Lustleigh Cleave, a favourite haunt of moorland enthusiasts [...] covers the entire slope of the hill side, from the summit to the base of the Bovey (called Buvvy), which flows along its western base. Among the “clatters” is a famous rocking or “Logan” stone, called the “Nutcrackers.” It moves easily and may readily be recognised by the quantities of nutshells under and around it, by which previous visitors have tested its powers. Parson’s Loaf, or Mopstone, is another fanciful name given to another of its “clatters.”
From ‘The Royal Forest of Dartmoor’ by the Rev. Morris Fuller, in ‘London Society’ , February 1896.
“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.
It may not affect the local pixies (if they really do eat mushrooms not nuts) but I was disappointed to read this, in FH Starkey’s 1981 “Exploring Dartmoor again”:
“Our route now lies for a mile or more along the top of the ridge, past the great rock called Harton Chest to another group of rocks – Sharpitor. According to th emap there is a logan stone (a rocking stone) called Nutcrackers here, but alas it has gone. According to the local story the Nutcracker rock was displayed in the early 1950s by vandals. It is said that an attempt was made by an Army group stationed locally to replace the stone on its seating. To do this they raised the stone in a sling made of steel rope by means of sheer-legs. Unfortunately the stone slipped from its sling and fell down the side of the Cleave to a position from which it could not be recovered. You will have to crack your nuts elsewhere I fear!”