Rep.Trans. Devon. Ass. Advmt Sci., 148, 311−336 © The Devonshire Association, June 2016 (Figures 1–7) Pixy-Led in Devon and the South-West Simon Young Via Piana 54, Santa Brigida, Pontassieve 50065, Italy simonyoungfl@gmail.com In Devon and south-western tradition more generally the pixies were believed to mislead or ‘pixy-lead’ their human neighbours, making them stray, for example, on a moor at night. In this article, which is based on four centuries of written sources, the story-forms for pixy-leading in Cornwall, Somerset and, above all, Devon are examined, as are traditional charms against pixy-leading, for instance, turned pockets. Finally, the question of when pixy-leading died as a belief in the south-west and possible physiological explanations for fairy disorientation are addressed. INTRODUCTION AND TERMINOLOGY A man or woman walks on familiar ground, crossing a ield, say, when they become disorientated and unaccountably lose their way. This experience might be explained by any number of factors: darkness, freak neurological events, intoxicants, atmospheric conditions, etc. However, in Britain, or at least in parts of Britain, the experience was traditionally blamed on supernatural entities: Pwcca, Puck, Willo’-the-Wisp, and the pixies.1 Such mischievousness or even malevolence on the part of supernatural beings has, of course, been noted by folklorists. However, this complex of folklore beliefs has not been systematically researched. There are brief notices of the phenomenon:1 there are even collections of stories and memorates,2 but there are no comprehensive studies. The following pages attempts to correct this for one region. It offers an overview of the folklore of 311 312 Pixies in Devon and the South-West fairy disorientation, throughout the modern period, in three southwestern counties: Cornwall, Somerset and, above all, Devon. The article is based on written sources, dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. In the south-western counties the best known supernatural creature and one associated with misled travellers was the pixy. There are many different forms of this word including piskey, pisgie, pixie, pixey and pixy; certain associated with a given area (e.g., ‘pixy’ for Devon vs. ‘piskey’ for Cornwall), some chance spellings (e.g., ‘pixy’ vs. ‘pixey’). We will use, for consistency, the most common term, the Devonian ‘pixy’, established nationally by Coleridge and Bray in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.3 The experience of being disorientated was typically expressed through one of these pixy-forms plus the word ‘led’ or a dialectal equivalent. The forms in rough order of frequency in our sources were: pixy-led, pixy-laid, pixy-laden and pixy-laded.4 The last form (which may have originated in Somerset) possible stood behind ‘pixilated’ a word employed in parts of New England.5 Again for the sake of consistency we will use the term ‘pixyled’, the most common and the most readily intelligible to a modern English reader: the others risk confusion.6 While ‘to be pixy-led’ proved the classic locution for the experience there are also ive adjectives that appear in pixy-led accounts to describe the victim: ‘belated’, ‘benighted’, ‘bewildered’, ‘mazed’ and ‘mystiied’.7 Finally, I will use the drab but eficient ‘fairy disorientation’ to describe the phenomenon, in non-south-western or general contexts. SOURCES The earliest surviving reference to being pixy-led from the south-west was written c. 1630: a generation after Shakespeare had described Puck playing similar tricks in Midsummer Night’s Dream (III, i). 8 In the eighteenth century there is practically no reference to pixy beliefs of any kind: the 1700s are poor in terms of fairy-lore records. However, in the nineteenth-century, scores of writers set down pixylore, including the experience of being pixy-led. This was a period when belief in the pixies was dying in the region, and nostalgia, or at least curiosity about a rapidly disappearing belief system, encouraged research. Interest in pixies continued into the Edwardian period and, indeed, beyond, despite the dearth of fresh material. After the death of Victoria, folklorists had, for the most part, no choice but to recycle Pixies in Devon and the South-West 313 nineteenth-century accounts, save in the few cases where there were new pixy sightings.9 Fairy disorientation experiences, meanwhile, continue to be recorded. The most recent published case I have found dates to 2014;10 the most recent from the south west, 2010.11 Reading through four centuries of pixy-led writing a number of points emerge, which will help us frame the present article. First, ‘to be pixy-led’ became the classic term not only in the south-west but in Britain generally. For instance, Katharine Briggs calls fairy disorientation by the Devon term in her Dictionary of Fairies.12 It is dificult to establish when this tendency to ‘south-westernise’ fairy disorientation began, but it is striking that some of the earliest descriptions come from the south-west. It is also notable that, in the nineteenth century, the south-west gives us the overwhelming majority of such experiences for Britain. In the Welsh Marches, for example, the ‘bewildered’ were ‘pouk-laden’, but the present author knows of only a handful of sources that describe fairy disorientation there.13 By the nineteenth century it was, meanwhile, natural for Hardy and Kingsley14 to bring pixy-led folklore into their novels as south-western ‘colour’, which would be understood by a national audience. Second, there is a very strong bias in south-western pixy-led sources towards Devon. It is dificult to be empirical about this, but perhaps three quarters of our pixy-led sources come from that county. Most of the rest are from Cornwall, and a handful from Somerset (particularly the Quantocks). Dorset is excluded from this study because I have only found two records.15 The reason for this bias in favour of Devon is again dificult to explain. Is it perhaps the impressive moors there: pixy-led experiences often take place on moors? Or can it be explained by a relative lack of interest among Cornish tradition-bearers, who concentrated on more exotic pixy deeds including changelings and visits to pixy land? The low level of pixy-lore from Somerset is probably the result of declining belief there prior to the folklore collections of the nineteenth century. Third, being pixy-led is clearly, in our sources, a lived experience, one that many individuals, particularly in Devon and Cornwall, claimed to have had. The experience was, in fact, at least in the nineteenth-century, ubiquitous in some areas. Enys Tregarthen, in North Cornwall, noted that ‘[l]egends about Piskey-led people are as plentiful as blackberries’,16 while Thomas Couch, on the other side or Cornwall, wrote that ‘every parish can furnish two or three [pixy-led 314 Pixies in Devon and the South-West experiences]’.17 The very ubiquity of the legends meant that pixy-led stories were often neglected by local collectors, or recorded rather breezily, as they tended to be formulaic: to quote Couch again, ‘there is little variety in them, except in unimportant particulars’.18 Couch himself edited his pixy-led account out of his discursus on Polperro tradition in a later draft, presumably because he felt it too passé.19 A fourth point, and perhaps the most striking of all, is the continuity of pixy-led tales. In 1659 Christopher Clobery described a pixyled traveller in his poem ‘The forraign Anchorite’: our irst good Devon source.20 Clobery uses the imagery of being pixy-led for religious purposes, much as the metaphor of pixy-leading would be used by south-western journalists for nineteenth-century politics.21 However, whatever, Clobery’s motives may have been, his words are clear. The poet describes how the pixies lead travellers astray and ultimately into the mire; how when the traveller falls into the mire the pixies laugh and clap; how precautions can be taken against being ‘benighted’; and Clobery, inally, associates Will-o’-the-Wisp with the experience of being pixy-led.22 When Thomas Couch of Polperro came to tell a pixy-led story in 1864, two centuries later, his narrative was similar. A man angered the pixies who led him around a ield, they laughing at his misfortune. When he inally escaped a Will-o’the-Wisp tricked him into a mire. Only afterwards did the man remember that there were forms of protection (see further below) that he could have used against the pixies.23 STORY-FORMS Tedious as these accounts might have been to some collectors, they were successfully integrated into a number of stories in which being pixy-led is central or forms an important part of the narrative. The scandalously neglected Enys Tregarthen wrote ‘How Jan Brewer was Piskey Led’, ‘An Enchanted Field’, ‘A Piskey Who Rode in a Pocket’, ‘The Piskey Warriors’ and ‘Why Jan Pedogget Changed His Mind’; William Bottrell, ‘Uter Bosence and the Pixy’; an anonymous writer told a story of the iancé of a Devon miller’s daughter being pixy-led in punishment for jealousy; William Crossing had, for Dartmoor, the tale of unbelieving Nanny and the Pixies (which ends with a pixy gymnastic pyramid) and another tale about Tom White of Post Bridge. 24 Robert Hunt contributed a tale from St Levans about how Mr Trezillian was ‘bewildered’, afterwards inding some silver pixy knee buckles.25 Pixies in Devon and the South-West 315 There is the ‘Man a Lost’ tale, which seems to have come from Somerset:26 a traveller shouts to a passerby for help and has to be escorted out of his troubles. ‘Abraham Stocker’s Night-Walkin’ appeared in Somerset dialect in the 1920s.27 ‘Ragnor Lodbrok’ wrote a short Gothic horror story about being pixy-led, reminiscent of Le Fanu’s fairy iction.28 Then there is also the single most repeated south-western pixy-led story, one that allegedly dates back to Elizabethan times: John Fitz and the Pixies on Dartmoor, a story we will examine in some detail below. As a south-western theme being pixy-led was also, of course, celebrated in local poetry in both dialect and English.29 To these stories must be added tens of memorates of men and women who were ‘benighted’ in Devon and to a lesser extent Cornwall and Somerset in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. We know of these not least because these stories made their way into local newspapers. There follow some examples. In 1865, a man got lost with a load of hay between Tavistock and Okehampton.30 In 1870, a Methodist preacher described, with evident horror, the pixyled experiences of one of his superstitious lock.31 In 1876, a Chagford man got ‘mazed’ coming back from Drewsteignton.32 In the same year, a group from Ottery went to the baby show at Exmouth and got lost on their homeward journey.33 In 1879, two drunkards ended up on a moor and believed themselves to be pixy-led.34 At the Georgeham annual fair, in 1879, a young man went missing and claimed, on being discovered, that he had been led astray by the pixies.35 In 1882, a farmer got lost on a moor near the Tamar at night and his horse died beneath him.36 In 1903, there was a frightening report from the area around Saltash of a young woman who got disoriented in an impossibly small ield.37 At the turn of the century one woman in Somerset was ‘demented from terror’ after a similar experience in the mist.38 Most dramatic of all there is the death of James Hill, in 1835, whose body was found near Dolton.39 Hill evidently believed he was being pixy-led when he was killed by violence or misadventure: he had turned his waist-coat inside out, a classic precaution.40 When we examine the canon of south-western pixy-led sources we ind that there is more variety than Victorian collectors claimed.41 The major division is between what might be called ‘ield-crossing’ experiences and ‘wandering’ experiences, though I know of only one nineteenth-century writer who made this distinction.42 In the irst an individual gets lost in a small and well-known space, even one he 316 Pixies in Devon and the South-West knows ‘blindeyes’43 and typically walks around and around within that space. Take, for instance, the girl in Saltash in the last paragraph, who had to be rescued by a police constable from an enclosed area. In the second, the victim is misled from familiar roads and walks far and wide before inding his or her way home: in an extreme case ‘thirty miles to accomplish a journey of twelve miles’.44 In terms of narrative ield crossing is far more satisfactory than wandering. After all, many reading this article will have had the experience of getting lost on known roads or paths, especially at night: whereas the ield-crossing experience is one that most of us have not had. ‘Wandering’ experiences are, of course, by far the most commonly reported. Another narrative variable are external conditions: if the journey takes place in the dark (particularly on a pitch black night), if there is fog (two sources claim that pixies brought fog with them),45 if the victim gets lost on a barren moor, then the experience is far less uncanny-sounding than if it took place, say, in broad daylight in a lane. Again, the most successful tales and memorates in terms of narrative satisfaction, are ‘ield-crossing’ experiences in daylight where the experience is most dificult to explain. Certain aspects of these experiences amplify their curiosity. One Cornish source claims that victims ‘can always see the path close at hand’.46 There is also the ability to see distant landmarks47 that must add to the general state of disorientation: the world outside the experience has remained the same, the world within the experience has been transformed. Then, of course, there is the claim that some places are more dangerous than others. In Somerset there was the Pixies’ Mound on the Wick, around which traditions of being pixy-led centred, at least according to C.W. Whistler.48 There was, in Devon, a certain Kenn Lane, between Kenn and Powderham, that no local would walk at night.49 Whitchurch Down on Dartmoor ‘is said to be very famous for the peril there incurred of being pixy-led’.50 In Cornwall there was the Gump and ‘more rarely’ Goss Moor.51 Then near Camelford, in Cornwall, there was ‘Pixy or Piskey Hill’.52 All these locations are wild areas, with few human habitations. The state of the victim also varies: there is a very great difference between, say, a farmer walking across a ield at midday and a drunk crossing a moor after midnight. The implication that those who were pixy-led were drunk became, in fact, itself a topos: the temptation to excoriate superstition and blame such things on the drinking habits of Pixies in Devon and the South-West 317 the lowers orders was just too much to resist for supercilious Victorian writers. So we have: ‘pisky led is often whiskey led’; ‘spirits of quite a different kind’; ‘cider-stroke’, ‘the exhalations from the juice of John Barleycorn [ascending] into his upper regions’, the lovely ‘ciderlated’ and many more.53 Alcohol dominated pixy-led literature to such an extent, indeed, that some pixy-led experiences are given with the speciic assurance that alcohol was not involved, anticipating the inevitable criticism to come.54 Given this state of affairs it will come as no surprise to learn that husbands in some parts of Devon blamed the pixies for late returns from the inn.55 Interestingly the pixies offered other alibis too: young courting couples sometimes blamed fairy neighbours for their late return to their parents;56 and late workmen and late schoolchildren resorted to the same excuse, according to one reminiscence from East Devon.57 There is also the question of interactions with the pixies. In some stories the pixies appear to mock the misled traveller;58 in others they are (the opposite of Victorian children) heard (laughing and perhaps clapping) but not seen; in others still there is no contact with them and their presence is implicit but invisible and silent. Then, there is glamour. Glamour is the power of supernatural entities, typically fairies, to change the physical appearance of things and particularly their surroundings.59 In some south-western stories objects change form, thus adding to the sense of disorientation: ‘for the pixies could make narrow lanes look like turnpike roads, and, when they chose, the glow-worms’ lights in the hedges seemed like candles shining through cottage windows’.60 Very occasionally this is referred to explicitly; e.g., a hedge disappears.61 More typically, though, it is implicit in the telling: for example, a gate cannot be found in a hedge, where a gate has always been.62 PIXY MOTIVES Why did the pixies mislead humans? There seem essentially to be four reasons: mischief, punishment, protection and kidnapping. In most cases the motive was mischief, the enjoyment of seeing a traveller end up in the mire. Think of the pixy laughter that traditionally broke out during and at the end of the pixy leading. The pixies did not want to hurt their victims: victims were supposed to lounder not drown in the bog. There are, indeed, very few cases where the pixies are given evil intentions.63 Most evil pixies appear in the works of non-south-western 318 Pixies in Devon and the South-West writers, who perhaps did not grasp the fun side of the tradition. Bottrell, the quintessential Cornish writer, describes, it is true, a pixy-led youth, bashing his head against a rock and cutting his side;64 Bottrell also suggests, however, that the experience did the youth good (he settled down and played less sport). Certainly, in some cases travellers were pixy-led so as to be taught a lesson. For example, Nanny, in William Crossing’s 1890 story, had claimed that the pixies did not exist;65 in other cases travellers, while not doubting the pixies’ existence, spoke disrespectfully of them.66 The Miller’s daughter in ‘the prettiest part of Devonshire’ had an admirer who was pixy-led because he became jealous of her.67 In parts of Devon it was believed that picking stitchwort (Stellaria holostea) would lead to being pixy-led, presumably as this was a pixy lower.68 In other instances the crime of the pixies’ victims seems to have been that of seeing the pixies about their dancing or revels,69 or even disturbing their revels by whistling.70 In some cases pixies not only misled men and women but also ‘stung’ them (‘it felt like they were sticking needles and pins in him’)71 or pinched them (‘tweaked and pulled’)72 or span them around in a brutal dance73 or left them ‘in a bath of perspiration’74 or even thrashed them with nettles and brambles.75 There are two other motives given. William Crossing, who is one of the most knowledgeable writers quoted here in terms of Devon lore, thought that the pixies might pixy-lead to keep humans away from pixy habitations.76 Then, also, there are occasional references to individuals being led astray, for the opposite reason, so as to bring them into the pixy realm: the pixies, like other fairies, depended on human companionship and so, from time to time, they subtracted a human from local villages or farms. Richard Vingoe, for example, was pixyled at Treville Cliffs and found himself in a subterranean world.77 On Dartmoor, in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a child was said to have been led away by two pixies.78 There is also a sinister story of a boy being tempted away from humankind on the same territory by a lonely voice.79 Here we are entering the complex of south-western changeling legends.80 PROTECTION AGAINST BEING PIXY-LED What if anything could humans do against such wiles? The natives of the south-west had a series of stratagems against being pixy-led. The most common involved disarranging clothing in some way. The Pixies in Devon and the South-West 319 simplest form was for the victim to turn his or her pockets inside out and this is noted again and again in accounts: ‘You girt, fule, why didden ‘ee turn your pocket inside out?’, asked one wife whose husband had been led into a stream by the pixies.81 However, there were other methods involving clothes. We know of travellers who turned their waistjackets or coats.82 There were others still who turned their hats inside out.83 There are references to turned aprons, shawls, petticoats and stockings.84 We have two Cornish references to gloves being turned inside out and thrown at the pixies: and the pixies disappearing instantly.85 There is a solitary reference to a ‘benighted’ woman turning a coin in her pocket.86 There is one early nineteenth-century reference to a group of travellers, on the advice of a cunning woman, stripping themselves and sitting on their clothes for thirty ive minutes on a fogged up moor.87 Our single eighteenth-century source about the dangers of being pixy-led notes that men turn clothes but that women should turn their caps: was this a question of propriety?88 Note, too, that, while clothes turning was a way of breaking the pixy spell, it was also used as a preventative: hats or stockings could be placed inside out before leaving the house if the risk was great.89 Why was it that pixies so resented turned clothes? Mrs Bray offered a rather Victoriansounding suggestion – with Bray it is often dificult to know to what extent she is recounting and to what extent she is elaborating tradition. She claimed that fairies hated any form of disorder and so led from inside out clothes:90 this idea was repeated by others, though likely because they had read Bray, who became a touchstone for pixylore as the nineteenth century progressed.91 Another possibility is that the pixies were riding in the pockets or clothes that were turned: at least, Enys Tregarthen offers this as an explanation in two of her stories.92 The turning of clothes was, according to our records, the most popular stratagem against pixies in the south-west. However, there were others. The most antique method, attested by Clobery in the seventeenth century, was the carrying of a piece of bread.93 Herrick also refers to this in a poem on fairy disorientation, ‘If ye feare to be affrighted, When ye are (by chance) benighted’, a poem that may have borrowed from Devonshire lore.94 However, by the nineteenth century this method had been forgotten in the south-west: at least the present author has found no reference to it; the only relevant 320 Pixies in Devon and the South-West nineteenth-century custom involved bread (and cheese!) as protection against pixies changing children.95 Another method to break the pixy spell, attested once in Devon, involved shouting out the name of someone who was pixy-led.96 As our source for this custom notes, the opportunities to use this trick must have been few. Those who are pixy-led are usually pixy-led alone and when there are couples or groups they are presumably all in an equal state of confusion. (Interestingly, one south-western writer claimed that it was unlucky to give directions to someone who was pixy-led.)97 Another record, also from Devon, implies that a pixy-led individual should call his own name out three times.98 There is one reference to leaving a tribute of a pin to avoid being pixy-led:99 pin presents for the pixies are well attested, though this is not the normal interpretation for pins being deposited.100 There is also a church bell that ‘broke the [pixy] spell’ in Cornwall:101 church bells have, of course, long been detested by fairies of all types. Others of those who were pixy-led at night took the simple precaution of lying down and sleeping on the spot, hoping that morning would bring resolution.102 This is not so much an antidote, as a sensible form of surrender. According to one source the pixies continued to mislead their victims ‘until there is no more ‘sproil’ left in [them]’.103 There are a number of later references to pixy spells being broken by drinking running water.104 These are often linked to Dartmoor and might be explained in various ways. There is, of course, the established idea that supernatural creatures cannot cross running water. There is, too, the moorlanders’ wisdom that when lost on a moor in the fog you look for a stream and follow it down.105 However, there must be the suspicion that the water-drinking advice comes from a misunderstanding of the legend of Fitz’s Well. On Dartmoor there is a well of this name, supposedly built by one John Fitz. According to this legend, in the sixteenth century (the well carries the date 1568), one John Fitz and his wife had been pixy-led. They had found a spring and drunk from it and as the mist that enclosed them had raised at the moment of drinking, Fitz had built a cover over the spring that stands to this day. The implication is not, surely, that drinking water breaks the spell but that drinking water from Fitz’s Well does.106 The story is connected, it should be noted, with two Dartmoor wells107 and the legend is unlikely to date back to the sixteenth century. However, its duplication and an early nineteenth-century reference to the ‘elders of Pixies in Devon and the South-West 321 Tavistock’ telling the tale suggest that it dates back at least to the mideighteenth century.108 THE PIXY-LED AND BELIEF Fairy beliefs of any description are always extremely dificult to measure. There is a reluctance on the part of ‘believers’ to suffer ridicule. There is also the age-old conceit that the fairies have recently led: a topos that stretches back at least to Chaucer and that distorts all attempts to measure belief in their existence in a given present.109 Now these are very real problems, but with dozens of sources to hand a modern researcher can start to gauge, at least roughly, the demise of pixy-leading. The fundamental question is this: if, in a given locale, a man or woman got lost on returning home at night when would they have stopped interpreting this event through the ilter of superstition? There is no question that, in the 1830s, pixy-belief was strong on Dartmoor, when Bray recorded it so vividly,110 and we might presume the same of other rural areas in the south west. However, within a generation an important change had taken place. There was a rash of pixy-led newspaper stories in the 1860s and 1870s, particularly in North Devon, a remote part of the county.111 These stories are simultaneously evidence of men and women believing in the danger of being pixy-led, but also of local journalists, and presumably their readers laughing at the same. Simultaneously we have evidence of voices lifted against the ‘superstition’ of being pixy-led: including members of the clergy.112 No wonder that by 1892, some Dartmoor folk, insisted that they turned their stockings inside out before leaving the house, ‘for luck’ rather than for the pixies;113 no wonder that Crossing reported, in 1890, that while some moor folk were ‘full of instances of folks having missed their way in the most mysterious manner’, they had ceased to admit to believing in pixies.114 In 1910 a local writer, ‘Plain Peter’, insisted that pixy superstition was dying out on Dartmoor and he was very possibly correct.115 By the Edwardian period belief in being pixy-led had become rarer. In 1911, when Evans-Wentz wrote up his fairy ield-work in Cornwall, he only included three references.116 In one case, at Marazion, an elderly couple knew the term but were not certain as to what it actually meant.117 When a Rotary address was given at Bristol with a description of the superstition, in 1927, the audience roared with 322 Pixies in Devon and the South-West laughter at the words ‘pixy-led’ and then again at the notion of turning pockets inside out.118 So much for supernatural awe. The year after, 1928, a journalist reported the death of a woman at Philleigh, in south central Cornwall, who had believed in the pixies: it goes without saying that, ifty years before, this would not have been news-worthy. The same journalist writes that ‘there are probably people still living who have been pixy-led and had to turn their coats inside out before they cast off the spell and found the right path’.119 In 1946, one brief obituary notice, recalls that a Cornish man had been pixy-led when young: again ifty years before this would not have appeared in an obituary.120 Even in the most isolated parts of the south west, traditional belief in being pixy-led was breaking up. In another place we have argued that Cornish changeling beliefs had vanished prior to about 1880:121 on the basis of evidence of this type, over, admittedly, a wider and more varied area, it would be tempting to say that traditional south-western belief in being pixy-led had all but died prior to, say, 1950.122 It is true that in the 1920s, new proofs surge up. They come, though, from a quite different quarter, the middle classes with their interest in a new spiritualised fairy.123 In 1919 a Women’s Institute School discussion at Exeter included mention of being pixy-led, and one audience member caught a local reporter’s attention by claiming that ‘there was something in it’.124 Likewise, in 1928, in a discussion at the Folklore Society in London ‘[e]xamples of people who were ‘pixie-led’ were given’.125 In 1936 there was a talk at Launceston Women’s Institute where William H. Paynter (the speaker), not only claimed to have been pixy-led but to have seen pixies.126 It is not possible to prove that all who spoke at these events were part of the middle classes; in the case of the London meeting we do not even know whether the relevant speakers were south-western. However, there is the presumption and those who attended such soirees were unlikely to be the typical ‘country swain’ (in whom we might imagine these traditions last survived). In other cases middle-class ingerprints are clearer. Consider, for example, L. H. Dopson, who claimed, in a letter to a newspaper, in 1946, to have been pixy-led at Chalender: he also quotes, with a knowing air, a rare seventeenth-century pamphlet and his prose suggests learning.127 Two members, meanwhile, of the Old Cornwall societies had had the experience of being pixy-led. In 1928, a newspaper report explained how one member had been ‘benighted’ in an Pixies in Devon and the South-West 323 ‘isolated village’ around midnight after giving a lecture. Another member, this time a woman, had been pixy-led on the dunes going to St. Piran’s Oratory.128 The article led to a furious argument in the letter’s page of the newspaper in question, the Western Morning News, between R. D. Greenaway and Henry Jenner. Greenaway found the beliefs of these Old Cornwall members puerile and being pixy-led an embarrassing relict.129 Jenner, on the other hand, argued that the reality or not of the phenomenon was immaterial: what should matter to folklorists was what people believed.130 One suspects that Greenaway was, above all, irritated by two members of his social class who had, as part of their effort to become true Cornubians, acquired a belief more typically associated with the rural labouring classes. This debate in 1928 might usefully stand as a symbolic moment in the evolution of pixy-led belief. Of course, from 1928 onwards there will have been agricultural populations in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset who toyed with the idea that they or their fellows were pixy-led; though, we might imagine, far fewer than in, say, 1880 and fewer and fewer. However, from 1928 onwards, they were likely outnumbered by middle-class south-westerners searching for their regional roots and for a new spirituality in the wilds around them. There is no need to judge these individuals, as R. D. Greenaway did: but we should recognise that theirs were a new order of pixy-led beliefs. THE PIXY-LED AND WILL-O’-THE-WISP Fairy disorientation is, as we noted in our introduction, well known in other parts of Britain and Ireland. We can only give the most supericial overview here, but the following might be suggestive. Travellers were Will-led in East Anglia: a marshy land where Will-o’-the-Wisp once did his worst.131 In Ireland there was the belief in the stray sod: an individual steps on a certain sod of earth and is misled by the fairies.132 In Powys and Glamorgan Pwca, a Welsh relation of Puck loved to lead travellers astray, jumping suddenly across a ravine with his light, bringing his victims close to death.133 Puck or Pouk himself survived until relatively recent times in the Welsh Marches and got up to similar shenanigans.134 Interestingly, in Gower, an Anglicised part of Southern Wales, locals talked of being ‘pixy-led’ in the Edwardian period:135 this should be compared with the fascinating form, being ‘piscon-led’ in Pembrokeshire.136 These beliefs also travelled overseas 324 Pixies in Devon and the South-West with British and Irish colonists. New England, we have seen already, had those who were pixilated;137 and Barbara Rieti recounts cases of fairy disorientation in the forests of Atlantic Canada, where bread survived as the classic form of protection.138 A nice question is why these traditions are (or seem to be) absent from some areas: for example, north-western England. The south-western experience of fairy disorientation is unremarkable in this broader set save for the apparent partnership between the pixies and Will-o’-the-Wisp, or one of several south-western equivalents including Jack-A-Lantern, Jacky Twoad or Joan the Wad. As we saw above Clobery, in the seventeenth century, and Couch, in the nineteenth century, both include Will-o’-the-Wisp in their pixy-led tales,139 and while his presence is not inevitable it is frequent.140 Why? Ruth St Leger-Gordon, writing on Dartmoor ifty years ago, noted that ‘the mythical pixy is often confused with the natural Will-o’-theWisp, ignis fatuis [sic]’: ignis fatuus was often and reliably seen on Dartmoor.141 Forty years before C.H. Laycock wrote, with Dartmoor in mind, that the ‘old moor folk used to connect [Will-o’-the-Wisp] lights with the pixies, hence the term ‘pixy-light’ by which they are sometimes called’.142 And there was a Dartmoor legend that had, in one version, pixies on Dartmoor luring a man to his death with lights.143 Bray, a generation before, had, noted that pixies used Willo’-the-Wisps ‘to deceive travellers’.144 It should be remembered that Dartmoor pixies are unusually, shall we say, ‘amorphous’. Bray wrote that they are: ‘traditionally averred to possess the power of assuming various shapes at will’, but unfortunately goes into no detail.145 Crossing had one of his characters, say, in 1890: ‘And then they can change their-selves, too. Zometimes they be in wan shape, and zometimes in another’.146 Elsewhere in Dartmoor tradition they are connected with (rolling?) bundles of rags and rolling bundles of vegetation.147 Given this propensity might the pixies even have been the pixy lights rather than carrying the same? Similar clues about pixy lights come from elsewhere in the southwest. In 1869, William Dunnes at St Kea (Cornwall) was reported as having seen ‘‘portents’ of ire with ‘piskies’ all round them’.148 In 1871, a preacher is told of ‘their lights’, in reference to pixies, dancing on an unnamed south-western moor.149 In 1892, Joseph Hammond talks about ‘some seducing light’ leading men astray at St Austell. He goes on to describe a miner, following a ‘pale bluish light’, believing that he was being pixy-led: the light, then, turned into a ghost.150 Enys Pixies in Devon and the South-West 325 Tregarthen had her pixies carrying lights that they waved backwards and forwards.151 There is an Exmoor memorate about a man hitting the light of ‘a pixy with a lantern’.152 In 1902, the Exeter Gazette claims that on Exmoor pixies took travellers off the path ‘with the Will-o’-the wisp’.153 Then, in 1923, the Somerset story ‘Abraham Stocker’s Night-Walkin’ has Abraham encounter two lights that he refers to as ‘pixy-lanterns’, ‘twinkly lights a dancing like mockin en jist a little way off’.154 In Somerset, meanwhile, the well-informed Elworthy states that he suspects that most cases of pixy-leading are actually Jack-o’-Lanterns.155 Then, Deane and Shaw reported that, as late as 1965, a number of elderly people would not walk on the moors at Warleggan (Cornwall) for fear of being ‘pixy-led by the dancing lights’.156 Now these are scattered references, but there seems a strong possibility that pixies and Will-o’-the-wisp were, at one time, the same thing not just on Dartmoor, but in many areas in the south-west. Perhaps, rather literal-minded early collectors found it dificult to connect small humanoids with dancing immaterial lights and encouraged their separation into two different entities? Or possibly the pixies transformed into Will-o’-the-Wisp? Certainly, in Cornwall pixies were, according to one source, believed to be able to transform themselves into Hilla, a night demon.157 The blurring lines between categories of supernatural entities is always bewildering, but perhaps particularly so to the west of the Tamar.158 REASONS FOR DISORIENTATION An essay on regional folklore is not the place to offer a master theory on what might be called the science of being pixy-led. It might be, however, the place to offer initial thoughts with the hope that others will be able to make better sense of disorientation in physiological or psychological terms. We have seen that fairy disorientation was common in fairy-lore in Britain and Ireland and a wider survey would show how it can be found in other places around the world.159 Given this we are likely looking, then, at, without wishing to sound too portentous, the human condition: something in our hardwiring that can lead to extreme disorientation even in known places. If this is the case then it would be perfectly understandable that this phenomenon, from time to time, emerges into folklore; and the parallel with, say, sleep paralysis and Hufford’s experienced-centred work on ‘the hag’ would be irresistible.160 326 Pixies in Devon and the South-West What could cause such extreme disorientation? The irst thing to note is that many recorded experiences took place at night or in fog. It is dificult for someone in the twenty-irst century, particularly now that most of us dwell away from the countryside, to understand what darkness really is; certainly, a world in which a nocturnal rider could mistake a tree for a church tower, a haystack for a house or a tree stump for a person has passed.161 In these conditions of total or near total black the senses narrow and stimuli are, necessarily, more powerful. It is easy to imagine a night-traveller, having taken a wrong turn, becoming unnerved by the apparent ‘rebellion’ of a familiar environment and being even more prone to exaggerate small and unfamiliar stimuli. In many of these accounts there is something resembling an experiential loop that seems, almost trance-like.162 The loop is represented beautifully in tradition by the repeated walk around a ield in search of a gate that is no longer there. How do pixy-led traditions correspond to this caricature? There are a number of points that might be worth putting down. First, as we have seen alcohol is often blamed for pixy-led experiences: and the mechanics of being drunk seems well matched to the ‘loop’ effect mentioned above; an inability or slowness in getting out of a rut of thought.163 Alcoholic intoxication is also associated with anterograde amnesia where the mind ceases to create new memories: this would have devastating consequences for a man or woman trying to get home in the dark.164 Second, some of the rituals of protection, particularly changing clothes, would help victims snap out of this loop: they give, as one perceptive early writer put it, ‘a person time to recollect himself’.165 In relation to the trance mentioned above, it is also interesting that many victims take an unaccountably long time to remember these resources. It is curious, too, that the pixy’s laughter or clapping (a distorted night sound, an owl or a fox cry, say)166 often ends the experience: does a sudden night noise ‘break the spell’? There are, also, in our records, frequent references to night lights. Without attempting the hopeless task of understanding what these lights really were (marsh gas, luminous insects, glowing barn owls…)167 let us, instead, concentrate on what lights in darkness can do to a traveller. Travelling in the dark can be compounded by visual problems: opthamologists recognise the existence of night myopia, for example. Pixies in Devon and the South-West 327 A light at night, meanwhile, can be particularly disorienting as there is, in overwhelming darkness, a natural inclination to focus on said light as the walker has no other visual stimuli, and the walker can easily stray: this is particularly dangerous with moving lights.168 Sometimes no light is to be preferred: the account of the Somerset man who could walk across a ield with his eyes closed and reach a gate a dozen times over in the day, but had been pixy led at night on the same ield is possibly instructive here.169 Of course, these are some very slight considerations around getting lost at night and the interface of tradition with these facts. However, will any of these explain a man or woman getting lost at midday in a small ield with no alcohol in their body and a clear blue sky above? Here such explanations are inadequate, but then there are very few such experiences recorded in our sources: almost all pixy-led experiences seem to take place in the dark or in fog. We are perhaps not aware just how rare these daylight encounters are because these more dramatic cases are quoted and re-quoted. There is, for example, a celebrated instance of a bark stripper in Torrington in 1890, where the bark stripper was ‘pixy-led’ in the middle of the wood, after his colleagues had left him, an event that was reported in many of the south-western newspapers.170 The man had a terrifying experience and yet this experience conforms only loosely to what we would call being pixy-led: the victim actually appears to have been paralysed for ive hours and only at the end to have lost his way in his panic to get out the wood on his hands and knees. Another much quoted instance is the story of a Women’s Institute head who managed, when a young woman, probably between the wars, to lose a gate in a hedge in daytime. But unfortunately this story – and it is brilliantly written – may be ‘fruit from the poisoned tree’: it comes from Ruth Tongue’s folklore collecting about which there are, today, such grave doubts.171 In fact, I have excluded Ruth Tongue’s Somerset material from this article for just this reason.172 An account of a missing hedge gap from 2010,173 meanwhile, appears in an interview with a life-long psychic by whose standards vanishing gates proved a tame, almost humorous ‘happening’. As collectors know a one off uncanny event is very different from the multiple experiences of a ‘sensitive’. Both are potentially interesting for folklorists, but they need to be separated out. 328 Pixies in Devon and the South-West CONCLUSION This essay has explored the folklore of fairy disorientation as it is found, above all in Devon, but also in Cornwall and Somerset: the experience, to use the Devon term, of being ‘pixy-led’. There will certainly be south-western sources that have been overlooked, particularly given the frequency of pixy-led references in ephemera, sources which future studies can hopefully integrate. Perhaps the most useful future contributions in this ield would be, though, studies for the three other macro areas with strong pixy-led traditions: Ireland; Wales and the Marches; and East Anglia. It is only after a proper understanding of these traditions in their local settings that a wider comparative study will be possible: a study in which the folklore and perhaps even the science of being pixy-led can be properly assessed. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This article could not have been written without the help of Fion Dash, Ray Girvan (†), Ronald James, Malcolm Hart, Roberto Labanti, Juliette Wood, Chris Woodyard and the anonymous reviewer. I thank them accordingly! Note that many sources for this paper, particularly the more obscure ones from ephemera, are gathered together in a 40,000 word pdf entitled ‘Pixy-Led Sources’ at https://umbra.academia.edu/simonyoung. This is freely available to facilitate discussion and source checking. NOTES 1. Spence, Lewis, 1948, The Fairy Tradition in Britain (London), pp. 24– 25; Briggs, Katharine, 1977, A Dictionary of Fairies (London), pp. 330– 331. This is folklore motif F369.7 (see also F402.1.1). 2. Mac Manus, Dermot, 1973, The Middle Kingdom (Gerrards Cross), pp. 118–129; Mathews, F.W., 1923, Tales of the Blackdown Borderland (London), pp. 55–59. 3. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 2001, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetical Works, (Ed.) J.C.C. Mays, II vols. (Princeton), vol. I, 107–112; Bray, Anna Eliza, 1836, A description of the part of Devonshire bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy; its natural history, manners, customs, superstitions, scenery, antiquities, biography of eminent persons etc. in a series of letters to Robert Southey, Esq., III vols., (London), vol. I, 167–192. 4. Wright, Joseph, 1898–1905, The English Dialect Dictionary, VI vols. (London), vol. IV, p. 531 gives only the first three forms. Pixies in Devon and the South-West 329 5. Farmer, Sarah Bridge, 1894, ‘Folklore of Marblehead, Mass’, The Journal of American Folklore, 7, 252–253. In fact, ‘pixilated’ featured in a hit Hollywood film in 1936, thanks to which it enjoyed brief national celebrity and a predictable distortion in meaning: Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, 1941, ‘Pixilated: A Marblehead Word’, American Speech, 16, 78–80. 6. St Leger-Gordon, Ruth, 1972, Witchcraft and Folklore of Dartmoor (London), p. 25. 7. There follow some examples: ‘belated’, A Lady, 1837, A Dialogue in the Devonshire Dialect in Three Parts to which is Added a Glossary by J.F. Palmer (London), p. 72; ‘bewildered’, Selby, Charles, 1841, Maximums and Speciments of William Muggins, Natural Philosopher and Citizen of the World (London), p. 282; ‘mazed’, Coope, F.E., 1900, Thurlestone Church and Parish (Kingsbridge), p. 85; ‘mystified’, Crossing, William, 1968, Tales of the Dartmoor Pixies (Newcastle-on-Tyne), pp. 29–30. Not a single one of these four forms appears with this sense in Wright’s, Dialect Dictionary! 8. Westcote, Thomas, 1845, A View of Devonshire in MDCXXX with a pedigree of most of its gentry, (Exeter), p. 433. 9. Northcote, Rosalind, 1901, ‘Pixies in the Present Day’, Devon Notes and Queries, 1, 37–39. 10. Johnson, Marjorie, 2014, Seeing Fairies: From the Lost Archives of the Fairy Investigation Society (San Antonio), pp. 204–207. 11. Dathen, Jon, 2010, Somerset Faeries and Pixies: Exploring Their Hidden World (Milverton), p. 40. 12. Briggs, Dictionary, pp. 330–331. 13. Allies, Jabez, 1852, On the ancient British, Roman and Saxon Antiquities and Folk-lore of Worcestershire (London), p. 418; Spence, Fairy Tradition, p. 24. 14. Hardy, Thomas, 2003, Return of the Native, (New York), p. 24; Kingsley, Charles, 1855, Westward Ho! The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty (Cambridge), p. 270. 15. Johnson, Seeing Fairies, p. 202; and Tomlinson, W.R., 1897, ‘The WillO’-The-Wisp’, Borderland, 4, p. 205. 16. Tregarthen, Enys 1906, North Cornwall Fairies and Legends (London), p. 192. 17. Couch, Thomas Q., 1864, ‘The Popular Antiquities of Polperro and its Neighbourhood’, Transactions of the Natural History and Antiquarian Society of Penzance, 2, 149–161 at 153. 18. Ibid., p. 153; see also Palmer, Kingsley, 1976, The Folklore of Somerset (London), p. 23. 19. Young, Simon, 2013, ‘Four Further South-Western Fairy Notes’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, 41, 69–78 at 74–75 20. Clobery, Christopher, 1659, Divine Glimpses of a Maiden Muse: Being Various Meditations and Epigrams on Several Subjects. With a Probable 330 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. Pixies in Devon and the South-West Future Cure of Our Present Epidemical Malady; If the Means Be Not Too Long Neglected (London), pp. 72-73. I give an in depth examination of this poem in ‘Four Neglected Pixy-Led Sources from Devon’, Devon Historian, 85 (2016), 39–49, at 42–44. Anon, 1887, ‘Rambling Notes’, Royal Cornwall Gazette, 8th April, p. 4. Clobery, Divine Glimpses, p. 73. Couch, ‘The Popular Antiquities’, 153. Tregarthen, North Cornwall Fairies, pp. 151–157; Tregarthen, 1911, The House of the Sleeping Winds and Other Stories Some Based on Cornish Folklore (London), pp. 107–112 , 191–199; Tregarthen, 1996, Pixie Folklore and Legends (New York), pp. 67–75, 97–103; Bottrell, William, 1870–1880, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, III vols., (Penzance), vol. I, 56–62; Anon, ‘The Pixies’, 1877, Chambers Journal, 802, p. 784; Crossing, Tales, pp. 43–45, 28–31. Hunt, Robert, 1881, Popular Romances of the West of England or the Drolls, Traditions and Superstitions of Old Cornwall (London), pp. 119– 120. Mathews, Tales, pp. 57–59. Ibid., p. 69 Anon, 1867, ‘Pixy-Led on Dartmoor’, Cheltenham Chronicle, 24th December, p. 8. L.G., 1865, ‘Pixy-Led: A Devonshire Tale, Partly in the Devonshire Dialect’, Western Times, 30th May, p. 4; Greenhill, Alfred, 1877, ‘Pixey-Led: A Devonshire Ditty’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 23rd March, p. 3; Sambrook, Joyce, 1929, ‘Pixie-Led’, Western Morning News, 18th October, p. 6; ‘R.I.P.’, 1922, ‘Fairyland’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 12th April, p. 5; Gard, Lillian, 1930, ‘When Joe Wuz Pixy-Led!’, Western Morning News, 25th March, p. 6; Arnell, Doris, 1931, ‘Pixy-Led’, Western Morning News, 5th June, p. 6; Gard, Lillian, 1938, ‘When Gran Wuz Pixy-Led’, Western Morning News, 11th August, p. 6. Anon, 1865, ‘Pixie Led Farmer’, Western Times, 21st April, p. 8. Anon, 1871, ‘Home Missionary Society: Teaching at an Outstation, A Specimen of Rural Ignorance’, The Christian Witness and Congregational Magazine, 7, p. 38 Anon, 1876, ‘Pixey-Led: A Night’s Ramble by a Chagtonian’, Western Times, 19th May, p. 7 Anon, 1876, ‘Lost Between Exmouth and Ottery’, Western Times, 21st April, p. 8. ‘Rover’, 1879, ‘Petersmarland: Those Pixies Again’, Western Times, 22nd August, p. 7. Anon, 1879, ‘Georgeham’, North Devon Journal, 1st May, p. 8. Anon, 1882, ‘Pixie-Led’, Western Times, 14th April, p. 8. Anon, 1903, ‘Extraordinary Incident’, Cornishman, 27th August, p. 3. Whistler, C.W., 1908, ‘Local Traditions of the Quantocks.’ Folklore, 19, 41–53 at 48 Pixies in Devon and the South-West 331 39. Anon, 1835, ‘Mysterious Case’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 1st August, p. 2. 40. Anon, 1835, ‘The Proceedings’, Western Times, 8th August, p. 3. 41. Couch, ‘The Popular Antiquities’, p. 153. 42. Cooley, A.J., 1865, Two Months in a London Hospital: Its Inner Life and Scenes, A Personal Narrative (London), 103, n. 1. 43. Anon, 1926, ‘Pixy Led’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 10th September, p. 14. 44. Anon, 1876, ‘Pixey-Led’, Western Times, 19th May, p. 7. 45. Bottrell, Traditions, vol. III, 181–182; Croker, Thomas Crofton, 1825– 1828, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, III vols. (London), vol. III, p. vi. 46. Courtney, Margaret Ann, 1890, Cornish Feasts and Folklore (Penzance), p. 123; Ballantyne, Archibald, 1897, ‘The West-Country Pixies’, The Argosy, 64, 410–422 at 415. 47. Tregarthen, Tales, 152; Brown, Theo, 1980, Devon Ghosts (Norwich), p. 132. 48. Whistler, ‘Local Traditions’, pp. 48–49. 49. Pycroft, G., 1884, ‘Devonshire Folklore’, The Western Antiquary, 3, 28– 29, 37–38; Brown, Ghosts, p. 132. 50. Bray, A description, vol. I, p. 182. 51. For the Gump, Jenner, Henry, 1911, ‘In Cornwall’ in W.Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (Oxford), pp. 163–170 at 164; Jenner, Henry, 1916, ‘Piskies: a folk-lore study’, Annual Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, 83, 130–151, at 134–135. For Goss Moor, Jenner, ‘In Cornwall’, p. 164; Jenner, ‘Piskies’, p. 134; Tregarthen, Tales, pp. 67–75. 52. Hammond, Joseph, 1897, A Cornish Parish Being An Account of St Austell, Town, Church, District and People (London), 60 n. 2. 53. Respectively, Courtney, Cornish Feasts, p. 123; Greenaway, R.D, 1928, ‘Pixie Led’, Western Morning News, 4th April, p. 2; Anon, 1895, ‘The Evil Eye’, London Daily News, 27th February, p. 6; ‘Pixie-Led Farmer’; ‘Phosphorous’, ‘Pixelated’, 1904, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 21st December, p. 4. 54. E.g., Anon, 1890, ‘Devonshire Folklore’, Rep. Trans. Devon. Assoc. Advmt Sci., 24, 49–54. 55. ‘Pixie-Led’, Western Times, 13th August, 1869, p. 7. 56. Wright, W. H. K., c. 1914, Picturesque South Devon (Dundee); Gard, ‘When Joe Wuz Pixy-Led!’ 57. Collings, Jesse and John Green, 1920, Life of the Right Hon Jesse Collings (London), p. 19. 58. Anon, 1873, ‘Wayside Notes’, Western Times, 30th May, p. 7. 59. Briggs, Dictionary, p. 191. 60. Ballantyne, ‘The West Country Pixies’,p. 415. 61. Briggs, Dictionary, pp. 330–331. The strongest south-western example is in Tregarthen, The House, pp. 109–112. 332 Pixies in Devon and the South-West 62. E.g., Mathews, Tales, p. 55. 63. Anon, 1887, A Handbook for Travellers in Devonshire. (London), p. 199; Anon, 1862, ‘Brazillian Dick, Farmer Phil and the Miller’s Maid’, Western Times, 20th December, p. 9; Farmer, ‘Folklore’, p. 252; Thornbury, Walter, 1870, A Tour Round England (London), pp. 163–164, 168, 169–170; Nellie Cornwall, c. 1888, Twice Rescued or the Story of Little Tino (London), p. 132. 64. Bottrell, Traditions, vol. I, pp. 56–62. 65. Crossing, Tales, pp. 43–45. 66. Page, John Lloyd Warden, 1892, An Exploration of Dartmoor and Its Antiquities: With Some Account of its Borders (London), p. 37. 67. Anon, 1877, ‘The Pixies’, Chambers Journal, 802, p. 784. 68. Friend, Hilderic, 1882, A Glossary of Devonshire Plant Names (London), p. 572; Friend, Hilderic, 1889, Flowers and Flower-lore (London), pp. 19-20; Anon, 1892, ‘Spell Bound’, Nottingham Evening Post, 29th December, p. 4. 69. Couch, ‘Popular Antiquities’, p. 153; Crossing, Tales, pp. 29–30; Hancock, Frederick, 1897, The parish of Selworthy in the county of Somerset, some notes on its history (Taunton), p. 248. 70. Everitt, William, 1884, Devonshire Scenery (Exeter), p. 84. 71. Hunt, Popular Romances, p. 119. 72. Couch, ‘Popular Antiquities’, p. 153. 73. H.G.T., 1850, ‘Pixies or Piskies’, Notes and Queries, 61, 509; Tregarthen, Tales, pp. 155–156; Crossing, Tales, pp. 29–30; Brown, Ghosts, p. 132. 74. Chope, R. Pearse, 1910, ‘The Folklore of Devon’, The London Devonian Year Book for the Year 1910, pp. 109–133 at 112: compare Tregarthen, The House, p. 197. 75. Anon, ‘The Pixies’, p. 784. 76. Crossing, Tales, p. 8. 77. Bottrell, Traditions, vol. II, p. 102. 78. King, Richard John, 1840, Two Lectures Read Before the Essay Society of Exeter College, (Privately printed), pp. 33–34. 79. Crossing, Tales, pp. 48–50. 80. Young, Simon, 2013, ‘Five Notes on Nineteenth-Century Cornish Changelings’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 51–79. 81. Anon, ‘Devonshire Folklore’: motif F385.1 ‘fairy spell averted by turning coat’. 82. ‘The Proceedings’, Western Times, 8th August 1835, p. 3; Gwatkin, Mrs. (Ed.), 1839, A Devonshire Dialogue in Four Parts (London), p. 20; Thoms, William John, 1847, ‘The Folk-Lore of Shakespeare. V. The Names of Shakespeare’s Fairies’, The Athenaeum 1040, pp. 1030– 1031. 83. Gwatkin, Dialogue, p. 20; Couch, ‘Popular Antiquities’, p. 153. 84. Aprons: Bray, A description, vol. I, 183, vol. II, p. 254. Shawls: King, Richard John, 1875, ‘Verbal Provincialisms of South-Western Devonshire’, Rept. Trans. Devon. Assoc. Advmt Sci., 7, 401–569 at 522. Petticoats: Bray, A description, vol. I, p. 183. Stockings: Hewett, Sarah, Pixies in Devon and the South-West 333 1892, The Peasant Speech of Devon and Other Matters Connected Therewith (London), p. x; Courtney, Cornish Feasts, p. 123; Anon, 1916, ‘Pexylated’, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 6th August, p. 6. 85. Hunt, Popular Romances, pp. 119–120; Bottrell, Traditions, vol. II, p. 101; see also Page, John, 1895, An Exploration of Exmoor and the Hill Country of West Somerset: with Notes on its Archaeology (London), p. 107. 86. Anon, ‘Home Missionary Society’, p. 38. 87. Croker, Fairy Legends, vol. III, p. vi. 88. Halliwell, James Orchard, 1846, A Dictionary of Provincial and Archaic Words, II vols. (London), vol. II, p. 628. Chris Woodyard notes in a personal communication: ‘Women’s gowns [in the eighteenth century] were pinned across the breast and required effort to undo. Women also wore more layers than men: shift, stays, gown. A man need only take off his coat and it might not even have been buttoned. A cap was pinned on, but was much easier to remove and turn than a gown.’ Note that I examine Halliwell’s passage in ‘Pixy-Led Sources’, p. 44–46. 89. Gwatkin, Dialogue, p. 20; Hewett, Peasant Speech, p. x; Ballantyne, ‘The West-Country Pixies’, p. 416. 90. Bray, A description, vol. I, p. 183. 91. Worth, R.N., 1883, Tourist’s Guide to South Devon: Rail, Road, River, Coast and Moor (London); Ballantyne, ‘The West-Country Pixies’, p. 416; Rowe, Samuel, 1896, A Perambulation of the Antient and Royal Forest of Dartmoor and the Venville Precincts (London), p. 90. Note that the passage in Rowe comes from additions made to the 1848 original by J. Brooking Rowe (who had certainly read Bray). 92. Tregarthen, The House, pp. 198, 112. 93. Clobery, Divine Glimpses, p. 73. 94. Herrick, Robert, 2013, The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, (Ed.) Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly, II vols. (Oxford), vol. I, p. 307. I have examined this poem more extensively in ‘Pixy-Led Sources’, p. 40–42. 95. Watson, W. G. Willis, ‘Pixylated’, Taunton Courier, 30th July 1919, p. 6. 96. Northcote, ‘Pixies’, p. 38. 97. Hawkey, Charlotte, 1871, Neota (Taunton), pp. 48–49. 98. Anon, 1926, ‘Pixy Led’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 10th September, p. 14. 99. Anon, 1914, A pictorial and descriptive guide to Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport with excursions by river, road and sea (London), pp. 128–129. 100. Worthy, Charles, 1887, Devonshire parishes; or, The antiquities, heraldry and family history of twenty-four parishes in the archdeaconry of Totnes, II vols. (Exeter), vol. I, p. 25. 101. Anon, 1928, ‘Apparently the Belief in Pixies...’, Western Morning News, 31st March, p. 7. 334 Pixies in Devon and the South-West 102. Bottrell, Traditions, vol. III, pp. 181–182; Anon, 1879, ‘Georgeham’, North Devon Journal, 1st May, p. 8; Lee, Charles, 1898, ‘Wisht Wood’, The Cornish Magazine, 1, 252–260 at 255. 103. Hewett, Peasant Speech, x. 104. Crossing, Tales, 59; Anon, 1919, ‘Pexylated’, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 6 Aug, 6; Cresswell, Beatrix F., 1920, Dartmoor with its surroundings; a handbooks for visitors (London), 75. 105. Crossing, William, 1914, Guide to Dartmoor: Southern and Western Section (Exeter), p. 5. 106. Crossing, William, 1902, The ancient stone crosses of Dartmoor and its borderland (Exeter), pp. 121–122, pace Crossing, Tales, p. 59. 107. Page, An Exploration of Dartmoor, p. 65; Crossing, The ancient stone crosses, p. 122. 108. Bray, A description, vol. II, p. 302. 109. Briggs, Katharine, 1978, The Vanishing People: A Study of Traditional Fairy Beliefs (London), pp. 7–9. 110. Bray, A description, vol. I, pp. 167–192. 111. Anon, 1865, ‘Pixie Led Farmer’, Western Times, 21st April, p. 8; Anon, 1876, ‘Pixey-Led: A Night’s Ramble by a Chagtonian’, Western Times, 19th May, p. 7; Anon, 1876, ‘Lost Between Exmouth and Ottery’, Western Times, 21st April, p. 8; ‘Rover’, ‘Petersmarland’; Anon, 1828, ‘PixieLed’, Western Times, 14th April, p. 8. 112. Anon, ‘Home Missionary Society’; Anon, 1862, ‘Holwsworthy Institute’, Exeter Flying Post, 19th November, p.7. 113. Hewett, Peasant Speech, p. x. 114. Crossing, Tales, p. 58. 115. ‘Plain Peter’, 1910, ‘Pixy Led’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 8th July, p. 14. 116. Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, pp.158–169, 173–174, 183. 117. Ibid., pp. 173–174. 118. Anon, 1927, ‘Devon Doings: Amusing Address to Bristol Rotarians’, Western Daily Press, 31st May, p. 5. 119. Anon, 1928, ‘Pixies and Witches’, Western Morning News, 27th March, p. 6. 120. Anon, 1946, ‘A Blagdon Hill Craftsman: Passing of Mr. ‘Bill’ Dyer’, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 12th January, p. 5. 121. Young, ‘Five Notes’, pp. 53–57. 122. See though Theo Brown’s 1980 work Devon Ghosts, p. 132. 123. Young, Simon, 2013, ‘A History of the Fairy Investigation Society, 1927-1960’, Folklore 124, 139-156 at 156. 124. Anon, 1919, ‘In the Waning Light’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 7th November, p. 9. 125. Anon, 1928, ‘Some Cornish Charms’, Western Morning News, 25th September, p.8. 126. Anon, 1932, ‘First Clotted Cream: Did it Originate in Devon or Cornwall?’, Western Morning News, 17th November, p. 4. Pixies in Devon and the South-West 335 127. Dopson, L.H., 1946, ‘Pixies in Somerset’, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 27th April, p. 2. 128. Anon, 1928, ‘Apparently the Belief in Pixies...’. 129. Greenaway, R.D., 1928, ‘Pixie Led’, Western Morning News, 4th April, p. 2. 130. Jenner, Henry, 1928, ‘Pisky-Led’, Western Morning News, 10th April, p. 2. 131. E.g. Tingey, J.C., 1922-1923, ‘Jack-a-Lantern’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 12, 204-206. 132. Mac Manus, The Middle Kingdom, pp. 118–129. 133. Croker, Fairy Legends, vol. III, pp. 230–232. 134. Allies, Antiquities, 418. 135. Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, 158-159. It has been suggested to me that this is the author applying English terminology to a Welsh reality. I suspect, though, that Evans-Wentz is here employing a local term, particularly given Pembrokeshire’s piscon-led (see next note). The geographical distribution of pixy-lore badly needs a study. 136. Merrick, W.P, 1904, ‘Pembrokeshire Notes’, Folklore, 15, 194-198 at 196. 137. Farmer, ‘Folklore’, p. 252. 138. Rieti, Barbara, 1991, Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland (St John’s), pp. 90–100. 139. Clobery, Divine Glimpses, 73; Couch, ‘Popular Antiquities’, p. 153. 140. E.g. ‘Phosphorous’, ‘Pixelated’. 141. St. Leger-Gordon, Witchcraft, 22; Baring-Gould, Sabine, 1900, A Book of Dartmoor (London), pp. 244–247. 142. Laycock, C.H., 1920-1921, ‘Jack-A-Lantern’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries, 11, pp. 86-87. 143. Thornbury, Walter, 1870, A Tour Round England (London), p. 169. 144. Bray, A description, vol. I, p. 175. 145. Ibid. vol. I, p. 173. 146. Crossing, Tales, p. 24. 147. King, Two Lectures, pp. 33–34; King, Richard, 1873, ‘The Folklore of Devonshire’, Fraser’s Magazine, 8, 773-783. For more on ‘rolling’ fairies: Young, Simon, 2015, ‘The Mysterious Rolling Wool Bogey’, Gramarye, 8, 9-17 148. Young, Simon, 2012, ‘Three Cornish Fairy Notes’, Devon and Cornwall Notes and Queries 41, 1-4 at p. 2. 149. Anon, ‘Home Missionary Society’. 150. Hammond, A Cornish Parish, p. 61. 151. Tregarthen, Tales, p. 144. Tregarthen has many references to pixy lights, e.g. Pixie Folklore, 57, 100. 152. Hurley, Jack, 1976, Legends of Exmoor (Dulverton), p. 35. 153. Anon, 1905, ‘Pixy Belief in North Devon’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 24th February, p. 5. 154. Mathews, Tales, p. 69. 336 Pixies in Devon and the South-West 155. Elworthy, Frederick Thomas, 1895, The Evil Eye: An Account of this Ancient and Widespread Superstition (London), p. 433. 156. Deane, Tony and Tony Shaw, 1975, The Folklore of Cornwall (London), p. 91. 157. Bottrell, Traditions, vol. III, p. 182. 158. Young, Simon, 2013, ‘Against Taxonomy: The Fairy Families of Cornwall’, Cornish Studies, 21, pp. 223–237. 159. E.g. Pettersson, Olof, 1961, ‘The Spirits of the Woods: Outline of a Study of the Ideas about Forest Guardians in African Mythology and Folklore’, The Supernatural Owners of Nature, (ed.) Åke Hultkrantz (Stockholm), 101-111, at p. 103. 160. Hufford, David J., 1982, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centred Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (Philadelphia). 161. Anon, 1876, ‘Lost Between Exmouth and Ottery’, Western Times, 21st April, p. 8. 162. E.g. Hammond, A Cornish Parish, p. 360. 163. Jenner, ‘Piskies’, p. 134. 164. Ray Girvan kindly supplied this comment: ‘With alcoholic anterograde amnesia, it is quite possible to get it without being obviously drunk. It kicks in not with blood alcohol level per se, but with rapid increase in blood alcohol level, necking as little as a couple of pints of strong beer or several shorts very fast can bring it on.’ 165. Halliwell, A Dictionary, vol. II, p. 628. 166. Allies, Antiquities, p. 418. 167. Pigott, Sir T. Digby, 1908, ‘Luminous Owls and the ‘Will o’the Wisp’’, Contemporary Review 94, 64-72; Blair, K.G., 1921-1922, ‘Annual Address to the Members’, Proceedings of the South London Entomological & Natural History Society, 9-22; Clarke, David, 1994, ‘The Luminous Owls of Norfolk’, Fortean Studies, 1, 50-58; Hand, Wayland D, 1977, ‘Will-o’-wisps, Jack-o’-Lanterns, and Their Congeners: A Consideration of the Fiery and Luminous Creatures of Lower Mythology’, Fabula, 18, 226-233 at pp. 232–233. 168. I have sometimes (in Italy) to return home through a wood in the pitch black on a wide path. Knowing the path well I walk without a light, but in June I have at times fallen into the siding because I’ve been distracted by ire-lies in the trees. 169. Mathews, Tales, p. 56. 170. Anon, ‘Devonshire Folklore’, 1890, pp. 52–53. 171. Harte, Jeremy, 2001, ‘Ruth Tongue: the story teller’, 3rd Stone, 41, 16– 21; Davidson, H. R. Ellis, 1986, Katharine Briggs: Story-Teller (Cambridge), 141-142. 172. Tongue, Ruth, 1965, Somerset Folklore (London), pp. 113–115. 173. Dathen, Somerset Faeries, p. 40.