The Pixy is synonymous with the Brownie of the Lowland Scot, the Daoine Sith of the Highlander, and the Peght of the Orkneys. The name used by the Gaels, Daoine Sith, can mean either The People of Peace or The Folk of the Mounds (barrows). Should this latter meaning be taken, and linked to the people who originally built the barrows, ie the Picts, the implications are clear.

The Pixies are the the little dark-complexioned aboriginal folk who were supposed to inhabit the barrows, cromlechs, and allées couvertes, and whose cunning, their only effective weapon against the strength of the Aryan invader, earned them a reputation for magical powers. Over the years these peoples also became linked with the pagan belief in nature sprites, and the two beliefs merged, giving us the pixy we know today.

Over the years there have been many legends as to how the pixies originated, mostly based on Christian beliefs. To some the pixies are too bad for Heaven but too good for Hell, to others they are demonic entities who require the minstrations of a priest to drive them away. However, since pixies have been known to take an interest in churches, the latter opinion leaves a lot to be desired. Of course the pixies would leave such places as Ottery St. Mary and Tavistock Abbey, for why would they desire to stay in such places where they were treated with so little respect.

The more popular view of the pixies' origin is the same as with most fairies: pixies come from the land of Faerie. This place has numerous names, and confused descriptions. Some people claim it is an underground kingdom, some claim it is an distant island, and more recently, some claim it is a separate dimension, linked to this one. It is also said that the pixies have their own realm within the land of Faerie, called Pixyland.

Unbaptised children were thought at the beginning of the nineteenth century in England to turn into piskys when they died.

Another tradition says that piskys are Druids who, because they would not believe in Christ, were for their sins condemned to change first into piskies.

Moths were considered in Cornwall to be departed souls, and were still in 1890 called piskies in some parts. She also mentions that a green bug which infests bramble-bushes in late autumn bears the name of pisky.

he following is by Elizabeth Yates who found additional stories collected by Enis Tregarthen in the 1940 book Piskey Folk :

Cornwall's own particular fairy folk are the Piskeys, and legends about them are as plentiful as sea shells. Living in the cliffs or on the moors, they were known to lead a prankish, but often useful, existence, always exceedingly merry. Some believe that they were once related to a pygmy race of Neolithic times; others hold to an earlier notion that they were Druids who resisted Christianity, and the more they resisted the smaller they grew. It was always thought they had lived before and not good enough for heaven or bad enough for hell" remained on the earth.... Yes, Cornwall is a land where almost anything may happen, where legends brood and the past is hugged closely like a cloak.

In one of Enys Tregarthen's notebooks is a quaint explanation of the Piskeys.

"According to an old legend," she writes, "the Almighty went to call on Adam and Eve one day after they had been driven out of the Garden of Eden. When He arrived, Mother Eve was washing her children. She had not washed them all, for she had so many, and so she brought to the Lord only those that she had washed.

"'Have you no other children?' the Lord God asked.

"'No,' answered Eve, for she was ashamed to present to Him her little unwashed children and had hidden them.

"The Lord God was angry and said, 'What man hides from God, God will hide from man.'

"It came to pass as the Lord God had said, and all the unwashed children of the first mother became invisible. They went away into the hills, woods, forests, and lonely places of the earth and there took up their abode. They have remained invisible to the eye of man ever since, save to the few who have the faculty of seeing them or to those to whom they reveal themselves.

"These unwashed children of Eve are the fairies and are known throughout the world by different names.

"In Cornwall they are generally called Piskeys, but they have many other names too. Some call them the Small People; others the Dinky Men and Women or the Dinkies; some speak of them as the Little Invisibles. There are many kinds of Piskeys, such as the nightriders or the tiny people who ride horses and colts and even dogs by night; and the knockers or little miners who work and play down in the old mines. There are Spriggans, too, bad Piskeys with whom no one wants to have anything to do.

"These little invisible folk have their dwelling places on the wild downs and moors, by the side of streams, bogs, and marshes; on the great granite-piled hills; on the commons and cliffs and even down by the sea. They live in tribes or clans, each clan having peculiar qualities or characteristics, and though they show a common origin they differ considerably from one another." The old Cornish people still tell tales of Piskeys, and through the years the stories have sometimes changed a bit, giving rise to different versions, sometimes lost a bit here or there. They might have been lost altogether but for the efforts of a few writers eager to perpetuate them.