Growing up on Bodmin Moor, my childhood was steeped in Cornish folklore. At school the teachers told stories of giants, mermaids and piskies. At the weekends I would search for signs of piskies on the moors, tiny footprints or wooden doors nailed to trees.
The influence of folklore in Cornwall has never really left the county, with stories just as prevalent now as they were hundreds of years ago. Annual celebrations remind us of the region’s rich Celtic heritage, from Obby Oss in Padstow, to Bodmin Riding Festival. With stories of the Bucca and The Beast of Bodmin, it seems as if everyone has a little bit of folklore within them. Given Cornwall’s economic reliance on tourism, many parts of the Celtic history are diluted to become more palatable.
The Cornish Pisky is mainly spoken of as an amenable character, if not slightly whimsical in its behaviour. These days piskies are more commonly used as a noun to describe drunk people getting lost (being 'pisky-led/whisky-led'), or thought of as small bronze figurines that are bought in a seaside shop for a pound and rubbed for luck. In Cornish folklore, there are actually five types of pisky – ranging from the harmless Knocker to the cruel Spriggan— an entity to be feared.
There is however a new trend emerging in literature that returns to the pisky’s folkloric roots. Increasingly we are seeing a return of the Cornish Pisky and other Celtic Fae portrayed as truly malevolent beings— creatures more likely to steal souls away than guide you home at night.
In Bone China, Laura Purcell's third Gothic historical fiction novel, the threat of the Cornish Piskies is woven in with the threat of consumption. The story is set in the fictional Moroven manor house on the Falmouth coastline, sitting above the mouths of caves.
Purcell's piskies are those that hunt for bodies to take and children to steal away to their underground – usually on the lookout for beautiful young women, in the book they seem ready to attack anyone who infringes on their land.
The consumptives are living in the caves in the cliff face, under the impression that the sea air will cure the incurable. At night, a haunting knocking on the wall keeps them awake. The piskies the reader is introduced to in Bone China are taunting and relentless in their cruelty and Purcell's writing ensures you are never certain if they are real, or if they are a narrative device, indicative of the decaying minds of her characters.
There are only two named piskies in Cornish folklore: Jack O' the Lantern and Joan O' the Wad (wad being an archaic Cornish term for 'torch'), who are seen as the Pisky King and Queen respectively. Though their names may make them seem kindly, like Willow O' Wisps guiding the lost home at night, there are more tales of them tricking the lost by appearing as lanterns, dooming them to wander the moors alone for an eternity – or killing them, than there are of them helping.
There is a bardic oral tradition in Cornwall, with folklore passed on through word of mouth and story-telling, rather than the written word. T. Q Couch, author of 'The History of Polperro' recording some popular Cornish rhymes which show the King and Queen of the Piskies in a rather negative light. In one, the speaker is calling for the help of Jack O' the Lantern to guide him home, after Joan O' the Wad has 'tickled the maid and made her mad'.
Another is thought to be the original words of the nursery rhyme 'Margery Daw', with these lyrics dating back to the 17th Century:
See-saw, Margery Daw,
Sold her bed and lay on the straw;
Sold her bed and lay upon hay
And pisky came and carried her away.
For wasn’t she a dirty slut
To sell her bed and lie in the dirt?
In Bone China Purcell is, intentionally or not, reminding her readers of the Pisky that will taunt young and unmarried women in order to spirit them away for their own uses, and in doing so banishes the cheerful 'leprechaun-esque' image many people see when they hear 'Cornish Pisky'.
Perhaps it is Purcell's place as a writer of Gothic fiction that makes the representation of Cornish folklore in Bone China more realistically and sensitively employed than in other pieces of modern literature and popular culture.
In the Harry Potter franchise, one of J.K Rowling's magical beasts is the 'Cornish Pixie', bright bluer and small in appearance, the pixies are described as having 'painted faces' and 'voices as shrill as a budgie'. At this level, it would seem like this representation of the pixie was as true to Cornish folklore as the grey suited animated pixies in Nickelodeon's cartoon, 'The Fairly OddParents'.
When you look at the companion book to the Harry Potter novels, 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them', a back story is provided for the Pixies that seems to be taken straight out of Cornish Folklore: a holidaying witch is visiting Cornwall when she is abducted by a tribe of Cornish piskies. When she is returned, she finds herself troubled for life.
Of course, when we compare this to traditional folk stories, it is unlikely that the witch would have been returned at all. More likely she would suffer a fate more similar to that of minister and folklorist Robert Kirk, who legend says was taken away to fairyland for revealing the secrets of the fairies in his book The Secret of The Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns & Fairies. He didn’t stray from exploring their more malevolent side.Sally Magnusson's upcoming novel The Ninth Child (19th March, Two Roads Books), set during the building of the Loch Katrine Waterworks in 1856, explores the 'after life' of Robert Kirk. Magnusson taps into the Celtic folklore of the area and the mystery surrounding Kirk’s death. In the novel, Kirk has been left to roam the land, looking for a soul to offer up to the Fae. Some 200 years after his death, the faery folk are still taunting him.
Purcell also plays with the idea of a person being returned by the piskies, with one character believing she was abducted by them as a child, and devoting the rest of her adult life to protecting her charge from enduring the same fate. Where Purcell's character Creeda employs lines of salt and dolls to trick the piskies, old Cornish tales favour the scent of dead fish, grease and a salt water wash to keep the piskies at bay. A side of the Cornish pisky many people forget about when they pop the tiny figures in their pockets for good luck, the Spriggans were thought to steal babies and children and leave changelings in their place. The idea of being swapped or changed is explored in the novel, both in terms of folklore and madness. As characters fall foul to strange behaviours, it is up to the reader to decide if this is the act of a Pisky or an ill mind.
I spoke with the author and she told me that part of her inspiration for the piskies in her novel was a tale that originated in Devon, Ottery St. Mary. A local bishop decided to build a church in Ottery St. Mary, and commissioned a set of bells to come from Wales. On hearing these plans, the piskies were worried— they knew once the bells were installed they would no longer rule the land. When the men arrived with the bells, the piskies placed a spell on them, attempting to lead them off the edge of a cliff. One man stubbed his toe before he reached the edge of the cliff and said 'God bless my Soul!', and then the spell on the men was broken and they successfully installed the bells. The piskies were then banished to a cave known locally as the Pixie’s Parlour.
For Purcell, the idea of writing a story set in a dark, dank cave came before anything else. During her research she discovered the real life story of John Crogan, a doctor who placed consumptive patients in caves. He was American, but feeling like she knew more about 19th Century England than America, Purcell moved the location to the UK. Cornwall was chosen as a setting for reasons of both logic and inspiration: it is a place Purcell knew had many caves and she is a huge fan of Daphne Du Maurier and wanted the chance to spend time in the County. The idea for the piskies came last, with Laura saying 'I thought that if I was setting something supernatural in Cornwall, it would be a crime to not use some of that wonderful folklore'.
Using elements of Cornish folklore, as well as pulling together sinister elements of other Celtic Fae in 'Bone China', Purcell has written a book that pulls the Pisky away from the seaside shop and back into the supernatural.