Page:A book of the west; being an introduction to Devon and Cornwall.djvu/255

Rh eye. The fairy prince vanished, and appeared again as the little man she had first seen.

"'Nurse,' said he, 'you are blinded in your left eye as a punishment for having used the ointment. I am sorry, for you were kind to my wife. Here is a present she has sent you.'

"He then gave her ten guineas, and she returned him the box. He then vanished. This is all the story that Granny told me about the fairy ointment."

A farmer on the west side of Dartmoor, having had sickness among his cattle in 1879, sacrificed a sheep and burnt it on the moor above his farm as an offering to the Pysgies. The cattle at once began to recover, and did well after, nor were there any fresh cases of sickness among them. He spoke of the matter as by no means anything to be ashamed of, or that was likely to cause surprise.

There can be little doubt that many of the Pixy stories, as well as those of ghosts, have their origin in practical jokes.

Old Joe Leaman, of Dartmeet, recently dead, had an experience with Pysgies, as he supposed.

One day, having need of fuel, he went up the Dart to cut faggots of wood in the Brimpts plantation. Whether he had leave to do so, or took it, is not recorded.

He went among the trees, cut a faggot, bound it, and carried it to a place where he purposed making a pile, which he would carry home at his leisure. But he was observed by some young fellows, and after he had deposited his faggot and had disappeared in the plantation, they went to