Observations placeholder

HENRY JENNER, Member of the Gorsedd of the Bards of Brittany; Fellow and Local Secretary for Cornwall of the Society of Antiquaries; author of A Handbook of the Cornish Language

The only true Cornish fairy is the Pisky, of the race which is the Pobel Vean or Little People, and the Spriggan is only one of his aspects.

The Pisky would seem to be the 'Brownie' of the Lowland Scot, the Duine Sith of the Highlander, and, if we may judge from an interesting note in Scott's The Pirate, the 'Peght' of the Orkneys.

If Daoine Sith really means 'The Folk of the Mounds' (barrows), not 'The People of Peace', it is possible that there is something in the theory that Brownie, Duine Sith, and 'Peght', which is Pict, are only in their origin ways of expressing the little … folk who were supposed to inhabit the barrows, cromlechs, and allées couvertes………………..

In Cornwall there are instances of prehistoric structures being called 'Piskies' Halls' (there is an allée couverte so called at Bosahan in Constantine)

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Miss Susan E. Gay, of Crill, about three miles from Falmouth; and Miss Gay, who has written a well-known history of Falmouth (Old Falmouth, London, 1903)
'The pixies and fairies are little beings in the human form existing on the 'astral plane', who may be in the process of evolution; and, as such, I believe people have seen them. The 'astral plane' is not known to us now because our psychic faculty of perception has faded out by non-use, and this condition has been brought about by an almost exclusive development of the physical brain; but it is likely that the psychic faculty will develop again in its turn.'
'It is my point of view that there is a basis of truth in the folk-lore. With its remnants of occult learning, magic, charms, and the like, folk-lore seems to be the remains of forgotten psychical facts.'