The Lost Child: A Cornish Fairy Account
Beguiling music and a passage carved through the undergrowth by an invisible being.
It’s folklore again this week, folks! And I have such a lovely story for you (an old but real-life account of fairy mischief). It’s an extract from one of my works in progress, Hunt’s Complete Cornish Folklore.
(But also briefly, The Piano Tuner’s Song Collector’s Edition Kickstarter is in prelaunch. Find out more and follow here.)
Where birds sing melodiously in Cornish hedgerows woven with ferns, pink campion and foxgloves (a fairy bloom if ever there was one), so striking is the sound, is it any wonder that it might be taken for otherworldly music? And yet perhaps there is something beyond the trill and warble, a lightness, an undulation so sublime it cannot be resisted, a melody that if followed, leads to a realm so beautiful that to scratch its description onto the page would never, ever do it justice. Who could blame a child for following such a thing…
The Lost Child
In the little hamlet of Treonike, in the parish of St Allen, has long lingered the story of a lost child, who was subsequently found. All the stories agree in referring the abduction of the child to supernatural agency, and in some cases it is referred to the “Small People or Piskies”— in others, to less amiable spiritual creatures. Mr Hals1 has given one version of this story, which differs in some respects from the tale as I heard it, from an old woman some thirty years since, who then lived in this parish. Her tale was to the following effect.
It was a lovely evening, and the little boy was gathering flowers in the fields, near a wood. The child was charmed by hearing some beautiful music, which he at first mistook for the song of birds, but being a sharp boy, he was not long deceived, and he went towards the wood to ascertain from whence the melodious sounds came.
When he reached the verge of the wood, the music was of so exquisite a character, that he was compelled to follow the sound, which appeared to travel before him. Lured in this way, the boy penetrated to the dark centre of the grove, and here, meeting with some difficulties, owing to the thick growth of underwood, he paused and began to think of returning.
The music, however, became more ravishing than before, and some invisible being appeared to crush down all the low and tangled plants, thus forming for him a passage, over which he passed without any difficulty.
At length he found himself on the edge of a small lake, and greatly to his astonishment, the darkness of night was around him, but the heavens were thick with stars. The music ceased, and wearied with his wanderings, the boy fell asleep on a bed of ferns.
He related, on his restoration to his parents, that he was taken by a beautiful lady through palaces of the most gorgeous description. Pillars of glass supported arches which glistened with every colour, and these were hung with crystals far exceeding anything which were ever seen in the caverns of a Cornish mine.
It is, however, stated that many days passed away before the child was found by his friends, and that at length he was discovered one lovely morning, sleeping on the bed of ferns, on which he was supposed to have fallen asleep on the first adventurous evening.
There was no reason given by the narrator why the boy was “spirited away” in the first instance, or why he was returned. Her impression was, that some sprites, pleased with the child’s innocence and beauty, had entranced him. That when asleep he had been carried through the waters to the fairy abodes beneath them; and she felt assured that a child so treated would be kept under the especial guardianship of the sprites for ever afterwards. Of this, however, tradition leaves us in ignorance.
An extract from Hunt’s Complete Cornish Folklore, Robert Hunt.
Find out more about the new release here.
1 See Davies Gilbert’s Parochial History of Cornwall.
Coming next week…
The Lucas Letters Dispatch Two
(additions to the Folkloric Series)
If you haven’t yet caught up on Dispatch One,
find it here.
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This collection starts on 1st May…
