Small People 2

Small People Page 2

The illustrations on this page are taken from 'Traditions & Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall' by William Bottrell 1873

The Spriggans

Spriggans seem to be closely related to the Trolls of Sweden and Denmark. They are the soldiers or warrior caste of the Cornish faeries, being violent, mischievous and bad tempered. They were exceedingly ugly and looked like wizened and shrivelled old men with large heads like those of children upon their puny little shoulders. They were able to raise sudden whirlwinds and storms to terrify the lonely traveller and could summon rain and hail to damage crops. William Bottrell described them as:

'… the dourest and most ugly set of sprights belonging to the elfin tribe; they are only to be seen about old ruins, barrows, giant's quoits and castles, and other places where treasure is buried, of which they have the charge.'

(Bottrell, Traditions and hearthside stories of West Cornwall, 1870-90, vol.2, p.246)

They were known to be accomplished thieves and burglars. They would steal sheep and cattle and if a building was unexpectedly demolished, it was generally believed to be the work of the Spriggans. They also liked to steal human babies and leave one of their own ugly brats in its place; a Changeling.

Spriggans seemed to have an affinity for Giants, often sharing their caves and living on scraps of food left behind. Some people believed that the Spriggans were the ghosts of Giants because they were very strong (for their size) and loved to hoard treasure.

Read Bottrell's account of an encounter with Spriggans here.

The Piskies

The Cornish Pisky is the most famous of the Pobol Vean. However, what he/she/it looks like it depends upon which part of Cornwall you visit. In the East of Cornwall, we find the familiar tribe of Piskies, with their elfin looks, pointy hats and pointier ears. Like the Spriggans, they are mischievous creatures. However,in West Cornwall, Pisky is a solitary individual rather than a tribe. Margaret Ann Courtney defines the Piskies as follows:

'The small people go about in parties, but the pisky in his habits, at least in West Cornwall, is a solitary being. 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 maidservants when they leave the house dirty at bed-time.'

(Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-lore, p.122)

Whichever version you choose, there is no mistaking Pisky behaviour. A favourite trick was to ride horses at night so that their owners found them exhausted in the mornings. Where the horses had been ridden in a circle, gallitraps, or faerie rings, were left behind.

The Piskies would also dance upon people's roofs, disturbing the sleeping homeowners. If they did this on the roofs of cattle sheds, it turned the milk sour. Farmers would then nail lumps of lead to the roof - Pisky-paws - to trip them up and spoil their pranks. K Hamilton Jenkin describes a typical Pisky prank:

'Old Robin Hicks, who formerly lived in a house on Quay Head, was more than once on stormy nights alarmed at his supper by a voice calling sharp and shrill: "Robin! Robin! your boat is adrift". Loud was the laughter and tacking of hands when they succeeded in luring Robin as far as the Quay, where the boat was lying safely at her moorings.'

(K. Hamilton Jenkin, Cornwall and the Cornish, page 251; quoting from T. Quiller Couch, History of Polperro, no page reference.)

Note: In one version of this story, poor old Robin Hicks is called to the boat several times in the night and these exertions prove to be fatal. So much for our 'Merry little fellow'!)

Piskies particularly loved to lead people astray, often into bogs and marshes, by appearing like the light from a cottage window or as a man carrying a lantern. This was known as being 'Pisky-led' and explains another name for the Pisky - Jack o' Lantern. It is commemorated in the rhyme:

Jack o' lantern! Joan the wad,
Who tickled the maid and made her mad;
Light me home, the weather's bad.

Almost nothing has been written about Joan the wad even though she is the only female pisky to have appeared in literature. She is sometimes referred to as 'The Queen of the Piskies' and the consort of Jack o' Lantern. In other collections of Cornish stories, she actually is the Jack o' Lantern. It is considered lucky to carry a small carving or image of her, hence the rhyme:

'Good fortune will nod if you carry upon you Joan the wad.'

The idea of a Queen Pisky does ties in with the belief that when Small People die, they are reincarnated as ants. Could it be that Pisky society follows a similar pattern to ant society? And what is a 'wad'? There is no such word in the Cornish language. Maybe there's another story to be written about that! For many years a strange little advert about Joan the Wad used to appear in the back of cheaper children's books and comics, particularly Fanthorpe Badger books (older visitors to this website may recognise it). To see the adverts, click here.

Incidentally, Jack o' Lantern appears to be the Cornish regional name for a nationwide phenomenon - the Ignis fatuus or 'Foolish Fire'. The Ignis fatuus is a light seen at night, moving over swamps and marshy places. It is sometimes associated with a deceptive hope or goal. When associated with death as an omen, it is called a corpse-candle, corp-candle, or dead-candle, among other names. The Ignis fatuus of myth is now believed to be caused by the combustion of gases from the rotting organic material. This explanation being unavailable in the past, stories grew up to explain it according to whatever had happened locally or in tales they had heard, much as we listen to scientists today. Among the many regional names we find Jenny-burnt-tail (Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire), Hobbledy's lantern (Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Hertfordshire, East Anglia, Hampshire, Wiltshire, west Wales), Will o' the Wykes (Lincolnshire), Kitty-candlestick (Wiltshire), The Ellylldan (Wales), Pinket (Worcestershire), The Spunkies (Lowland Scotland) and the more familiar St Elmo's Fire and Will o' the Wisp.

A common preventative measure to avoid being Pisky-led was to turn your coat inside out. In fact, some people believed that 'no Pigsey could harm a man if his coat were inside-out' and it became a very common practice for night travellers to wear their jacket, cloak or some other garment inside-out.

Apart from Joan the wad (and possibly Jack o'Lantern) the only other pisky that has ever been named (to our knowledge) is Coleman Grey. Grey was a Changeling - a Pisky (or possibly 'Small People') baby swapped for a human baby - that is mentioned in Quiller Couch's Notes and Queries. Piskies, like Spriggans, indulged in baby-swapping. However, they tended to choose abused or ill-treated children and always replaced them once they'd been fed and cleaned. Meanwhile the naughty, impish Pisky baby would have wreaked havoc in the human's home to teach the bad parents a lesson. To read the story of Coleman Grey, click here.

Piskies have been generally described as fair of face and dressing all in green with, occasionally, red caps. Ruth Tongue in her Country Folklore (1970) describes them as 'red-headed with pointed ears, turned-up noses and short faces'. Bottrell describes Pisky as 'a little old man, not more than three feet high, covered with only a few rags and his long hair that hung over his shoulders like a bunch of rushes. His face was broader than it was long; she couldn't make out the colour of his great round owl's eyes, they were so shaded by his shaggy eyebrows, from between which his nose, like a snout, poked out. His mouth reached from ear to ear, and they were set far back to make room for it. His teeth were very long and jagged and he was so eager about his work that, with each stroke of the threshal, he kept moving his thin lips round and up and down and his tongue in and out. He had nothing of a chin or neck to speak of, but his shoulders broad enough for a man twice his height. His naked arms and legs were out of all proportion and too long for his squat body; and his splayed feet were more like a quilkan's (frog's) than a man's.'

Not quite the cheeky little 'Lucky Pisky' we see on the tourist shop keyrings then.

One final note before we move onto Knockers.

If you've ever tried to learn the Cornish language, you'll know all about mutations. In Cornish, it is quite common for the spelling of a word to change depending on the context in which it is being used. It is quite common for a letter 'T' to mutate to a letter 'D' (except as an initial) or occasionally even to a letter 'S' or a 'Z'. That's why the Welsh, Breton, and older Cornish 'tad' or 'tat' (meaning 'Father') became the later Cornish 'tas'. It's also why the Cornish have 'bos' for the Welsh 'bod' (a dwelling) and 'nans' instead of 'nant' (valley). This may also explain why earlier spellings of 'Pisky' were recorded as 'Pigsey'. The reason I mention this is that our legendary Cornish Piskies may actually have been the inspiration for one of the most famous fairy tales of all ...

In 1846, the writer Ambrose Merton wrote a letter to the Athenaeum magazine (a sort of Victorian Times Literary Supplement) to suggest that popular traditions were worth recording for future generations to read and study. He proposed an entirely new word for this study - Folk-lore. He received a very enthusiastic response from readers, many of whom sent in examples of such stories. One story, from Cornwall, told of three little Pigsies who lived in separate houses: One of wood, one of un-mortared stone and one of iron. A fox came prowling by night, looking for a bite to eat, when he came to the house of wood ... Does this sound familiar?

It appears that the story of the 'Three Little Pigs' may originate from Cornwall. Substitute Pigsey for Pig/Piggy and Fox for Big Bad Wolf and the two stories are almost identical (although there are any number of different endings to the Three Little Pigs story). And, after all, wouldn't a Pisky be more likely to live in a house than a pig? To read the Athenaeum story, click here.