The Boy Who Played with the Piskeys

Up on Fore Street in St Cleer lived a woman and her son Tom. The woman worked so hard, worked up at the big house on the edge of the downs as a housekeeper, cleaning and cooking and washing and scrubbing, then when she got home she carried on with her own housework, cleaning and cooking and washing and scrubbing, and she didn’t have much time to spend with Tom.

Their house was clean and Tom’s clothes were clean and his belly was full of pasties and pies, but he was lonely, his mother had no time to play and there were no other kids on Fore Street in those days.

Tom winged and wined and his mother sent him up to the moor at the top of the village to find some playmates. He explored the moor, ran up and down the narrow paths that wound between the prickly spikes of gorse and bramble, climbed the rocks and jumped in the cow pats, SPLAT, but he was still lonely. He made a den in the scrub, he chased the moor pony and her foal, he listened to the larks singing in the wide sky, but he was still lonely.

Then one day he heard laughter on the moor, not children’s laughter but a high pitched tinkly laughter, and all at once he was surrounded by little people, small as your hand, in green jackets and red coats, or red jackets and green coats. PISKEYS.

‘Come play with us Tom’ they cried, and soon Tom was caught in games of tag and chase, of hide and seek, of dancing and jumping and singing and spinning. ‘You can play with us everyday Tom,’ said the Piskeys, ‘ but you must promise not to tell a soul. Grown ups don’t understand the fairy folk.’ Tom promised, and every afternoon he went up to the moor to play with the Piskeys. Tom was not lonely anymore.

One day Tom’s mother went to light the fire, but she had run out of kindling wood. She went up to the moor, sure she could find some dry wood to get her fire going. As she picked up twigs and sticks and bits of broken branch she heard laughter, high pitched tinkly laughter..and she was sure she heard Tom laughing too.

When Tom came home for his tea that night his mother asked him who he was playing with on the moor. ‘I’ve been playing great games with the Piskeys mum, tag and chase, hide and seek, dancing and jumping and spinning and singing.’ Tom’s  mum felt sad, she knew you must never, ever tell anyone when you have been playing with the Piskeys, or you will never see them again. So she decided to spend more time with her young son, and spend less time cleaning and more time playing.

Their house was dusty and Tom’s clothes were grubby but Tom and his mother played every single day, and Tom was happy.