Long ago there was a large area of common land just south of St Buryan, between Westmoor and Burnewhall, they called it Selena Moor. On the moor there were swampy, squelchy bits with yellow flag iris, mosses and sedges. In the moor there were scrubby, scratchy bits with brambles and blackthorn and gorse. Bracken there grew taller than men, and rough stony tracks crossed the moor but most of it was impassable.

Round the moor, and round St Buryan was farmland, and in the summer the farms' fields were full of golden corn. It was so long ago that there were no tractors, no combine harvesters, and the corn was cut by men and women with sickles, then bought into to the barns for threshing. It was far too much work for one farmer and his men to gather the corn, so folk helped each other with the harvest, and when all the corn was gathered in they had a big party, a harvest supper.

Mr Noy lived in St Buryan, and he'd been helping his neighbours with the harvest. He rode his horse to work, and he always had his dogs by his side, though they were not much help with the harvest. He didn't turn up to help one day, so they thought he must have been working the other side of the village – all the neighbours were just like one family then. Harvest supper came and there was a great feast for many – pies and pasties, plums and pears, drinking, singing, dancing and droll telling – but still no sign of Mr Noy. People stayed up all night feasting but when morning came they sent out search parties to look for their missing neighbour. Off they went, some on horseback, some on foot, searching dangerous places like ponds and cliffs and streams, but when they returned at night time no one had seen Mr Noy. The next day they widened the hunt to Sennen, St Just, and Penzance, and many more neighbours joined in, but when they returned at night time no one had seen Mr Noy. On the third day the search parties set out again, and almost immediately someone heard dogs barking and a horse neighing, maybe they were Mr Noy's animals, no one had thought to look for him so close to home. The noise was coming from a thicket on Selena Moor, which was almost surrounded by bog, and the dogs showed the villagers the way through brambles and thorns and furze to an old ruined barn, and there, on the floor, was Mr Noy, fast asleep.

He was some mazed when he woke up, didn't know where he was, thought he needed to get back for the harvest feast, tho that was long gone – his friends took him back to their house for breakfast instead, and he told them what happened.

He'd taken a short cut home after the harvest, but the short cut turned into a long cut and soon he was lost, strange because he knew the place so well. He heard laughing and music and followed the sound, his horse wouldn't go any further so he tied the horse and dogs up and went on alone, came to a meadow and saw hundreds of people feasting, the biggest harvest supper he had ever seen – but the people were small, very small, the smallest people he had ever seen. A normal sized girl was playing the fiddle for the dancing, she looked familiar, looked like his old girlfriend Grace who had disappeared years ago.

Mr Noy watched the dancing, tapped his foot to the music and was just about to join in when the girl suddenly gave her fiddle to a tiny old man, and gestured for Mr Noy to follow her, and follow her he did. They went to a clearing to talk.

'Yes, I am your Grace' she said.

Mr Noy, delighted, went to take her hand.

'Don't touch me,' she cried, 'and whatever you do don't eat any food here – not a pie or a pasty, not a plum or a pear, or you will be bewitched like me. These are fairy folk, piskeys, and it is their party. If you eat their food or hold their hands in a dance then you are stuck in fairyland forever. I made that mistake years ago when I was out on the moor and saw them, I ate a piskey plum and now there's no going back, I'm stuck here forever looking after changelings and playing Nos Lowen.'

Mr Noy, saddened, stepped back.

Grace went back to the party, picked up her fiddle and played. Mr Noy stood in the shadows and watched, Mr Noy stood in the shadows and listened, Mr Noy felt cold, He put his hands in his pockets to pull out his nice warm gloves, and accidentally pulled his pockets inside out. Instant silence, no piskeys, no Grace, no meadow, no party – just an old ruined barn in a thicket. Mr Noy went inside and lay down in the barn for a sleep, he was quite exhausted after his adventures, and it was in the barn the searchers found him.

Next harvest time Mr Noy went missing again, and no one ever found him. He must have joined in the fairy feast, ate a piskey pasty and stayed with his old sweetheart Grace.

There's only a tiny bit of Selina moor left, most is now farmland. Mosses and sedges, brambles and blackthorn grow there still, and and hiding in plain sight are … piskeys.

Retold by Sue Field

From William Bottrell 'Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall Vol 2'