one came near them would scamper away into the hole. Mothers often told their children that if they went under cliffs by night the small people would carry them away into 'Dicky Danjy's hole.'"—Bottrell.
These small people are said to have been half-witted people who had committed no mortal sin, but who, when they died, were not good enough to go to Heaven. They are also thought, in some state, to have lived before.
The small people go about in parties, but pisky in his habits, at least in West Cornwall, is a solitary little being. I gather, however, from Mr. T. Q. Couch's History of Polperro that in the eastern part of the county the name of Pisky is applied indiscriminately to both tribes. He says two only of them are known by name, and quotes the following rhyme:
"Jack o' the lantern! Joan the wad,
Who tickled the maid and made her mad;
Light me home the weather's bad."
Here in the west he is a ragged merry little fellow (to laugh like a pisky is a common Cornish simile), interesting himself in human affairs, threshing the farmer's corn at nights, or doing other work and pinching the maidservants when they leave a house dirty at bedtime. Margery Daw, in our version of the nursery-song, meets with punishment at his hands for her misdoings—
"See saw, Margery Daw,
Sold her bed and lay upon straw;
Sold her bed and lay upon hay,
And pisky came and carried her away.
For wasn't she a dirty slut
To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?"
Should the happy possessor of one of these industrious, unpaid fairy servants (who never object to taking food left for them by friends) express his thanks aloud, thus showing that he sees him, or try to reward him for his services by giving him a new suit of clothes, he leaves the house never to return, and in the latter case may be heard to say:
"Pisky fine, pisky gay!
Pisky now will fly away."
