1 Against Taxonomy: The Fairy Families of Cornwall [This is at pre-proof stage with Cornish Studies] (i) Introduction and Hunt’s Classification In the nineteenth-century, as folklorists gathered material in a systematic fashion, it was natural, indispensable even, that they classify that data. Part of this effort was made to break down the many supernatural beings that they found into macro categories – ‘demons’, ‘fairies’, ‘giants’… – and then these macro categories into smaller groups: e.g. ‘white ladies’, ‘poltergeists’ and the ‘uneasy dead’ for ghosts. There is no question that in doing this they were, in part, following local traditions. But, as folklorists have long realised, including those same nineteenth-century folklorists, 1 there is enormous blurring in lore and very often taxonomic categories misrepresented the beliefs of a given area. This is particularly true of fairies. In this short article we want to look at this question from a Cornish perspective. Cornwall has several advantages for such a study. It is (i) a relatively small and a relatively homogenous area. It has (ii) a rich nineteenth-century folklore corpus, as several talented men and women worked on the fairy lore of this region. And there are (iii) a series of memorates from Cornwall, which come through to us independently of the folklore collectors and that allow us, to some extent, to check the collector’s material and their interpretations. The first systematic attempt at fairy classification for Cornwall was made by Robert Hunt in 1865 in his Popular Romances, a book dedicated, in part, to fairies. 2 Hunt was not Cornish: he had been born in Devon. But he grew up in Penzance and he had taken notes on the folklore of the region from the 1820s, when still a young man. 3 He was systematic in outlook; he was a chemist, a statistician, a pioneering photographer and a mine engineer as well as a poet and a philanthropist. 4 And he was determined, in a very Victorian way, to reduce the confusing galaxy of traditional names to order. It should be understood that there are in Cornwall five varieties of the fairy family, clearly distinguishable: 1) The Small People; 2) The Spriggans; 3) Piskies, or Pigseys; 4) The Buccas, Bockles, or Knockers [and] 5) The Browneys. 5 The reader would be well advised to remember that ‘clearly distinguishable’ in what follows... 2 This is the list that all subsequent writers on Cornish folklore have been confronted with and against which very many have rebelled. William Bottrell who had inspired Hunt and who, in turn, was inspired and provoked by him dithered, in his three publications, over how to divide up the Cornish fairy folk: he ultimately, as we shall see, declined to follow Hunt in his pentarchy. Margaret Courtney writing some twenty five years later did away with browneys and reduced the list to four. 6 The Rev. W.S. Lach-Szymra listed five fairy types, but differed in what these five were: fairies, piskies/pixies, small people, good people and brownies. 7 Jenner, in two essays in the nineteen-tens, reduced Hunt’s list to three: he united the first three categories as ‘piskies’, divided knockers and buccas and provisionally rejected browneys. 8 Enys Tregarthen accepted knockers and spriggans (‘bad Piskeys’), conflated piskeys and small people, revealed that they were also called ‘dinkies’ or the ‘little invisibles’, and that there was too a species named ‘nightriders’. 9 Then, in 1975, Tony Deane and Tony Shaw, in the most influential modern work on Cornish folklore, settled on three categories, uniting small people, spriggans and piskies and keeping knockers and browneys. 10 Jeremy Harte, in what is perhaps the most important general study of fairies in the last generation, united the first three, ignored knockers, and rejected browneys out of hand. 11 And Amy Hale, in our most important Celtic encylopedia, subdivided piskies into spriggans, knockers, buccas and browneys. 12 It will be noted that not a single one of the authors on this list is in agreement! 13 And if individuals of the calibre of Harte and Jenner or Courtney and Tregarthen disagree what hope is there for a new study? Were we intending to write a ‘definitive’ list, none at all. But our aim here is not to settle on one or other combination of names: this would be to repeat the errors begun by Hunt a century and a half ago. It is rather to show the ultimate futility of lists where fairies (and other supernatural creatures) are concerned, particularly when our evidence is incomplete. Note we say ‘ultimate’ because it is inevitable that folklorists and tradition-bearers will classify. But while classifying we must remember that we are not entomologists with nets, boxes and pins. Our ‘lists’ and ‘categories’ are no more than epistemological tools to better understand an amorphous, flowing and yet poorly documented reality: they must not be confused with the reality itself. (ii) Piskeys, Little People and Spriggans 3 Any study of Cornish fairies has to begin with ‘piskey’ the Cornish spelling of the standard south-western fey. The piskey is ‘pixy’ in Devon – the canonical spelling thanks to Coleridge and Bray – and it is also spelt sometimes as pigsey. 14 The geographical limits of pixy belief in early modern times are difficult to establish. Certainly, the four south-western counties feature pixy tales. But there are hints that pixies were known as far east as Sussex and as far north as the Welsh Marches. 15 Early evidence is lacking, either because our sources are inadequate or because that evidence never existed. And this is compounded by the fact that no one has ever given a convincing etymology for the word ‘piskey’, a word that possibly had its origin in the Brittonic language of the south-west. We say ‘possibly’ but the earliest known occurrence of pixy appears in 1636 (or thereabouts) in Devon. 16 Given the ubiquity of ‘piskey’ it is hardly surprising that Hunt includes them in his list. More curious though are the references to spriggans and the small people. Here Jeremy Harte has suggested that ‘the only difference lay in the choice of Standard English, West Country Dialect or vestigial Cornish to describe them’ for respectively small people, piskeys and spriggans. 17 Harte seems to be basing his thoughts here on Jenner’s work of almost a century before. Jenner wrote: ‘if there is any distinction it would seem that ‘small people’ is a more general term, spriggans are a more elegant and refined sort, perhaps influenced by the fairies of cultivated literature, and piskies more uncouth and rustic.’18 However, if Harte and Jenner are correct – and this is far from certain – it is important to remember that for Hunt there were differences not just of name but of function as well. The small people are described by Hunt as ‘the spirits of people who inhabited Cornwall many thousands of years ago’ – though he admits that it is ‘by no means clear that the tradition of their origin does not apply to the whole five branches of this ancient family’. 19 Hunt underlines the fact that they are not only small, but ‘smaller and smaller’: they are shrinking through time. He also points to their benevolence. These Small People are exceedingly playful amongst themselves, but they are usually demure when they know that any human eye sees them. They commonly aid those people to whom they take a fancy, and, frequently, they have been known to perform the most friendly acts towards men and women. 20 4 The spriggans, on the other hand, are malicious, which might have to do with their guarding ancient treasures. As one of Hunt’s correspondents – Bottrell? – had it: This is known, that they were a remarkably mischievous and thievish tribe. If ever a house was robbed, a child stolen, cattle carried away, or a building demolished, it was the work of the Spriggans. Whatever commotion took place in earth, air, or water, it was all put down as the work of these spirits.21 The piskey, on the other, hand is more mischievous than wicked. He likes to pixy-lead travellers and he is famous for his laughter. 22 In crude Freudian terms, the spriggans are the id, the piskies are the ego and the small people the super ego of the Cornish fairy world. The division in names also then involved or was understood by Hunt to involve a division in function and character. But – returning to Harte and Jenner’s point – had Hunt split up what was an organic whole in tradition? We have too little evidence, unfortunately, but the writings of three authors: Bray, Couch and Bottrell suggest that Hunt was guilty of splitting. To take the work of Bray first, she certainly described other supernatural creatures in her writings on the south-west. However, among the fairies, she only recognised the pixy.23 There were no small people, there was no spriggan: in fact, even a fairy in a mine is called a pixy rather than a knocker. 24 Does this represent the more ‘primitive’ folklore of Dartmoor? Was it perhaps Bray’s desire to simplify for readers from elsewhere (or the desire of her informants to do the same)? Possibly. But it is striking that Bray describes the pixies being sent on their tasks by the Pixy King who lived on the moor. And pixies working below ground belonged to the same kingdom as those misleading travellers in the bogs.25 She also has an expert correspondent who confuses issues still more by twice calling the mine pixies ‘small men’! 26 Thomas Couch published in 1855 the earliest extensive writing on the Cornish as opposed to the Dartmoor pixy, basing his experience on the village of Polperro where he and his family lived. 27 Couch was, like Hunt afterwards, an interested outsider: and his writing on fairy types is important because, almost uniquely in Cornish folklore writing, he predates Hunt’s authoritative statements. Couch, like Bray, does not mention spriggans or little people. However, in an earlier version of that paper, preserved in the 5 Transactions of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society, we can see his confusion as to classification, something that does not appear in this form in later drafts of his work. Our domestic spirit, who rewards the thrifty servant, and punishes the slattern, and who, in the old manor house at Killigarth, when the family was at church, was wont to watch the joint as it roasted on the spit, and to admonish the servant to remove it when sufficiently drest, agrees with the gobelin of Normandy, the kobold of Germany, the nisse of Norway, and the Tom te gubbe of Sweden, and the brownie of Scotland, and may be found distinct from our little pastoral fairy whose chief amusement is music and dancing, laughter and mischief, and whom makes those rings in our meadows ‘of which the ewe not bites’. 28 Couch makes here the division – the division preferred by most twentiethcentury folklorists 29 – between the domestic solitary fairy and the host of fairies outside: a division that Hunt effectively avoids. Couch then goes on to speculate about the existence of knockers, though with self-confessed ignorance. In Cornwall we might expect to find the ‘swart fairy of the mine’ occupying a prominent place in our mythology. It would, therefore be interesting to know whether this is the case from those who are acquainted with the folk-lore of our mining districts, especially as it has been a disputed point whether the Duergars or dwarf-tribe, dwelling in hills and caverns, and distinguished for their skill in metallurgy, formed really a portion of the old belief, or were, as Sir Walter Scott thought them, the diminutive natives of the Lappish and Finnish nations driven to the mountains by their invaders. 30 Couch, then, at Polperro, had heard nothing of Spriggans and Small People. Indeed, he struggled with typology, but broke down the fairies he knew according to function, albeit more general functions than Hunt. In his later published draft he complains that all fairy types had been subsumed by the pisky. 31 (iii) Bottrell and Hunt on Fairy Types 6 Most interesting are though the comments of Bottrell. Jenner, in a notable passage, claims that Bottrell had ignored Hunt’s classification. 32 But this is not strictly true. In fact, in each of his three volumes Bottrell includes reflections on the division of fairies into groups. In the first volume, he seems to differentiate between piskeys and fairies (whom he calls ‘the small people’). 33 In the second volume he has a short essay entitled ‘The Small People’ with which ‘Spriggans’ are associated. 34 Then in the third volume, in an essay called ‘The Fairy Tribe’, Bottrell moves closer to Hunt’s position: he talks of small people, spriggans (treasure-keepers) and piskeys. 35 However, he is not emphatic and his use of these words suggests a flexibility that is not there in Hunt’s classification. Consider these passages: italics are our own. ‘I wish we could but catch a spriggan, a piskey, or a knacker,’ says Capt. Mathy one night, ‘ef one can but lay hands on any of the small people unawares before they vanish, or turn into muryans (ants), they may be made to tell where the goold es buried.’36 I ventured to wipe the water from my face with my apron, and to open my anointed eye, and oh! the Lord deliver me from what I see’d – the place was full of sprites and spriggans; in all the folds of the nets and sails, that were thrown over the keybeams, in the clews of ropes that hung from the rafters, troops of small-people were cutting all sorts of capers; 37 In his glossary to the second volume Bottrell writes that small people are ‘fairies’, spriggans are a ‘sprite, fairy’ and piskeys are ‘a mischievous fairy that delights to lead people astray’. 38 There is overlap then, not Hunt’s ‘clearly distinguishable’ categories. If, as Jenner believed, Bottrell was far more of an authority on fairies than Hunt then what should perhaps strike us here is vagueness and an evolving system that responded to Hunt’s writing. It is commonly appreciated that Hunt had read Bottrell’s notes before publishing. 39 It is forgotten though that Bottrell’s writings take Hunt’s work into account and that he responds to that work. As we have noted elsewhere Bottrell is perhaps the closest we have in nineteenth-century Britain or Ireland to a tradition-bearer writing folklore. 40 In a sense Bottrell is not just writing about drolls he is still part of that tradition: ‘the last of the drolls’. His very vagueness about classifying fairies is what is most important. The categories of Hunt interest him, but though he 7 hums and whistles a little, he does not, in the end, take up the tune. It is as if that tune were too restricting. More shocking though is Hunt’s occasional confusion that is, in some senses, profounder than Bottrell’s. The following tale is entitled ‘the Fairy Fair in Germoe’. Here we have confusion both in terminology (piskies/small people) and in function (the good small people are ‘wicked, spiteful devils’, who steal children). Again italics are our own. Bal Lane in Germoe was a notorious place for piskies. One night Daniel Champion and his comrade came to Godolphin Bridge, they were a little bit ‘overtook’ with liquor. They said that when they came to Bal Lane, they found it covered all over from end to end, and the Small People holding a fair there with all sorts of merchandise – the prettiest sight they ever met with. Champion was sure he saw his child there; for a few nights before, his child in the evening was as beautiful a one as could be seen anywhere, but in the morning was changed for one as ugly and wizened as could be; and he was sure the Small People had done it. Next day, telling the story at Croft Gothal, his comrade was knocked backward, thrown into the bobpit, and just killed. Obliged to be carried to his home. Champion followed, and was telling of their adventure with the Small People, when one said, ‘Don’t speak about them; they ’re wicked, spiteful devils.’ No sooner were the words uttered than the speaker was thrown clean over stairs and bruised dreadfully, a convincing proof to all present of the reality of the existence of the Small Folks. 41 This passage and particularly Bottrell’s two before suggest that, as Jenner noted, ‘small people’ is simply a generic term. 42 We wonder if ‘small people’ has not been romanticised because of the reasonable hope that the words are a calque on a Cornish phrase, pobel vean.43 Spriggans, on the other hand, cluster in references from the west of Penzance: perhaps we are dealing then with just a local genus? 44 Certainly, the ideal way to look at fairy classification would be to look at fairy names on a micro level, parish by parish: the problem is we never or rarely have enough information to do so. Enys Tregarthen’s writings though are a warning as different categories and names of fairies apparently existed in the north of Cornwall: e.g. ‘dinkies’ and ‘nightriders’. 45 (iv) Buccas, Bockles and Knockers 8 If piskies/spriggans and small people provide us with ‘lumping’ problems then Hunt’s ‘the Buccas, Bockles, or Knockers’ perhaps demand splitting: These are the sprites of the mines, and correspond to the Kobals of the German mines, the Duergars, and the Trolls. They are said to be the souls of the Jews who formerly worked the tin-mines of Cornwall. They are not allowed to rest because of their wicked practices as tinners, and they share in the general curse which ignorant people believe still hangs on this race. 46 About knockers (or ‘knackers’) we have already seen that there is danger of confusion with piskies. 47 Bockles barely exist outside this page of Hunt. 48 But then Hunt reports that ‘in some districts’ the word Bucca is also employed for mine spirits. 49 Crucially, Bottrell too refers to ‘knackers’ as buccas, calling them also ‘underground spriggans’ 50 But this does not seem to be the first or even the second meaning of Bucca. Indeed, in a long note Bottrell gives the following senses: (i) ‘a poor, half-witted person of a mischievous disposition’; (ii) ‘a ghost’; (iii) ‘a scarecrow’; (iv) ‘Old Nick’ [when Bucca-dhu, black spirit] and (v) ‘a divinity’. 51 On this last point: Within easy memory every boat in Newlyn always set aside a portion of the catch, and left it in a collected heap on the beach to propitiate ‘Bucka’, and every fisherman noted, with superstitious awe, the remarkable regularity with which ‘Bucka’ fetched away his offerings, after dark. 52 This examination is a reminder of how complicated tradition can become and how our terms, rather than being surgical tweezers become unwieldy pliers that damage what they pick up. Here we have a word that has several different meanings, presumably, in part, because of geography (‘in some districts’, ‘Newlyn’), in part, because of natural polarities in myth, and, in part, because of the complexity of language. It is striking that Hunt, who had a life-long interest in Cornish traditions, did not write about the bucca on the beach at Newlyn. Instead, he deprived the bucca of life by lumping him together with the knockers of the mines. Bucca though deserves, on this 9 evidence, a separate existence either as a fairy or something else: Bottrell’s ‘divinity’ perhaps. 53 (v) The Elusive Browney We have dealt so far with the problems of lumping and splitting. What now though about accidental invention? In 1865 Robert Hunt gave his own description of the most mysterious supernatural being from Cornwall: This spirit was purely of the household. Kindly and good, he devoted his every care to benefit the family with whom he had taken up his abode. The Browney has fled, owing to his being brought into very close contact with the schoolmaster, and he is only summoned now upon the occasion of the swarming of the bees. When this occurs, mistress or maid seizes a bell-metal, or a tin pan, and, beating it, she calls ‘Browney, Browney!’ as loud as she can until the good Browney compels the bees to settle. 54 With the very strange exception of the bees this description of browney is one that a reader could easily find in nineteenth-century England, to the north of the Humber, and in Scotland. Brownie (the normal spelling) was a solitary fairy, typically semi-nude and hairy, who worked loyally in households. He would insist on cleanliness and yet rebel when offered clothes, leaving the service of any household that ‘misused’ him in this way. 55 In Cornwall there are several stories of this type though all involve ‘piskeys’… 56 Browney, on the other hand, presents problems of geography. How can a fairy appear at two different ends of Britain, but not in any intervening region? In fact, this dual appearance would not be quite as difficult to credit if other evidence was good. Most modern attempts to explain the word ‘brownie’ have employed Gaelic. 57 But Brownie is associated, above all, with northern England and the Scottish Lowlands, an area that was, like Cornwall, Brittonic-speaking in early medieval times. If ‘brownie’ could be shown to derive from a Brittonic word then the distance between the two ‘brownie’ regions would not be such an obstacle. However, no such word has been found and there is also the fact that ‘brownie’ (or an obvious cognate) is absent from Welsh and Breton, the other Brittonic-speaking regions. At this point the natural scepticism over Hunt’s Cornish browney returns. 10 This scepticism grows when it is realised that prior to Hunt there is no other mention of brownies for Cornwall or Devon. There are fairies that act like brownies – they are solitary and run away on being given a new suit of clothes – but they are, as we noted above, called ‘piskeys’. Nor are the references that come after Hunt copious or convincing. Bottrell connects fairies and bees but refuses to use the word ‘browney’: a pointed and very significant omission. 58 In 1881 after a lecture in Penzance a Mr Cornish describes how a ‘brownie’ (his spelling?) regularly visited a house in that town.59 It is interesting that this brownie was a solitary fairy and that he was associated with a home. But is ‘brownie’ here the traditional term or just a term for a ‘solitary fairy’ popularised by the fairy writers of the previous generation, not least Hunt himself? Then, in 1910, Henry Jenner opined that ‘brownie’ was a foreign term, perhaps taken from books. However, he admits that he had recently come across a case of a ‘brownie’ in Sennen in West Cornwall. 60 The only specific south-western trait that browney has is his peculiar association with bees. Ariel in The Tempest famously sucks where the bee sucks (V,1). But we have been able to find no association between fairies and bees in traditional lore with one slight but possibly significant exception. Anna Bray writing in her Description quotes a seventeenth-century Tavistock poet recording, in verse, the popular belief that ‘that fairies and pixies steal honey from the hives of bees’. For as I oft have heard the wood-nimphs say, The dancing fairies when they left to play, Then backe did pull them, and in holes of trees Stole the sweet honey from the painfull bees, Which in the flower to put they oft were seene, And for a banquet brought it to their queene. 61 Of course, Hunt’s browney and this poem have only a vague connection: in one browney settles the bees, in one pixies or fairies steal honey from hives. But there is a curiosity that must at least be noted. The poet in question was William Browne. 62 Is it possible that Browne got confused in the memory of one of the nineteenth-century, south-western fairy writers? Browne was little read in the 1800s. But Bray was the point of reference for all those interested in south-western fairy belief. One of Hunt’s informants or Hunt himself may 11 have got a name mixed up while recalling legends about honey and fairies, particularly given the existence of the northern brownie. 63 Hunt and Bottrell as well as Thomas Couch (one of Hunt’s sources) all admitted to having read Bray: and brownies were becoming, in turn, well known through writers such as Keightley. 64 Now, it is likely that the words browney/Browne associated with fairies and honey represent no more than a coincidence. But the very fact that we can offer this kind of hypothesis is a reminder of the fragility of the proof for the genus. Harte is perhaps too emphatic when he writes that ‘a whole species of fairy has been created, not by the folk, but by the folklorist’. 65 But there is a very real danger that this is what has happened here. For us, Bottrell’s omission of ‘browney’, while discussing the same episode is the most important nineteenth-century data point. vi) Conclusion The weight of all the previous arguments is that Hunt’s list cannot be sustained. The splitting of spriggans, small people and piskeys is almost certainly a mistaken response to Cornish tradition; a response that Bottrell seems to have accepted and resisted by turns. There are lacunae, with bucca given a miner’s pick when he should also have been given a room (or beach) of his own. Browney may be a misunderstanding or an import. In fact, in the end the only real division seems to be between underground and overground fairies. But, as we hinted above, even that is too-simplistic. Bray describes the fairies in the mine as a piskey. 66 We also have a precious reference from near Bodmin where Jack o’Lanterns are associated with the discovery of a mine. 67 So, what can be done? Is it best to surrender and simply talk of Cornish fairies or better piskies with no subdivisions? It would be, but even the boundaries between fairies and other supernatural beings are blurred. After all, we learn that ‘the small people’ (and perhaps all of the fairies) were the spirits of the dead: a theme made much of by Lewis Spence. 68 The spriggans were the shrunk, reduced remnants of the giants. 69 The piskey and will-o’-thewisp double up frequently: Jack-the-lantern is sometimes even called a piskey as, thinking of Devon now, is Joan-the-Wad. 70 We read one report of mermaids taking changeling children: as typically fairies would do. 71 In another account, a fairy widower swims in the water among the small people. 72 One non-canonical Devon source even suggests that there may 12 have been some overlapping between piskeys and yeff hounds.73 In the Middle Ages it proved impossible to hold a line between demons and fairies and fairies and Christian figures (Mary, angels…). 74 In modern times there have been several studies noting similarities between UFO and fairies encounters. 75 It should really come as no surprise that in the nineteenth century, in the south-west, among believers, there was no firmly held line between different supernatural categories. If Hunt’s list is a vain attempt to classify then what lessons, if any, can we take away from this exercise? For this author, at least, one striking point is the difference between Bottrell and Hunt’s attitude towards classification. Hunt, as a scientist, needed classification. It was the foundation for his work on the fairies: he is a taxonomist. Bottrell, on the other hand, essentially a literate droll, plays with classification and blurs categories, floating among and with the fairies. And Bottrell is better matched to the material, for folklore is protean and shifts according to time, place and circumstance. All this begs a question: must we, in any attempt to understand folklore, eschew classification? To answer this question we will take an analogy from the study of history. It is useful for scholars and students alike to split European civilisation into ‘ancient’, ‘medieval’ and ‘modern’, with ‘dark ages’ (or some politically-correct equivalent) and ‘renaissance’ intervening as minor epochs. But this is only scaffolding that allows us to get close to the past, not the past itself. Anyone who studies history has to constantly remind themselves that those people living hundreds of years ago did not structure their experience as we do. There is no question that it is difficult for the taxonomic mindset to separate invented structures and real content. But should we want to get closer to the folk experience of Cornish fairies then we need to be a little more like William Bottrell and a little less like Robert Hunt. 1 Wirt Sikes, British Goblins: Welsh Folk-Lore, Fairy Mythology. Legends and Traditions (London 1880), 11, summed this up very well: ‘Fairies being creatures of the imagination, it is not possible to classify them by fixed and immutable rules. In the exact sciences, there are laws which never vary, or if they vary, their very eccentricity is governed by precise rules. Even in the largest sense, comparative mythology must demean itself modestly in order to be tolerated in the severe company of the sciences.’ See also G.L. Kittredge, ‘The Friar’s Lantern and Friar Rush’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association 15 (1900), 415-441 at 430: ‘Fairies, goblins, witches, gradongs, elves, cats, ghosts, dwarfs, will-o’-the-wisps, 13 familiars, white ladies and so on, are found, on occasion, performing each other’s duties with baffling self-complacency.’ 2 Robert Hunt Popular Romances of the West of England (London 1881), 80. Note that we use the third edition throughout this essay, though we have checked to make sure that all points are also in the original 1865 edition. 3 Robert Hunt Popular Romances, 21-22. 4 Alan Pearson, ‘Robert Hunt’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (London 2004) [accessed online] and Alan Pearson Robert Hunt (London 1976). 5 Hunt, Popular Romances, 80. 6 M.A. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folklore (Penzance 1890), 120: ‘The fairies of Cornwall may be divided into four classes, the Small People, the Pixies (pronounced Piskies or or Pisgies), the Spriggans, and the Knockers.’ 7 ‘M. Sebillot’s System as Applied to Cornish Folk-Lore’, Transactions of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society 1 (1882), 132-150 at 136: note that it is not clear that these are types, the author refers to ‘names’. 8 ‘Introduction [to Cornish section]’ in W.Y. Evans-Wentz The Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries (Gerrard’s Cross 1977), 163-170 and ‘Piskies: a folk-lore study’, Annual Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society 83 (1916), 130-151 at 132. 9 Enys Tregarthen, Pixie Folklore and Legends (London 1996), 12: ‘In Cornwall they are generally called Piskeys, but they have many other names too. Some call them the Small People; others the Dinky Men and Women or the Dinkies; some speak of them as the Little Invisibles. There are many kinds of Piskeys, such as the nightriders or the tiny people who ride horses and colts and even dogs by night; and the knockers or little miners who work and play down in the old mines. There are Spriggans, too, bad Piskeys with whom no one wants to have anything to do.’ For ‘night riders’ see Hunt, Popular Romances, 87. 10 Tony Deane and Tony Shaw The Folklore of Cornwall (London 1975), 90: ‘Writers in the nineteenth century placed Cornish fairies into five categories, but the traditional stories and various personal accounts contradict themselves so much that the field can be narrowed down to three types. The knockers of the mines… rare accounts of brownies and the Small People…’ 11 Jeremy Harte Explore Fairy Traditions (Loughborough 2004), 4. 12 ‘Pisky’, Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, 5 vol, John Koch (ed) (Santa Barbara 2005), IV, 1449- 1450 at 1449. 13 In other regions there was interaction between the terminology of folklorists and tradition: the lack of consensus in Cornwall, though, meant that there was no interaction on this side of the Tamar. 14 14 Coleridge mentioned the pixies in two early poems, Jeanie Watson, Risking Enchantment: Coleridge’s Symbolic World of Faery (London 1990), 72-75: Anna Eliza Bray, 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, &c. &c. in a series of letters to Robert Southey, esq (London 1836), 3 vols, marks though the real beginning of modern interest in this supernatural creature: see particularly her tenth letter, I, 167192. 15 For a good introduction Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of Fairies, (London 1976), 328-331. 16 Thomas Westcote, A View of Devonshire in 1630 with a Pedigree of Most of its Gentry (Exeter 1845), 433: ‘and, peradventure, I shall by some be thought to lead you in a pixy-path by telling an old tale’. This is the oldest reference recorded in the OED. 17 Explore, 4. Note ‘respectively’ is our deduction based on Jeremy Harte’s text. 18 ‘Piskies’ at 132: 19 Hunt, Popular Romances, 80. 20 Hunt, Popular Romances, 81. 21 Hunt, Popular Romances, 81: according to the OED Hunt is the first author to use the word ‘spriggan’. 22 Hunt, Popular Romances, 81-82. 23 An interesting question is whether Bray was serious about fairies and pixies being different, or whether this was just a ‘stunt’: Bray, Description, I, 172 and, most intriguingly, Bray, A Peep at the Pixies or Legends of the West (London 1854), 11-12: ‘Some people say [the Pixies] are the souls of poor children who die unbaptised, and others think that they are a kind of fairies, but more frolicsome, and have more power to do either good or harm. They are, however, generally considered a distinct race; for if you could but see a Pixy, my young friends, you would see at once how different was such a creature from a Fairy. Indeed, it is matter of tradition, that the Fairies wished very much to establish themselves in Devonshire, but the Pixies would not hear of it; and a terrible war ensued. Oberon was, with his host, defeated; and his majesty received a wound in the leg which proved incurable; none of the herbs in his dominions have hitherto had the least beneficial effects, though his principal secretary and attendant, Puck, has been in search of one of a healing nature ever since.’ A genuine tradition or fairy fodder for Bray’s juvenile readers? 24 Bray, Peep, 30-32. Note though Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, 182, William Shepherd from St Just states ‘There are mine piskies which are not the ‘knockers’’. 25 Bray, Peep, 13: ‘It is under the cold light of [the moon], or amidst the silent shadows of the dark rocks, where that light never penetrates, that on the moor the elfin king of the Pixy race holds his high court of sovereignty and council. There each Pixy receives his especial charge.’ 15 26 Bray, Description, III, 256: ‘these noises [in the mine] the men believe to be occasioned by the working of the fairies, or pixies, whom they call small men’. 27 Thomas Q. Couch ‘The Folk Lore of a Cornish Village: Fairy Mythology’, Notes and Queries 11 (1855), 397-398, 457-459. 28 Thomas Q. Couch ‘The Popular Antiquities of Polperro and its neighbourhood’, Transactions of the Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society 2 (1864), 149-161 at 160-161; confusingly the earlier draft was printed after the later one. See also ‘Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society: Folklore’, The Cornishman (Friday 11 November, 1853), 6-7 at 6. 29 For the best definition known to us, Diane Purkiss, Troublesome Things: A History of Fairies and Fairy Stories (London 2000), 8-9: ‘There are fairies with their own household – who might entertain you or take you as a servant – and fairies who live in yours, and who might act as your servant.’ 30 ‘The Popular Antiquities’, 161. 31 Couch ‘Folklore’, 397: ‘This creed has received so many additions and modifications at one time, and has suffered so many abstractions at another, that it is impossible to make any arrangement of our fairies into classes. ‘The elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves’ are all now confounded under the generic name pisky.’ 32 Jenner, ‘Piskies’, 132. 33 William Bottrell, Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall (1870-1880), I-III (the last volume entitled Stories and Folklore of West Cornwall), I, 42. 34 Bottrell, Traditions, II, 138-139. 35 Bottrell, Traditions, III, 245-246. 36 Bottrell, Traditions, I, 74 37 Bottrell, Traditions, I, 210. 38 Bottrell, Traditions, II, 291-292. 39 Hunt, Popular Romances, 3: ‘Mr Botterell [sic] has, with much labour, supplied me with gleanings from his store, and his stories have been incorporated, in most cases, as he told them.’ This is taken as being a reference to Hunt reading Bottrell’s notes. We do not know though if Bottrell had any notes: it could easily be a reference to oral communications. 40 ‘Six Notes on Cornish Changelings’ forthcoming in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. 41 Hunt, Popular Romances, 97. Does this ‘confusion’ come about because Hunt loyally recorded the narratives his sources gave him. Hunt took great pride in his editorial seriousness. Hunt, Popular Romances, 16 and 31. 42 Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, 170-185 sees a similar use of small people, going back to the early nineteenth-century. Note also Davies Gilbert The parochial history of Cornwall, founded on the manuscript 16 histories of Mr. Hals and Mr. Tonkin; with additions and various appendices (London 1838), I, 18: ‘Mr. Hals here [on Treonike] relates a story of some child being missed by his parents and afterwards found; imputing the temporary loss to supernatural agency, perhaps of fairies, usually denominated in Cornwall The Small People, or Piskies’. Note that we will examine this episode in more detail in ‘Six Notes on Cornish Changelings’ forthcoming in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. 43 Jenner, ‘Introduction’, 165. A lot would depend on comparative forms in the other Celtic languages. 44 Craig Weatherhill and Paul Devereux, Myths and Legends of Cornwall (Wilmslow 1998), 23-26. To the best of our knowledge Weatherhill and Devereux were the first to make this point. 45 Tregarthen, Folklore, 12. 46 Hunt, Popular Romances, 82. 47 See above note 24. 48 Jenner ‘Introduction’, 165: ‘Bockle, which personally I have never heard used, suggests the Scottish bogle, and both may be diminutives of bucca, bog, bogie, or bug…’. 49 Hunt, Popular Lore, 347. 50 Bottrell, Traditions, I, 76. 51 Bottrell, Traditions, I, 142 52 Bottrell, Traditions, I, 143. 53 Interesting in this respect are the comments of Henry Maddern in Evans-Wentz, Fairy Faith, 174-175: ‘In this region there are two kinds of pixies, one purely a land-dwelling pixy and the other a pixy which dwells on the sea-strand between high and low water mark. … There was a very prevalent belief, when I was a boy, that this sea-strand piy, called Bucca, had to be propitiated by a cast (three) of fish, to ensure the fishermen having a good shot (catch) of fish.’ 54 Hunt, Popular Lore, 82. Note also Briggs, Dictionary, 45. 55 For a good introduction Briggs, Dictionary, 45-49. 56 Hunt, Popular Romance, 168-169. A rare and early exception is in Couch ‘The Popular Antiquities’, 160, namely the ‘domestic spirit… in the old manor house at Killigarth [in Polperro]’. 57 Lewis Spence, The Fairy Tradition in Britain (London 1948), 34. 58 Bottrell, Traditions, III, 92-93. 59 Courtney, Feasts, 123: note a more detailed description with several novel folklore perspectives can be found in Anon, ‘Natural History and Antiquarian Society’ The Cornishman (Thursday 17 November 1881), 7. The lecture was Lach-Szyrma, ‘M. Sebillot’s System’, who had claimed, 136, that ‘Brownies were friendly, but no belief in them now’, a paraphrase of Hunt? 60 ‘Introduction’, 165. 61 A description, III, 22 17 62 The lines appear in Britannia’s Pastoral, an unfinished work: see further William Browne, The Poems of William Browne of Tavistock (London 1894), 2 vols., I, 294. We wonder whether Bray is correct to interpret this as a reference to local fairylore. It seems as likely to be Restoration fairy ‘bumph’. 63 How might this have worked? We know from Bottrell that there was a ritual of banging pans at swarming bees: Bottrell, Traditions, III, 92-93. If this had been associated with fairies in some way, the fairy expert might have remembered a passage in Bray about fairies and bees and ‘Browne’ and this last would have ‘clicked’ with the fairy word ‘brownie’. 64 Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the romance and superstition of various countries (1828), 274-276, inter alia. 65 Harte, Explore, 4. 66 See note 24. 67 S.J. Vincent ‘Old Moorland Philosopher’, Western Morning News (Saturday 8 September 1934), 8. ‘The little invisible people known as pixies were supposed to be the spirits of persons who inhabited the moorland thousands of years before and who ‘though too good to be condemned to eternal punishment, were not good enough for the joys of heaven.’ Fifty years ago there were many respected old folk living on the vast Moor, and there may some now who believe still in ghosts, fairies, also ‘Jack o’ lanterns’, hovering round about the mineral lodes Was it not said that copper ore was discovered in the Caradon hills by seeing the small dancing lights known by old miners as Jack o’ Lanterns’?: 68 Lewis Spence, British Fairy Origins (Wellinborough, 1981). 69 Hunt, Popular Romances, 81. 70 Brought out very clearly in Anon, ‘Penzance Natural History and Antiquarian Society: Folklore’ (Friday 11 November 1853), pp. 6-7 at 6. 71 Hunt, Popular Romances, 157-158. 72 Hunt, Popular Romances, 114-119 and 120-126 and Bottrell, Traditions, II, 173-185. 73 Attested in the late nineteenth century in ‘Gleaner’, ‘Holsworthy: A Dovetailed Narrative’, Western Times (Friday 03 February 1882), 7; compare Theo Brown, ‘Some Examples of Post-Reformation Folklore in Devon’, Folklore 72 (1961), 388-399 at 397. 74 J.A. McCullloch, Medieval Faith and Fable (London 1932) has numerous examples of this in his chapters on demons (58-74) and the Virgin (102-119). 75 Peter M. Rojcewicz ‘Between One Eye Blink and the Next: Fairies, UFOs and Problems of Knowledge’, The Good People: New Fairylore Essays, (ed.) Peter Narváez. (Lexington, 1997), 479-514.