Page:Cornwall (Salmon).djvu/60

 CORNWALL as accurately be employed. The fact can never be emphasised too strongl) that language does not identify race. The giants are perhaps the most distinctive feature of Cornish tradition, and this tradition is almost certainly pre-Celtic. It is simply a dis- torted and exaggerated recollection of an extinct race. That there were formerly men of great height is undeniable. Occasional specimens of men of gigantic height in our own day may be better explained as a lapse to an earlier type than as mere freaks of nature. It is just possible that the men of gigantic form remembered in Cornish tradition were the result of a cross be- tween Celtic and Finno-Ugric types ; but we know for a certainty that the Palaeolithic men who immediately preceded those whom we term Ivernians were a tall race, and a difference of a foot in height, magnified by tradition, would easily account for the " giants ". While the giants are peculiarly Cornish, the pixies or pisgies are as common to Devon as they are to Cornwall. These also appear to be a recollection of an extinct race. That the term was once more general is proved by the singular expression "please the pigs," in which " pigs " is clearly a corruption of pixy ; and we may also notice that a Middle-Age term for fairy or sprite was Puck. Perhaps they are a memory of the rather short race conquered and ab- sorbed by the Celts ; it has even been supposed that their name may be identified with the name of the Picts - Spenser, speaking of Ireland, 42