the land and on us poor hungry birds from dawn to dark, except on the Rest Day; and the only chance the crows had of filling their stomachs was on Sunday, when the people went to church.

‘The starving crows looked forward to Sunday as only poor starving birds with empty crops could, and the moment one of the elder crows gave the signal, which he did in the crow way, they all flew off to the corn-sown fields, and had a regular feast. My word! and didn’t they feed! They picked out with their sharp beaks every grain of corn they could find.

‘When the farmers found out the hungry crows had eaten up all the corn they had sown, there was the Black Man to pay, and the poor crows were anathematized from one end of the parish to the other.

‘The farmers resowed their fields, but they took good care to watch and see that the crows did not rob them of their toil; and they were always about the corn-sown land, Sundays as well as week-days, and the crows had to go supperless to bed, and little St. Neot had to preach to bare walls.

‘The Saint was greatly distressed at his people’s neglect of their religious duties, and he told them how wicked it was to stay away from church. The people said they were sorry, but declared it was the fault of the pilfering crows.

‘“The pilfering crows!” cried the Holy Man. “What have the crows to do with your stopping away from the House of God?”

‘“Everything,” answered the farmers; and they told little St. Neot that whenever they sowed bread-corn in their fields the wicked crows came and ate it all up, and that if he could not prevent them from doing this wickedness, they must keep away from church and watch their fields. “We and our children must have bread to eat,” they added, which was true enough—true for crows as well as men.

‘The Holy Man was very much grieved to hear the cause of their not coming to church, and he said he would devise some means to prevent the crows from robbing the fields whilst they were attending to their worship.

‘St. Neot was as good as his word, and it was noised about in the parish that he was building a great square enclosure of moorstone and mould about half a mile from the church; and when it was finished, he told his wondering people it was a pound for crows, which he meant to impound on Sundays from dawn till dusk, so that the farmers might come to church and worship without having their minds disturbed by fear of those black little robbers eating their corn.

‘There was a fearful to-do among the poor hungry crows when they learned what St. Neot had done; and although they knew they were within their right to steal when they were hungry—and they were always hungry, poor things!—they were sorry they ate up the corn the farmers had sown, and every crow looked forward to the coming Rest Day with fear and trembling.

‘Well, Sunday came, as Sundays will,’ continued the crow, ‘and before the sun had risen little St. Neot made known his will to the crows that they were to come to be impounded, and such power had the Saint over beast and bird that the crows had no choice save to obey, and long before St. Neot’s bell rang out to call his people to worship in the little church which he had built for them by the aid of his two-deer team and one-hare team, all the crows in the parish came as they were bidden to be impounded in the Crow Pound.

‘And, my gracious! what a lot of them came! There were crows of all sorts and conditions, all ages and sizes! There were great-great-great Granfer and Grannie Crows! there were great-great Granfer and Grannie Crows! great Granfer and Grannie Crows by the score! Grannie Crows by the hundred! Mammie and Daddy Crows by the thousand! and as for the children, and great-great-grand-children, they could hardly be counted! Even poor little Baby Crows, just able to fly, were there!

‘The Crow Pound was chock-full of crows, and all the place was as black as St. Neot’s gown. And as for the noise they made, it was enough to turn the Holy Man’s brain; but it didn’t.

‘The little Saint did not expect to see so many crows, it was certain, though he expected a goodly number, by the big enclosure he had made; and the old tale says that, when he saw so many birds, he exclaimed with uplifted hands, “My goodness! what a lot of crows!” and he looked round at this great assemblage—all in respectable black—in open-eyed amazement.

‘The people who came flocking to church when they heard that the crows were safe in the Crow Pound were almost as astonished as St. Neot to see such a big congregation of birds.

‘The church was too far away from the pound for the crows to hear the little Saint preaching, but when the wind blew up from Churchtown they could hear the singing, and to show you they were not so bad as the farmers made out to the Holy Man, they croaked as loud as ever they could when Mass was sung, and were as silent as the grave during the time St. Neot was preaching.

‘Every year, from sowing time till the corn was reaped and safe in the barn, the crows were impounded every Sunday from the early morning till evening whilst little St. Neot lived.’

‘Is that all?’ asked Jim, who listened to the crow’s version of the old tale till it was finished.

‘Yes,’ answered the great black bird with a croak, and when he had said that he took to his wings and flew away as fast as he could fly over Goonzion Downs, the way he had come.

‘That wisht-looking crow did not tell the old whiddle half bad,’ said Jim to himself, as he watched the bird fly away. ‘Shouldn’t I like to have seen this old pound full of crows! It must have been terribly funny when St. Neot looked in upon them and cried, “My goodness! what a lot of crows!” It must have been as good as a Christmas play. There, father is coming. That sharp-eyed old crow must have seen him climbing the hill.’

Once upon a time, so the old story begins, there were an old man and his wife called Granfer and Grannie Nankivell, who lived on a moor, and a small grand-daughter who lived with them.

Genefer was the name of this little girl. She was a small brown child. Brown as a Piskey, her grandfather said; but, brown as she was, she was exceedingly pretty. Her lips were as red as the reddest of berries, and the glow on her cheeks matched her lips.

Her grandfather was a turf-cutter, and most of his days had been spent cutting turf on the Cornish moors.

When this old man was between sixty and seventy he cleared out a whole bog, which happened to be a Piskey-bed.

The Piskeys never like their sleeping-places to be disturbed, and when they found out Granfer Nankivell had done it, they were very angry, and set up Piskey-lights to lead him astray when he came home. But they did it in vain as far as he was concerned. The old turf-cutter was very learned in Piskeys’ wiles, and never ventured across the moors without wearing one of his garments inside out, and this made him Piskey-proof, which means that the Piskeys had no power to harm him or to lead him out of his way.

But the sly Little People knew a thing or two as well as Granfer Nankivell, and when they found out that their Piskey-lights failed, they set their sharp little wits to work to do him harm in some other way.

After much watching they discovered that the old turf-cutter had a weakness for sweet things, and that the greatest treat his wife could give him was sugar biscuits of her own making and a big plate of junket. They also found out that Grannie Nankivell, whenever she made these delicacies, put them overnight into her spence1 for safety.

They made up their minds that they would punish the old turf-cutter for taking away their nice soft green Piskey-bed by doing him out of his junket and biscuits, and they told some distant relations of theirs, the Fairy Moormen, to keep an eye upon the spence-window, and whenever they saw Grannie Nankivell bring a bowl of junket and a dish of biscuits into her spence, they must come with all speed and tell them.

‘We’ll watch too,’ they said; ‘but in case we are away dancing or setting up Piskey-lights, you must watch for us,’ which the Tiny Moormen were quite pleased to do.

But the moor fairies watched in vain for many a week, and just as they were beginning to fear that Grannie Nankivell was never going to make any more biscuits and junket for her husband, she set to and made some, and when they were made she took them into the spence, as she always did.

The spence opened out from the kitchen, and was quite a little room in itself, with a tiny window facing the moors. In front of the window was a stone bench, and near it a square oak table.

The Tiny Moormen were peeping in at the window when the old woman put the bowl of junket on the table and the dish of sugar biscuits on the bench, and the moment her back was turned they tore off to the Piskeys with the news.

‘A big round basin full of lovely cool junket,’ they cried, ‘and a dish heaping full of round biscuits, yellow and white with eggs and sugar, with which they are made. I heard the old woman say that she had never made better, and all for Granfer Nankivell, ‘cause ’tis his birthday to-morrow.’

‘Birthday or no birthday, Granfer Nankivell shan’t taste one,’ cried the little Piskeys. ‘No fy, he shan’t! He turned us out of our beds, and we’ll do him out of his biscuits and junket, see if we won’t!’

‘That’s right!’ said the Fairy Moormen, who were hand and glove with the Piskeys, ‘only please save some for us.’

They and the Piskeys hastened away to the turf-cutter’s cottage, and when the turf-cutter and his wife had gone to bed, the Piskeys got into the spence and ate up the big bowl of junket, and passed out the biscuits to the Tiny Moormen.

When Grannie Nankivell went to her spence the next day she found the junket-bowl empty and every biscuit gone.

She said she could not imagine who had taken the things, but looked suspiciously at her little granddaughter Genefer.

‘The cat must have got into the spence and done me out of my birthday treat,’ said the old turf-cutter. ‘You must shut the spence-window the next time you put a junket in there.’

‘But the biscuits have gone as well as the junket,’ said the old woman, still looking at little Genefer. ‘Cats have no liking for sugar biscuits, that ever I heard tell of.’

The next time Grannie Nankivell took biscuits and a junket into her spence she shut the window and also the door; but when she got up the following morning and went to see if they were safe, lo and behold! the junket-bowl was again empty and the biscuits were gone.

‘’Tis a two-legged cat who has eaten up my beautiful biscuits and junket,’ she said to her husband; and she turned and looked at little Genefer.

‘I am not the two-legged cat who ate up all the nice things you made for Granfer,’ cried the child, meeting the old woman’s glance with her honest brown eyes.

‘I never said you did,’ said Grannie Nankivell; ‘but ’tis queer the junket-bowl is empty and every biscuit gone from the dish.’

‘I expect it was a dog which got into the spence and licked up the junket and ate the biscuits,’ put in the old turf-cutter. ‘I would lock and bar the spence-door, if I were you, the next time I put such nice things in there.’

‘I will,’ she said.

The next time Grannie Nankivell made biscuits and a junket she barred the window of the spence and locked the door, and the next morning, before Genefer dressed, she went to see if her junket and biscuits were all right; but the little round biscuits, which she had so carefully made and sugared, were every one gone, and the junket-bowl was quite empty, and as dry as a bone.

‘’Tis our little grandcheeld who has eaten it all!’ cried Grannie Nankivell in great anger to the old turf-cutter. ‘No cat or dog could get into a spence with door locked and window barred.’

‘I don’t believe it was Genefer,’ said the old man stoutly.

‘If it was not Genefer, who was it, pray? Biscuits and junkets don’t eat up themselves, any more than dogs and cats can get through keyholes and barred windows.’

‘That’s true,’ said Granfer Nankivell; ‘all the same, I am certain sure that our dear little grandcheeld would not go and eat up the things.’

‘Then who did?’ asked the old woman with a snap.

‘The little Piskeys, I shouldn’t wonder,’ he answered. ‘My great-grannie told me they were little greedy-guts, and in her days they used to skim the cream off the milk, and eat all the cheese-cakes she used to make, unless she put some for them outside on the doorstep. Regular little thieves the Piskeys were in her days. P’raps they haven’t learnt to be honest yet. There are plenty about now, and Little Moormen too, by the teheeing and tehoing I have heard lately, waiting, I dare say, to play some of their pranks on me.’

But Grannie Nankivell was still unconvinced, and still believed it was Genefer, and not the Piskeys, who ate her biscuits and junket.

One evening the old woman put another bowl of junket and a dish of biscuits in the spence, and was as careful as before to bar the window and lock the door; and in the middle of the night, when her husband was fast asleep and snoring, she got up and came downstairs to see if she could find out for certain who it was that ate up her good things. When she came down, whom should she see but her little grand-daughter Genefer standing by the spence-door in her little bedgown.

‘I am fine and glad you have come, Grannie,’ whispered the child, before the old woman could say anything. ‘I believe it is the Piskeys who have eaten the junket and things you made for Granfer. I saw a dinky little fellow not much bigger than your thumb go in through the keyhole just now. They are having a fine time in there, anyhow,’ as her grandmother looked at her oddly. ‘If I were you, I would look through the keyhole and see what they are doing.’

And through the keyhole the old woman looked, and saw, to her amazement, scores and scores of green-coated little men, whiskered like a man, on the oak table, standing round the junket-bowl ladling out the rich, thick junket with their tiny little hands, and half a dozen other little chaps were up in the window-sill passing out her delicious sugar biscuits to the Tiny Moormen, who were even more whiskered and bearded than their distant relations, the Piskeys.

By their faces, they were all greatly enjoying themselves, and at the expense of Granfer Nankivell, the turf-cutter!

Grannie Nankivell was so astonished that she lost her mouth-speech,2 but when she found it her old voice shrilled through the keyhole:

‘Filling your little bellies with the junket and biskeys I made for my old man, be ’ee?’ she cried. ‘I’ll wring the necks of every one of you—iss fy, I will!’

The old woman spoke too soon to carry out her threat, for she had no sooner spoken than the Piskeys vanished, the Tiny Moormen as well, and where they went she never knew.

But her husband told her the little rascals were still in the spence when she could not see them.

‘They have the power to make themselves visible or invisible, whichever is most convenient to them,’ he said.

‘They have done you out of your biscuits and junket a good many times, anyhow,’ cried the old woman.

‘Iss,’ said Granfer Nankivell, ‘they have; and as I did away with the Piskey-beds, we are quits. I only hope they will be of the same mind, and won’t come any more and eat up those nice things you make for me. I am quite longing for a plateful of junket and one of your sweet biscuits.’

Whether the Piskeys thought the old turf-cutter was sufficiently punished for clearing out their sleeping-places, or whether Grannie Nankivell’s threat to wring their necks frightened them away, we cannot tell. At all events, they and the Tiny Moormen kept away from the cottage on the moor, and whenever the old woman made sugar biscuits and sweet junket, and put them in the spence, no two-legged cat, Moormen or Piskeys, ever ate up those specially-made dainties; and little Genefer’s honesty was never again doubted.

When winter brought the cold north wind, and the snowflakes began to fall, the little North Cornwall children were always told that the Old Woman was up in the sky plucking her Goose.

The children were very interested in the Old Sky Woman and her great White Goose, and they said, as they lifted their soft little faces to the grey of the cloud and watched the feathers of the big Sky Goose come whirling down, that she was a wonderful woman and her Goose a very big Goose.

‘I want to climb up to the sky to see the Old Woman plucking her Goose,’ cried a tiny boy; and he asked his mother to show him the great Sky Stairs. But his mother could not, for she did not know where the Sky Stairs were; so the poor little boy could not go up to see the Old Sky Woman plucking the beautiful feathers out of her big White Goose.

‘Where does the Old Woman keep her great White Goose?’ asked another child, with eyes and hair as dark as a raven’s wing, as he watched the snow-white feathers come dancing down.

‘In the beautiful Sky Meadows behind the clouds,’ his mother said.

‘What is the Old Sky Woman going to do with her great big Goose when she has picked her bare?’ queried a little maid with sweet, anxious eyes.

‘Stuff it with onions and sage,’ her Granfer said.

‘What will she do then with her great big Goose?’ the little maid asked.

‘Hang it up on the great Sky Goose-jack and roast for her Christmas dinner,’ her Granfer said.

‘Poor old Goose!’ cried the little maid.

‘I don’t believe the Old Sky Woman would be so unkind as to kill and pluck her great big Goose,’ said a wise little maid with sunny hair and eyes as blue as the summer sea. ‘Winter-time is the Sky Goose’s moulting time, and the Old Sky Woman is sweeping out the Sky Goose’s house with her great Sky Broom, and the White Goose’s feathers are flying down to keep the dear little flowers nice and warm till the north wind has gone away from the Cornish Land.’

‘Perhaps that is so, dear little maid,’ her Granfer said.

A small girl called Nancy Parnell came down from Wadebridge to Padstow one St. Martin’s summer to stay with her Grannie.

The Grannie was old and weak in her legs, and could not take her granddaughter out to see the sights of the little old-world town, with its narrow streets and ancient houses, so the child had to go by herself.

When she had seen all there was to be seen in the town, she went up to look at the church, of which she had heard from her mother, who was a Padstow woman, and the quaint little figures on the buttresses of the south wall.

It was between the lights when she got there, but she could see the carved figures quite distinctly, which were a lion with its mouth wide open, a unicorn with a crown encircling its neck, and a young knight, standing between them, holding a shield; and when she had taken them all in she repeated a funny old rhyme which her mother told her she used to say when she was a little maid and lived at Padstow. The rhyme was as follows:

The rhyme—a taunt and an invitation in one—was very rude, and so was the little girl who repeated it; but the lion, the unicorn, and the little knight did not take any notice of her, and looked straight before them as they had done ever since they were carved on the wall. But Nancy was somewhat afraid of the effect of the rhyme on those quaint little figures, especially on the open-mouthed lion, who had no sign of teeth or tongue; and she ran round the great square-turreted tower, and took refuge under the pentice roof of the gateway, and sat on the bench to see if they would leave their stations on the wall and come after her; but they did not.

The little stone knight and the two animals had a strange fascination for the little Wadebridger, and the next evening again found her in the beautiful churchyard gazing up at them with her bright child-eyes, and as she gazed she repeated the same rude rhyme:

But they took not the smallest notice of her, nor of her rhyme, and the young knight did not lift as much as an eyelash; but the child, now the rhyme was said, was even more apprehensive than ever of the effect it might have, and ran round the tower and again took refuge in the old gateway, and waited to see if they would come down from the wall and try to catch her; but they never came.

The last evening of her stay at Padstow, Nancy went once more to the churchyard to have another look at the figures, and to taunt them with having no teeth or tongue.

It was not quite so late as the first two evenings she had come thither, and the robins were singing their evensong in the churchyard trees.

As she stood staring up at the figures, a shaft of light from the sun setting between the trees fell across their faces, and the eyes of the little knight seemed to look down in sad reproach at the rude little maid as she again repeated the rhyme which was even ruder than she knew.

Her voice was shrill and loud, and was heard above the robins’ cheerful song.

She had hardly finished the rhyme when she saw the lion move from his place on the wall, followed by the unicorn and the young knight, and come sliding down. She did not wait to see them reach the bottom, for she took to her heels and ran for her life; but she could hear the figures carved in stone coming after her as she flew round the tower, and her heart was beating faster than the church clock when she reached the gateway.

The gate, fortunately for her, was open wide, and she caught hold of it, and banged it behind her as the lion with his gaping mouth came up to it.

She looked over her shoulder as she turned to run down the street, and she saw the three figures all in a row—the young knight in the middle holding his shield—gazing at her through the round wooden bars of the gate. The lion looked savage, and but for the brave little knight with his pure young face, who seemed to have a restraining power upon both animals, he might have broken the bars and come through the gate and made small bones of the child who had invited them three times to come down and have her!

The little Wadebridger ran back to her Grannie, and told her about the rhyme she had said to the little stone figures on the wall of Padstow Church, and how they had come down and run after her to the gate. Her good old Grannie said it would have served her right if they had broken the gate and got her. ‘A lesson to you, my dear,’ she cried, ‘never to be rude to man or beast, especially to figures carved on church walls.’

The three little stone figures stood all in a row on the gate step till the child was out of sight, and finding she did not return, they went back to their places on the buttresses of the grey old church, and there they are still; and, as far as we know, they have never left them since Nancy Parnell, the little Wadebridger, repeated ‘Reefy, reefy rum’ three times, and that was when our great-great-grandmothers were children.

At the bottom of the same old town there is a house which has two tiny little men on horseback on the top of its roof. They have stood there for hundreds of years, and they never leave their places save when they hear the great church clock strike the hour of midnight, when, it is said, they leave the red tiles, and gallop round the market-place and through the streets of the little town.

These gallant little horsemen have seen the house on which they stand almost rebuilt—changed from an old-world building with quaint windows and doors into quite a modern one—and they have the sorrow of knowing that the only things left that are ancient are the walls, the red tile-ridge, their little horses, and themselves.

Long generations of Padstow children have seen these quaint little men on horseback, and many a question have they asked concerning them; but the only thing they ever learnt was that whenever they hear the church clock strike twelve in the middle of the night they come down from the roof, gallop round the market, and through the streets, as we have just said. But as children are generally in bed at that late hour, none were ever fortunate enough to see them do this wonderful feat, except little Robin Curgenven, the son of a toymaker, and it happened in this way:

One evening when Robin was about nine years old his father and mother went to a party; and as it was a party only for grown-up people, they left him at home asleep in bed.

Robin slept sound as a ringer till just before twelve, when he awoke, and finding he was alone in the house, he crept out of bed, opened the front door, which was under the roof, and went out and stood on the top of an external stone stairway which led down to the market-place.

The house where he lived was as quaint and old as the one on which the little men rode so gallantly, and it faced it. As he stood at the head of the steps the church clock began to strike the hour of midnight. It had only struck four or five when he remembered what he had heard about those wonderful little horsemen and their steeds, and he looked across the market to see if what he had been told about them was really true.

He could see the house quite plainly, and the little horses and horsemen, for it was a clear night and full moon.

The moment the clock had done striking Robin saw to his great delight the two little men on their two little horses leave the housetop and leap into the street, and go galloping round and round the market-place as his parents assured him they did when they heard the clock strike twelve.

The little horses galloped so funnily, and the tiny riders sat so bolt upright on their quaint little steeds, that Robin laughed to see them, and said they looked exactly like the wooden toy horses and horsemen in his father’s shop. And as they went galloping, galloping that queer little gallop, he clapped his hands and cheered like a Cornishman.

The tiny little horsemen took no notice of the excited boy on the top of the stairs, and the moment they had finished their gallop round the old market they came through the narrow opening at the foot of the stairs, and galloped away up the street as fast as they could.

So excited was little Robin Curgenven when he saw the tiny horsemen gallop away that he flew down the steps and tore after them, quite forgetting that his feet were bare, and that he had nothing on save his little white nightshirt.

He ran very fast; but fast as he ran, he could not overtake those swift little horses, and by the time he got to the bottom of Middle Street they were nearly at the top.

When they reached the head of that street the tiny horsemen pulled up their horses for a minute outside an ancient-looking house with a porch-room set on wooden pillars, and then they turned up Workhouse Hill and disappeared.

Robin ran faster than before, and the tails of his little nightshirt flew out behind him on the wind as he ran; and he never stopped running till he was half-way up Church Street, when he saw the little horses and their riders galloping down towards him.

They had been to the head of the town, and were returning; and he got on the footpath and stood near an arched passage, and waited for them to pass.

He did not have to wait long, and so fast did they come you would have thought they were galloping for a wager. They seemed to be enjoying their gallop through the streets of the sleeping old town amazingly; and Robin, as he fixed his bright young eyes upon them, saw, or thought he saw, a broad grin on their queer little faces as they galloped by.

The barefooted little lad, in his little night-garment, ran beside the quaint little horses and the little horsemen for a short distance, but they galloped much faster than he could run, and soon outdistanced him; and, run as hard as ever he could, he could not overtake them, but he heard the ringing of the tiny horses’ hoofs on the hard road as they went galloping down through the town.

When he reached the bottom of the town and the house where the little men and their horses usually stood, he glanced up, and to his surprise saw them standing on the tile-ridge, looking as if they had never left it.

Robin gazed at them till he began to feel cold, and then he went back across the market to his own house; and half an hour later, when his father and mother came home from the party, they found him fast asleep on one of the steps with his toes tucked up under him.

‘The funny little horses and little horsemen did hear the clock strike twelve, and galloped round the market and through the town same as you told me,’ said Robin in a sleepy voice, when his father picked him up and carried him into the house. ‘I saw them with my own eyes, and I ran after them up as far as Church Street. They galloped so funnily and so fast; I am glad I saw them.’

‘So am I,’ said his father, laughing, thinking his small son had dreamt it as he lay asleep on the step. ‘You are the first little chap who ever saw them come down from the roof and gallop, and I fancy you will be the last.’

Little Robin Curgenven may have been the first to see them gallop as his father said, but he may not be the last, for the quaint little horses and horsemen are still on the roof of the house, and it is told that they still gallop through Padstow streets, and round what once was the market, when they hear the church clock strike twelve!

The moon was near her setting as a tall, broad-shouldered man called Jan Brewer was walking home to Constantine Bay to his cottage on the edge of a cliff.

He was singing an old song to himself as he went along, and he sang till he drew near the ruins of Constantine Church, standing on a sandy common near the bay. As he grew near the remains of this ancient church, which were clearly seen in the moonshine, he thought he heard someone laughing, but he was not quite sure, for the sea was roaring on the beach below the common, and the waves were making a loud noise as they dashed up the great headland of Trevose.

‘I was mistaken; ’twas nobody laughing,’ said Jan to himself, and he walked on again, singing as before; and he sang till he came near a gate, which opened into a field leading to his cottage, but when he got there he could not see the gate or the gateway.

‘I was so taken up with singing the old song, that I must have missed my way,’ he said again to himself. ‘I’ll go back to the head of the common and start afresh,’ which he did; and when he got to the place where his gate ought to have been, he could not find it to save his life.

‘I must be clean mazed,’1 he cried. ‘I have never got out of my reckoning before, nor missed finding my way to our gate, even when the night has been as dark as pitch. It isn’t at all dark to-night; I can see Trevose Head’—looking across the bay—’and yet I can’t see my own little gate! But I en’t a-going to be done; I’ll go round and round this common till I do find my gate.’

And round and round the common he went, but find his gate he could not.

Every time he passed the ruins of the church a laugh came up from the pool below the ruins, and once he thought he saw a dancing light on the edge of the pool, where a lot of reeds and rushes were growing.

‘The Little Man in the Lantern is about to-night,’ he said to himself, as he glanced at the pool. ‘But I never knew he was given to laughing before.’

Once more he went round the common, and when he had passed the ruins he heard giggling and laughing, this time quite close to him; and looking down on the grass, he saw to his astonishment hundreds of Little Men and Little Women with tiny lights in their hands, which they were flinking2 about as they laughed and giggled.

The Little Men wore stocking-caps, the colour of ripe briar berries, and grass-green coats, and the Little Women had on old grandmother cloaks of the same vivid hue as the Wee Men’s coats, and they also wore fascinating little scarlet hoods.

‘I believe the great big chap sees us,’ said one of the Little Men, catching sight of Jan’s astonished face. ‘He must be Piskey-eyed, and we did not know it.’

‘Is he really?’ cried one of the Dinky3 Women. ‘’Tis a pity,’ as the Little Man nodded. ‘But we’ll have our game over him all the same.’

‘That we will,’ cried all the Little Men and Little Women in one voice; and, forming a ring round the great tall fellow, they began to dance round him, laughing, giggling, tehoing, and flashing up their lights as they danced.

They went round him so fast that poor Jan was quite bewildered, and whichever way he looked there were these Little Men and Little Women giggling up into his bearded face. And when he tried to break through their ring they went before him and behind him, making a game over him, he said!

He was at their mercy and they knew it; and when they saw the great fellow’s misery, they only laughed and giggled the more.

‘We’ve got him!’ they cried to each other, and they said it with such gusto and with such a comical expression on their tiny brown faces, that Jan, bewildered as he was, and tired with going round the common so many times, could not help laughing, they looked so very funny, particularly when the Little Women winked up at him from under their little scarlet hoods.

The Piskeys—for they were Piskeys—hurried him down the common, dancing round him all the time; and when he got there he felt so mizzy-mazey with those tiny whirling figures going round and round him like a whirligig, that he did not know whether he was standing on his head or his heels. He was also in a bath of perspiration—’sweating leaking,’ he expressed it—and, putting his hand in his pocket to take out a handkerchief to mop his face, he remembered having been told that, if ever he got Piskey-laden, he must turn his coat pockets inside out, when he would be free at once from his Piskey tormentors. He immediately acted on this suggestion, and in a minute or less his coat-pockets were hanging out, and all the Little Men and the Little Women had vanished, and there, right in front of him, he saw his own gate! He lost no time in opening it, and in a very short time was in his thatched cottage on the cliff.