Adventure and adventurers > Black's guide to the counties of Dorset, Devon, & Cornwall

CURIOSITIES OF DARTMOOR.
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and a good old dame who lived near Drewsteignton arranged for
their especial benefit a delightful little parterre of the gayest
blossoms. Very fortunate was that good dame in her after-life,
and often on a summer night she was rewarded for her kindness
by hearing the soft, sweet “roundels” and “serenades” of the
grateful pixies. But after her death, a harsh matter-of-fact man
came in for her estate, and he had no patience with the pixy-
garden, but rooted it up in a most summary manner. Thereupon
the elves laid their curse upon the place, and all about it sprang
up Jhe tallest possible thistles—as a hint, we suppose, to their
enemy that these were his proper diet!
At Chudleigh, half way up a wooded hill, is a sort of cavern,
which the common people call “ the Pixies’ Parlour.” Its roof
is formed by the roots of old trees, and around its mouth trail
numerous climbing plants. Coleridge has represented the little
fags as singing :—
“ Aye from the fervent heat
We to the cave retreat,
O’ercanopied by huge roots, entwin’d
With wildest texture, blackened o’er with age;
Round them their mantles green the ivies hind,
Beneath whose foliage pale,
Fann’d by th’ unfrequent gale,
We shield us from the tyrant’s mid-day rage.”
Often, in our childhood, we have been warned by the old
dames of the village where we spent many a happy day, not to
cross the churchyard after twilight, lest the pixies should be at
their revels ; and if during the night their store of milk or cider
appeared to have decreased, they would ascribe the theft to the
pixies, and not to thirsty lads and lasses—the real offenders. If
they drank the cider, however, they worked for it; they spun
the yam, swept up the hearth, and put the house in order. No
such industrious pixies now ! Railways have scared them from
their haunts ; their music now-a-days is overpowered by the shrill
whistle of the locomotive; and the daughters of our Devonshire
farmers are too well acquainted with Balfe and Verdi to listen to
the sweetest song that pixy ever sang 1
“ They are flown,
Beautiful fictions of our fathers, wove
In Superstition’s web when Time was young,