THE POETIC SPIRIT 195 



much more homogeneous, much more Celtic in type, 

 than in other parts ; and of all Cornwall there is no 

 part like this in which we are met with probably so 

 pure a breed of human beings." 



The people were left in their rocky land, and what 

 they had been an ancient crystallised race with the 

 imaginative faculty undeveloped they remained and 

 remain to this day. 



It has been thought that because Cornwall is pre- 

 eminently the land of strange beliefs and of old tales 

 and legends relating to mythical saints and heroes, to 

 giants and demons with a great variety of fantastic 

 beings mermaids, fairies, pigsies and piskies and 

 other little people the Cornish are a highly imagin- 

 ative people. These things are old survivals, and are 

 of the imagination in its childish or primitive stage. 

 The belief in all these fanciful beings is pretty well 

 dead and gone now ; at all events, I was unable to 

 find even an old woman who had anything to say 

 of the old beliefs which was not disrespectful. But 

 these beliefs undoubtedly kept their hold on the 

 Cornish mind very much longer than in any other 

 part of the country, and with these beliefs certain 

 pagan, or Druidical, observances were also kept up, 

 and have only died out within the last thirty or forty 

 years. Similar beliefs and observances were as 

 common all over England as in Cornwall ; there was 

 not a hill or down, or lake or stream, or singular tree 

 or rock, which did not have its own special demon or 

 genius. All this passed away with the fusion 

 of the British Celts with a people in a more 



