North Cornwall Fairies and Legends Part 7

'I wouldn't,' said she.

'You are a strange young maid to refuse an upstanding young man like me,' he said, 'who has a house of his own, to say nothing of what is inside it. Why, dozens of fair young maidens up to Padstow would have me to-morrow if I was only to ax them.'

'Then ax them,' cried the beautiful maid, turning her proud young head, and looking out towards Pentire, gorgeous in its spring colouring.

'But I can't ask any of them to marry me when I love you,' cried the infatuated youth. 'You have bewitched me, sweet, and no other man shall have you. If I can't have you living, I'll have you dead. I came down to Hawker's Cove to shoot something to startle the natives of Padstow Town, and they will be startled, shure 'nough, if I shoot a beautiful little vixen like you and take home to them.'

'Shoot me if you will, but marry you I will not,' said the beautiful maiden, with a scornful laugh. 'But I give you fair warning that if you shoot me, as you say you will, you will rue the day you did your wicked deed. I will curse you and this beautiful haven, which has ever been a refuge for s.h.i.+ps from the time that s.h.i.+ps sailed upon the seas;' and her sea-blue eyes looked up and down the estuary from the headlands that guarded its mouth to the farthest point of the blue, winding river.

'I will shoot you in spite of the curse if you won't consent to be mine,' cried the bewitched young man.

'I will never consent,' said she.

'Then I will shoot you now,' he said, and Tristram Bird lifted his gun and fired, and the ball entered the poor young maiden's soft pink side.

She put her hand to her side to cover the gaping wound the shot had made, and as she did so she pulled herself out of the water, and where the feet should have been was the glittering tail of a fis.h.!.+

'I have shot a poor young Mermaid,' Tristram cried, 'and woe is me!' and he s.h.i.+vered like one when somebody is pa.s.sing over his grave.

'Yes, you have shot a poor Mermaid,' said the maid of the sea, 'and I am dying, and with my dying breath I curse this safe harbour, which was large enough to hold all the fighting s.h.i.+ps of the Spanish Armada and your own, and it shall be cursed with a bar of sand which shall be a bar of doom to many a stately s.h.i.+p and many a n.o.ble life, and it shall stretch from the Mermaid's Gla.s.s to Trebetherick Bay on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and prevent this haven of deep water from ever again becoming a floating harbour save at full tide. The Mermaid's wraith will haunt the bar of doom her dying curse shall bring until your wicked deed has been fully avenged;' and looking round the great bay of s.h.i.+ning waters, laughing and rippling in the eye of the sun, she raised her arms and cursed the harbour of Padstow with a bitter curse, and Tristram shuddered as he listened, and as she cursed she uttered a wailing cry and fell back dead into the pool, and the water where she sank was dyed with her blood.

'I have committed a wicked deed,' said Tristram Bird, gazing into the blood-stained pool, 'and verily I shall be punished for my sin;'

and he turned away with the fear of coming doom in his heart.

As he went up the cove and along the top of the cliffs the distressful, wailing cry of the Mermaid seemed to follow him, and the sky gloomed all around as he went, and the sea moaned a dreadful moan as it came up the bay.

When he reached Tregirls, overlooking the Cove, he stood by the gate for a minute and gazed out over the beautiful harbour. The sea, which only half an hour ago was as blue as the eyes of the seamaid he had shot, and full of smiles and laughter, was now black as ash-buds, save where a golden streak lay across the water from Hawker's Cove to Trebetherick Bay.

'The Mermaid's curse is already working,' moaned Tristram Bird, and he fled through the lane leading to Padstow as if a death-hound was after him.

When he reached Place House he met a little crowd of Padstow maids going out flower-gathering.

'Whither away so fast, Tristram Bird?' asked a little maid. 'You aren't driving a teem of snails this time, 'tis plain to see. Where hast thou been?'

'Need you ask?' said a pert young girl. 'He has been away shooting something to startle the maids of Padstow with! What strange new creature did you shoot, Tristram Bird?'

'A wonderful creature with eyes like blue fire,' returned the unhappy youth, looking away over St. Minver dunes towards the Tors--'a sweet, soft creature with beautiful hair, every wire of which was a sunbeam of gold, and her face was the loveliest I ever beheld. It clean bewitched me.'

'A beautiful maid like that, and yet you shot her?' cried all the young maids of Padstow Town.

'Yes, I shot her, to my undoing and the undoing of our fair haven,'

groaned Tristram Bird; and he told them all about it--where he had seen the beautiful Mermaid, of his bewitchment from the moment he saw her face of haunting charm looking up at him from the Mermaid's Gla.s.s, and of the curse she uttered ere she fell back dead into the pool.

All the smiles went out of the bright faces of the Padstow maids, as he told his tale.

'What a pity, Tristram Bird, you should have been so foolish as to shoot a Mermaid!' they said; and they did not go and pick flowers as they had intended, but went back to their homes instead, and Tristram Bird went on to Higher St. Saviour's, where he lived in a little house overlooking Padstow Town nestling like a bird in its nest.

A fearful gale blew on the night of the day Tristram Bird shot the Mermaid, and all the next day, too, and the next night; and through the awful howling of the gale was heard the bellowing of the wind-tormented sea.

Such a terrible storm had never been known at Padstow Town within the memory of man, so the old Granfer men said, and never a gale lasted so long.

When the wind went down the natives of Padstow ventured out to see what the gale had wrought, and sad was the havoc it had made; and some went out to Chapel Stile, where a small chapel stood overlooking the haven, and what should meet their horrified gaze but a terrible bar of sand which the Mermaid's curse had brought there; and it stretched from Hawker's Cove to the opposite sh.o.r.e, and what was worse, the great sand-bar was covered with wrecks of s.h.i.+ps and bodies of drowned men.

'It is the bar of doom brought there by the fearful curse of the maid of the sea whom I shot with my brand-new gun,' cried Tristram Bird, who was one of the first to reach the stile when the wind had gone down; and he told them all, as he had told the Padstow maids, of what the Mermaid had said before and after he had shot her. 'And because of the wicked deed I did,' he said, 'I have brought a curse on my native town, and Padstow will never be blessed with a safe and beautiful harbour till the poor Mermaid's death be avenged.'

There was a dreadful silence after Tristram Bird had spoken, and the men and women of Padstow Town gazed at each other, troubled and sad, knowing that what the youth, who had been bewitched by the Mermaid's face, had said was true, for there below them was the great bar of sand dividing the outer harbour from the inner, and on it lay the masts and spars of broken s.h.i.+ps and the lifeless bodies of the drowned. The wind was quiet, but the sea was still breaking and roaring on the back of the Doombar, and as the waves thundered and broke, a wailing cry sounded forth, like the wail that Tristram heard when the Mermaid disappeared under the water; it sounded like the distressful cry of a woman bewailing her dead, and all who heard s.h.i.+vered and shook, and both old and young looked down on the Doombar with dread in their eyes, but they saw nothing but the dead bodies of the sailors and their broken s.h.i.+ps.

'It is the Mermaid's wraith,' cried an old Granfer man, leaning against the grey walls of the ancient chapel, 'and she is wailing the wail of the drowned; and, mark my words, everyone,' letting his eyes wander from one face to another, 'each time a s.h.i.+p is caught on this dreadful bar and lives are lost--as lost they will be--the Mermaid's wraith will bewail the drowned.'

And it came to pa.s.s as the old man said, and whenever vessels are wrecked on that fateful bar of sand lying across the mouth of Padstow Harbour and men are drowned, it is told that the Mermaid's distressful cry is still heard bewailing the poor dead sailors.

THE LITTLE CAKE-BIRD

On the Tregoss Moors, where in the long-ago King Arthur and his n.o.ble Knights went a-hunting, was a quaint old thatched cottage built of moorstone, and in it lived an old woman called Tamsin Tredinnick and her little grand-daughter Phillida; it stood between Castle-an-Dinas--a great camp-crowned hill--and the far-famed Roche Rocks.

It possessed only one room, which, fortunately, was fairly large, for it had to contain most of old Tamsin's possessions, including a low wooden bedstead, an old oak dresser, a hutch for the grail--a coa.r.s.e flour of which she made bread for herself and little Phillida--and her spinning-wheel.

At the side of the cottage was a small linhey, or outhouse, the door of which the old woman always kept open in inclement weather that the wild creatures of the moors might take shelter from the cold and from the storms that swept over the great exposed moorland s.p.a.ces.

Tamsin was very poor, and could only earn enough to pay the rent of her cottage and to keep herself and little grandchild, who was an orphan, in grail-bread and coa.r.s.e clothes. This she did by spinning wool, which she sold to a wool-merchant at St. Columb, a small market-town some miles away. She was advanced in years, and getting more unfit to spin every year, she told herself; and the less wool she spun the less money she had to spend on food and clothes for herself and Phillida. But, poor as she was, she was honest and good, and so was her little orphaned grandchild. They seldom complained, and when things were at their worst, and there was no grail left to make bread, or money to buy any, they told each other they had what bettermost people had not--wide moors to look out upon, and pure moorland air, fragrant with moor-flowers, to breathe into their lungs, little birds to sing to them most of the year, and dear little Piskeys to laugh outside their window in the dusk when they were very wisht. [10]

Tamsin was a child of Nature, and she loved the big, lonely moors, gorgeous with broom and gorse in the spring-time and fading bracken in the autumn months, with all her simple heart, and so did little Phillida. They loved all the moor-flowers--even the duller blossoms of the mint and nettle tribes--that made those great, lonely s.p.a.ces so wonderful and so full of charm. There was not a flower that broke into beautiful life on the moors but had a place in their hearts. They were their near and dear relations, they said, and as for the birds and other creatures that lived on the moorland, they were to them, as to St. Francis, their brothers and sisters, and even the Piskeys--the Cornish fairies--had a warm place in their affections.

Not a great way from Tamsin's cottage was a large Piskey Circle where the Tregoss Piskeys danced when the nights were fine and the moon was up, and often when they danced the old grandmother and her little grandmaid would come out on the step of their door and watch them.

They could see the Piskey Circle quite distinctly from the doorstep, and the Piskey-lights which the Piskeys held in their hands when they danced. But they never saw the Piskeys, for the d.i.n.ky Men, as Phillida called them, were very shy, and did not often let themselves be seen by human eyes. The old woman and the child never ventured near their Circle when the Small People were having their high flings, partly from a feeling of delicacy, and partly for fear of driving them away. The d.i.n.ky Men were as touchy as nesting-birds, Tamsin declared, and said that if either she or Phillida spied upon them when they were having their frolics they would, perhaps, forsake Tregoss Moor, which would have been a great misfortune. It was lucky, she said, to have the Small People living near a house. So she and her grandchild were content to watch them dancing from a respectable distance.

The place where the Piskeys made their Circle was very smooth and soft with gra.s.s, and the Circle lay upon the close, thick turf like a red-gold ring. Behind the Circle was a small granite boulder, and above the boulder a big furze-bush, which burnt like a fire when the furze was in bloom, and there little yellow-hammers sang their little songs year in and year out.

The Tregoss Moor Piskeys were quite nice for Piskeys, and took a great interest in Phillida and her old grandmother. They never tried to Piskey-lead them into the bogs and stream-works, of which there were many on the moors, nor set up Piskey-lights to slock [11] them into the Piskey Circle, which, we must confess, they did to their betters when they had the chance. They were ever so sorry when they knew the grail-hutch was getting empty, which somehow they always did, and that Grannie Tredinnick, as they called her, because Phillida did, had no money to buy grail to fill it; and they hastened to the cottage and peeped through the window and keyhole to see if they were looking wisht, and if they were they would begin to laugh in order to cheer them up and make them forget how hungry and sad they were.

A Piskey's laugh is a gay little laugh, and as unfettered as the song of a lark, and anybody hearing it is bound to feel happy and gay, no matter how wisht he happens to be before. Perhaps that is the reason the old saying 'laughing like a Piskey' is so often quoted in the Cornish land.

Old Tamsin and little Phillida always felt better when the d.i.n.ky Men came and laughed outside their door. Their laugh acted like a charm on the old woman, and often after the Piskeys came and laughed she laughed too, because she could not help it, and she would forget her aches and her pains, and would go to the spinning-wheel and try to spin. She generally found she could, and soon spun enough wool to buy grail to fill the grail-hutch.

Tamsin suffered from rheumatism, and when the weather was very wet and raw on the moors her hands and feet were crippled with pain; she could not spin at all, and not even the Piskeys' gay little laughs could charm the pain out of them.

One autumn and the beginning of the following winter were unusually wet, and the old woman's rheumatism was very bad, and, what was worse still, the d.i.n.ky Men went away from the moors. Where they had gone she did not know, and fervently hoped that she and Phillida had not offended them in any way.

The hum of the spinning-wheel was silent as the grave, the grail-hutch was empty, and they had had to feed on berries like the birds. When things were at their worst the clouds left off raining, the weather brightened, the sun shone out, and the little brown Piskeys came back to the moors. Finding out how matters were in the little moorland cottage, they came outside the door and laughed their gay little laugh once more. They laughed so much and so funnily that Grannie Tredinnick, weak as she was, couldn't help laughing to save her life; and when they saw her rise up from her chair and go over to the spinning-wheel and make the wheel whirl, they were delighted and laughed again.