362 TREGOimiNG HILL AND ITS STTRROUOTDINGS. 



The giant's lapstone is much reduced in size, though even 

 now its pile of granite " pebbles " — a term I use in default of a 

 better one to designate their size — occupies a very respectable 

 space. Coins have been found in it, or by it, about sixty years 

 ago. 



The Giant's holt or hold lies at the bottom of the cultivated 

 slope of the hill near Trew village in a field in the tenancy of 

 Mr. Q-. Tyacke. It is a cavern, now closed, but about seventy 

 years ago it was open, when a flight of stone-steps could be 

 discerned leading into it. Its site is known ; and I hope to have 

 an opportunity of re-opening it, and reporting the results to the 

 Royal Institution of Cornwall. 



The pisgays or small-people were once visible to a man, 

 when they were holding a " pisgays' fair " on the hill. The 

 most '"'■ oncest gabbing" proceeded from the group of miniature- 

 fiddlers and others that surrounded the " stannens." Directly 

 they discovered that a mortal was nigh, they vanished. 



A man coming home through Bargas at the bottom of the 

 hill could not find his house, though in his wanderings he was 

 close to it. At length he turned his pocket inside out, when he 

 found attached to it a pisgay, who burst out laughing " Ha, Ha, 

 Ha !" and went away like a rat. A common term in the neigh- 

 bourhood for "night-mare" is "pisgay-roden," and there are 

 several accounts of the visitation of people by it, when the room 

 has seemed to be full of a presence larger than it could bear. If 

 a thump on some article of furniture can be given, the pisgay 

 will at once depart. 



Smugglers' caves are found at Tolmennor, just below the 

 eastern declivity of the hill. 



On the eastern summit of the hiU a signalling station was 

 erected in the time of the last French war, for the purpose of 

 communicating tidings to and from the ships at sea. Its walls 

 alone are still standing outside the premises of Mr. Sampson. A 

 beacon also stood close at hand. Orders were given that when 

 it was ignited, the inhabitants of the neighbourhood were to 

 burn all their corn and fodder, and to quit their dwellings 

 driving their cattle before them, and leaving a desert behind 

 them. 



