_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.'
One of the members of the Newlyn Art School was able to offer a few of his own impressions concerning the pixies of Devonshire, where he has frequently made sketches of pixies from descriptions given to him by peasants:--
_Devonshire Pixies._--'Throughout all the west of Devonshire, 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.'
'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 passed 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.'