The Small Folk, or Fairies, as strangers call them, are very fond of flowers. They have their own particular gardens in many places around the rough Cornish coast, but mostly they are to be found near the base of jagged cliffs in little green tracts, inaccessible either from the sea or from the summit of the cliff above. There are several of these near the foot of the cliffs round Trereen or Treen Castle, that rugged headland near the Lands End, upon which stands the famous Logan Rock, or rocking stone.
You can generally tell a Small Folks’ garden by the many sea pinks that bloom there in season, and the peculiar brightness of the green of the ferns that nestle in the moist shade of the rocks. There is nothing much else to distinguish them by day, but of a summer night it is very different. Then if you chance upon one of them—which is very rarely—you will find the soft green of the cliff turf spangled with wee flowers of all colours, rare and beautiful, such as mere mortals never know.
And you may see the Little People dancing happily in rings around some sea pink which towers above their heads, or busying about with tiny water-pot or spade tending their beloved blooms.
The fishermen sometimes see them when, on a still summer night, their boats drift silently close in by the cliffs. They hear the strains of sweet soft music coming from close down by the water and see a constant moving of hundreds of tiny bright lights flickering in and out among the fairy flowers; and sometimes, on calm warm nights, the delicious scents of the flowers drifts far out to sea, a scent that is ten thousand times sweeter than any that came from a mortal garden.
Those who have been lucky enough to witness this wonderful scene say that you must be perfectly silent and hardly move, or you will frighten the Small Folk. They are very beautiful little creatures, seeking to harm nobody. They hold periodical feasts or “Fairs,” as they are called, sometimes upon some lonely hill top, or in a glade in the depth of a thick wood. Then, when thousands of them are assembled together, their lights may often be seen for miles.
But you must not interfere with the Small Folk or they will punish you. They have their own ways of doing this. They will lead you astray for hours, or make you drop stitches at your knitting, or make you lose your path on a dark winter’s night. But to those who wish them well they will never do real harm and they seem often to be sorry for the mischief they have caused, and will reward their victims with some piece of good luck soon afterwards.
At least this is what the old people who have known the Little People will tell you, but they will not talk much about them nowadays for fear of not being believed.
Still you may see the Fairy Gardens for yourself by Trereen Castle if you will, and see all around some of the finest coast scenery in all Cornwall.
The Logan Rock itself is one of the sights of the country. It is a huge boulder of granite said to weigh 65 tons, so poised that without great effort it can be rocked to and fro. Once it was easier to move, but a mischievous naval officer pulled it from its base about 100 years ago. He was made by the Admiralty to replace it, but it has never rocked so freely again.
This is the westernmost corner of England, and a succession of magnificent headlands thrust themselves into the sea between Trereen and the Lands End. A few miles inland is Sennen, the “last” parish in the country.
Penzance is the best centre for visiting this remote district. A regular service of motor buses runs from that place to the Lands End, carrying the visitor within an easy walk of Treen Castle and its Fairy Gardens, and traversing on the way a wild windswept, almost treeless country, abounding in relics of our earliest ancestors—strange stone circles and British villages. The moorland hills here rise to 800 feet in height, and from them extensive views are to be had comprising, on ordinarily clear days, the far isles of Scilly, lying out in the Atlantic, thirty-five miles away.
This is a land of health and rest where Small Folks’ gardens seem far easier to understand than in the grime and turmoil of a great city.
