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Sharpitor Nutcrackers

Rocking Stone

Folklore

"Have you any pixies in this neighbourhood?"
A rustic, who hesitated at first, shook his head, and said he "didn' think any ov 'em was left now," induced a woman standing by to say, "Ees there was;" and she pointed to a high ground covered with granite boulders (the scene was at Lustleigh), and said "You may go and zee the pixy holes for yourself up there. They comes there be night, and people goes to zee 'em; but they don't come out by day."
"Did you ever go? did you ever see them?"
She did not like to go there by night, but she had herself seen the "pixy holes," and she "knaw'd that volks did go there, and did zee 'em in the moonlight."
One of the company asked what they could find to eat in that wild place? and the answer was, "Perhaps 'twas mushrooms."
"Oh," said one of the listeners, "then they did not get any thing to eat for more than six weeks of the whole year," when a rustic wit responded, "Perhaps they larn'd how to pickle 'em."
Rustics and their quaint spelling. From "Devonian folk-lore illustrated", by John Bowring. In Reports and Transactions of the Devonshire Association vol. 2, 1867-68.
Rhiannon Posted by Rhiannon
16th October 2018ce

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