The tales contained in this little volume of North Cornwall fairy
stories, by Enys Tregarthen, are either founded on folk-lore or they
are folk-lore pure and simple.
The scene of the first story is laid amid the ancient walls and
gateways of 'Grim Dundagel thron'd along the sea,' and other places
not quite so well known by those who live beyond the Cornish land,
but which, nevertheless, have a fascination of their own, especially
Dozmare Pool, where Tregeagle's unhappy spirit worked at his hopeless
task of emptying the pool with a crozan or limpet-shell 'that had a
hole in it.'
This large inland lake, one mile in circumference, is of unusual
interest, not only because of the Tregeagle legend that centres
round Dozmare, but from a tradition, which many believe, that it
was to this desolate moor, with its great tarn, that Sir Bedivere,
King Arthur's faithful knight, brought the wounded King after the
last great battle at Slaughter Bridge, on the banks of the Camel.
A wilder and more untamed spot could hardly be found even in Cornwall
than Dozmare Pool and the barren moors surrounding it. As one stands
by its dark waters, looking away towards the bare granite-crowned
hills and listening to the wind sighing among the reeds and rushes
and the coarse grass, one can realize to the full the weird legends
connected with it, and one can see in imagination the huge figure of
Tregeagle bending over the pool, dipping out the water with his poor
little limpet-shell.
The Tregeagle legends are still believed in. When people go out to
Dozmare Pool, they do not mention Tregeagle's name for fear that the
Giant will suddenly appear and chase them over the moors!
On the golden spaces of St. Minver sand-hills the legends about this
unearthly personage are not so easily realized, except on a dark
winter's night, when the wind rages fiercely over the dunes and one
hears a fearful sound, which the natives say is Tregeagle roaring
because the sand-ropes that he made to bind his trusses of sand are
all broken. St. Minver is not only known for its connection with the
legend of Tregeagle, but it is one of the many parishes beloved by
the Small People or Fairy Folk with whom Enys Tregarthen's little
book has mostly to do.
Piskeys danced in their rings on many a cliff and common and moor in
that delightful parish, and on other wild moors, commons and cliffs
in many another parish in North and East Cornwall. Fairy horsemen,
locally known as night-riders, used to steal horses from farmers'
stables and ride them over the moors and commons till daybreak, when
they left them to perish, or to find their way back to their stalls.
Numberless stories of the little Ancient People used to be told,
which the cottagers often repeated to each other on winter evenings
as they sat round the peat fires, and some of these Enys Tregarthen
has retold. The author writes concerning them: 'Many of the legends
were told me by very old people long since dead. The legend of the
Doombar was told me when I was quite a small child by a very old person
born late in the eighteenth century. The one of Giant Tregeagle came,
I think, from the same source, but it is too far back to remember. I
only know it was one of the stories of my childhood, as were also the
Mole legend and some of the Piskey-tales, handed down from a dim past
by our Cornish forebears.
'The legends about the Little People are very old, and some assert
to-day that the tales about the Piskeys are tales of a Pigmy race
who inhabited Cornwall in the Neolithic Period, and that they are
answerable for most of the legends of our Cornish fairies. If this
be so, the older stories are legends of the little Stone Men.
'The legends are numerous. Some of them are very fragmentary; but
they are none the less interesting, for they not only give an insight
into the world of the little Ancient People, but they also show how
strongly the Cornish peasantry once believed in them, as perhaps they
still do. For, strange as it may seem in these matter-of-fact days,
there are people still living who not only hold that there are Piskeys,
but say they have actually seen them! One old woman in particular told
me not many months ago that she had seen "little bits of men in red
jackets" on the moors where she once lived. She used to be told about
the Piskeys when she was a child, and the old people of her day used
to tell how "the little bits of men" crept in through the keyhole of
moorland cottages when the children were asleep to order their dreams.'
These stories are given to the world in the hope that many besides
children, for whom they are specially written, will find them
interesting, and all lovers of folk-lore will be grateful to know
that the iron horse and other modern inventions have not yet succeeded
in driving away the Small People, nor in banishing the weird legends
from our loved 'land of haunting charm.'