The Piskey-Purse: Legends and Tales of North Cornwall

Tregarthen, Enys, 1851-1923Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2

Word count: 252K words
Chapters: 26

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Piskey-Purse: Legends and Tales of North Cornwall by Enys TregarthenAuthor: Tregarthen, Enys, 1851-1923,Language: English, Class: GR: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation: Folklore, Release Date: Aug 28, 2011

Editor's review

This collection, edited by Enys Tregarthen, is a small window into the folk narrative of southwestern England. Tregarthen spent years gathering Cornish local legends, and the book centers on figures such as the piskeys (Cornish folk fairies), with a strong regional flavor, rural detail, and supernatural atmosphere. It works both as folklore material and as a local legend reader within English literature. Its value lies not in complex plotting but in preserving the tone, taboos, and humor of oral tradition, letting readers sense how pre-industrial Cornish people imagined nature and the unknown. Read it slowly, as a collection of short stories rather than a continuous novel; those interested in folklore, English regional culture, or English folk-story writing will find ample material and inspiration. As a public-domain ebook, the text follows the Project Gutenberg edition, with limited notes and background, so consult Cornish folklore sources for comparison when needed.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in British folklore and ethnology
Scholars studying local oral traditions and English folk tales
General readers who enjoy short supernatural tales and atmospheric reading
Readers curious about Cornish culture and English dialect expression

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a continuous long plot or modern novel pacing
Researchers needing detailed scholarly annotations and textual criticism
Beginners with low tolerance for English dialect and archaic narrative style

Reading tips

Start with the table of contents and pick the piskey-related pieces to form an impression of the central figures.
After each story, jot down recurring taboos, place names, and character types.
When you meet dialect spellings or local terms, guess from context first, then check them together.
Read alongside a Cornish map to match story settings with the geographical environment.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this a novel or a collection of short stories?

It is a collection of legends and tales, each relatively independent, centered on North Cornwall folk figures and rural life rather than a continuous novel. It suits reading piece by piece, not necessarily from cover to cover in one go.

Can I understand it without a folklore background?

Yes, but it takes some patience. The language carries dialect color and traces of oral narration, with little background explanation. Start with a few shorter pieces, get used to the narrative style, then go deeper; use maps or folklore sources for local names and objects.

Does this edition include notes or an introduction?

According to the information, this is a public-domain electronic text from Project Gutenberg presenting mainly the original work; no detailed notes or introduction are specifically mentioned. For textual criticism or background explanation, consult separate Cornish folklore research materials.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Tregarthen, Enys, 1851-1923 Author · British · 1851–1923

Enys Tregarthen (1851–1923) was a British writer whose real name was Nellie Sloggett. Public information about her is limited, and few details of her life are recorded, but the two works held in the collection confirm that she devoted herself to collecting and retelling folk tales from Cornwall, in the far south-west of England. Her representative works, North Cornwall Fairies and Legends and The Piskey-Purse: Legends and Tales of North Cornwall, both draw on the oral traditions of the Cornish countryside and centre on fairies, pixies and other local spirits. Rather than simply recording them, she shaped and retold these stories while preserving their oral tone and local colour, so that these vanishing rural legends could be passed down in written form and remain an important source for later readers interested in Cornish folklore and fairy belief.