Page:Cornwall (Salmon).djvu/61

 TRADITIONS AND FOLKLORE terms these the *' Pisks ". It has further been conjectured that the pixies were actually the earliest teachers of Christianity, many of whom were Picts from Ireland. So far as the pixies of tradition are benevolent, this might be true ; but in many cases they are mischievous, and usually capricious. To be " pixy-led " is hardly an expression that could have developed from the actions of early Christian teachers ; we must refer the superstition to an earlier date. Popular fancy has sometime regarded the pixies as Druids, doomed by their rejection of Christianity to become smaller and smaller, until they vanished entirely ; and again, they have sometimes been regarded as the souls of unbaptised children. But much of the fairy- mythology of Cornwall is of a kind common to all Britain and Ireland. Tales of mine-spirits or " knockers " will be found in most mining districts. The " Devil and his Dandy dogs " is similar to the wish-hounds of Dartmoor and the demon huntsman of the Hartz Mountains. More distinctly Cornish is the story of Treg- eagle, though in Devon we have a glimpse of kindred doomed spirits, such as that of the De Tracey who helped to murder Becket. Tregeagle is said to have been an unjust steward or bailiff, saved from the clutches of fiends after death only by the utmost efforts of Mother Church. His spirit appeared in the witness-box to right some wrong that he had done ; and by the influence of the Church he was given some task that should last till the 43