Not long since there lived at Trewey, in Zennor, a poor and aged woman, who much loved her neighbour’s little girl, and, when dying, bequeathed to her a shawl, which was all she had to leave of any value.
The departed woman’s wish, however, was disregarded; and a few evenings after her funeral, the child would burst out in shrieks. On being asked what made her screech so, “Oh! there’s An Katty,” cried she, “with her face tied up in a white nackan and nothing on her but a sheet!” Thus the old woman’s ghost continued to haunt her; until one evening a strong man, of great faith, took the child and carried her out of doors, when, over a while, the little girl exclaimed, “Oh, there she es again.” Then the man saw the spirit too, and said to her, “In the name of goodness I command thee to tell me why thou art come back to trouble this cheeld?” The spirit answered, “Because the shawl isn’t given to the cheeld, I cannot rest.” Then the man said he would see her wish complied with, bade her depart in peace, and told her that if she hadn’t been “an old fool of a sperat, she would have scared the ones who kept the shawl and have left the cheeld alone!” By that, the ghost had vanished, without saying another word.
The same night the shawl was given to the cheeld, and Trewey folks thought that all was then settled with the old woman; but, in the course of two or three evenings, the little girl, being out in the town-place with her playmates, was taken up over the furze-ricks by invisible means, and borne away out of sight in a minute. The other children ran home frightened.
She often stayed out in neighbours’ houses for hours together, so her mother didn’t miss her till bedtime. Then, as the woman was going to look for her, in she came, with only one shoe on.
Being questioned as to where she had been to lose her shoe, the child answered that she didn’t know—only that she was taken up over the “housen” and carried away as easy as if she had been rocked in a cradle to a Churchtown with lots of trees in it, and laid in the churchyard on a new grave; she saw nobody, but heard like singing around her; somebody kissed her; then she shivered with cold, and was again carried up over the trees and back to her own town-place. She believed that her shoe was loosened as she skimmed the tree-tops, but where it dropped she couldn’t tell.
From what the child said, all Trewey people thought she had been [89]taken to Ludgvan, where the old woman was buried; and it was put beyond doubt next day, when her missing shoe was found on the old woman’s grave. There it was left; for the old woman “might want something belonging to the child, to put her to rest,” and nobody would risk bringing her back again for the sake of a shoe.
And she has “kept quiet” from that day to this.
The stranger, by the way of applauding this story, or the droll-teller, exclaimed, “Hear, hear, and cheers!” “Iss, they’re all in rags and tatters,” said the landlady, who was laying the table, “es the confounded children’s work; they’re always pullan the heer (hair) out of the cheers, od drat tham.” When the gentleman explained that no allusion was made to her chairs, the jolly dame laughed heartily at her mistake, and speaking to the story-teller said, “Cap’n Henny, don’t ’e tell any more stories about sperats, lev es have the St. Ives mutton feast, or somethan cheerful.”
Then the man who had told the two preceding drolls recited the following verses.