Fairy Tales Myths and Legends, Stories for Children: Kids Books from Cornwall and the British Isles - Softcover

Tregarthen, Enys

Softcover

ISBN 10: 153713292X ISBN 13: 9781537132921

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

The children stories in this book are 100 years old being published in 1906 and are now in the public domain. They were written by ENYS TREGARTHEN Edited by: Rogil @ www.vintagebookshop.co.uk Suitable for children from 4 to 10 years old. There are 11 stories in the book, they are: The Legend of the Padstow Doombar The Little Cake Bird The Impounded Crows The Piskeys’ Revenge The Old Sky Woman The Little Horses and Horsemen of Padstow How Jan Brewer was Piskey Laden The Small People’s Fair The Piskeys who did Aunt Betsy’s Work The Piskeys who Carried their Beds The Fairy Whirlwind These stories will amaze and delight our young readers. I have left the stories in their original version, they are as topical today as they were then, but I have edited a lot of the old style words to make them look and sound modern. I have added some new illustration to make it a much more pleasant experience to the reader The tales contained in this little volume of North Cornwall fairy stories, by Enys Tregarthen, are either founded on folklore or they are folklore pure and simple. The Tregeagle legends are still believed in, the Small People or Fairy Folk with whom Enys Tregarthen’s little book has mostly to do. Piskeys danced in their rings on many a cliff and common and moor and on other wild moors, commons and cliffs in many another parish in North and East Cornwall. Numberless stories of the little Ancient People used to be told, which the cottagers often repeated to each other on winter evenings as they sat around the peat fires, and some of these Enys Tregarthen has retold. The author writes concerning them: ‘Many of the legends were told me by very old people long since dead. I only know it was one of the stories of my childhood, the Piskey tales, handed down from a dim past by our Cornish forebears. ‘The legends about the Little People are very old, and some assert today that the tales about the Piskeys are tales of a Pigmy race who inhabited Cornwall in the Neolithic Period, and that they are answerable for most of the legends of our Cornish fairies. If this be so, the older stories are legends of the little Stone Men. ‘The legends are numerous. Some of them are very fragmentary; but they are none the less interesting, for they not only give an insight into the world of the little Ancient People, but they also show how strongly the Cornish peasantry once believed in them, as perhaps they still do. For, strange as it may seem in these matter of fact days, there are people still living who not only hold that there are Piskeys, but say they have actually seen them! One old woman in particular told me not many months ago that she had seen “little bits of men in red jackets” on the moors where she once lived. She used to be told about the Piskeys when she was a child, and the old people of her day used to tell how “the little bits of men” crept in through the keyhole of moorland cottages when the children were asleep to order their dreams.’ These stories are given to the world in the hope that many besides children, for whom they are specially written, will find them interesting, and all lovers of folklore will be grateful to know that the iron horse and other modern inventions have not yet succeeded in driving away the Small People, nor in banishing the weird legends from our loved ‘land of haunting charm.’

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 153713292X
• ISBN 13: 9781537132921
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 66
• Editor: Rogil