Fairy Legend of Land's End, Cornwall, England
(Story adaptation by Rudy B. Martin)

This is one of the legends of Cornwall (the land of enchantments),
England. Cornwall is a piece of land
about the size of Cleveland, Ohio at the Western tip of England in
the South. The story took place about
two centuries ago very near the very tip by the sea of Cornwall in
the West, appropriately named Land's End.

A man, William Noy, was traveling on horseback one moonlit night
from St. Buryan to his home farm at
Baranhual. The coastal road between these two places passed by
Selena, a farm before Baranhual and
on that night, William took a short cut route at Selena instead of
the usual coastal road. He had to force
his terrified horse to traverse on to the Selena Moor, a desolate
wilderness of marsh, wild undergrowth,
bogs and granite outcrops and soon he had discovered himself lost
in an unknown, dark and deserted
forest. Suddenly myriads of candles glimmered through the trees
everywhere in the forest and with this
was a sound of music. His horse had become frantically wild from
terror, so he finally decided to let it go,
anxious and hoping at the same time that the animal could bring
much needed help. In bewilderment, he
proceeded alone through the forest and in the clearing came upon an
orchard which opened into a meadow.
On this meadow was an old house and a girl in white dress was by
the entry door, playing a fiddle.

On the greens in the forest, William noticed hundreds of small
people whirling, gyrating and dancing in
unison at the giddy pace of the girl's music while many others
seated around rows of miniature tables were
feasting and drinking. Amazed and enticed by this merry making, he
was about to join in the dance when
the girl in white dress threw a warning glance at him. As the girl
approached him, he recognized her:
Grace Hutchens, his sweetheart from the Selena farm. She had been
dead for three years, buried at the
St. Buryan churchyard.

Overwhelmed with joy, William made a move to kiss her but Grace
shoved him away, explaining that he
should not touch anything in the forest for they were all
enchanted. She told him how she had gotten lost
at sunset at the same moor where he had taken a short cut. One of
her goats had gone astray and she was
looking for it when she heard his voice nearby, calling his dogs.
Searching for him, she had cut through
the moor and got confused and lost amidst the wilderness of bogs
and streams. She had sunk in the head
high bracken trying to reach him. Exhausted, she came upon the
orchard and the meadow, beyond which
was a garden filled with roses, surrounded by trees, and there was
a sound of music. She had eaten a
sweet plum from the orchard, slept in the garden and from then on
there was no way out of this enchanted
place for her. She awoke surrounded by hundreds of the small
people who had stolen her (exactly as
William sees her now) and had left behind her changeling body which
was soon found by her town friends
and which they (including William) later buried at the St. Buryan
churchyard.

Grace went on to say that the small people have babies of their
own, but extremely few and very precious
to them. The small people are thousands of years old, even before
the Christ, and had worshipped the
stars while still in their human form. She said that they had
rejoiced on having her in the place because
they now have her to take care of them and their baby changelings
(from dead human babies). The
babies are nourished with milk from goats which the small people
disguised as billy goats would lure into
the garden.

William did not like this kind of existence and wanted to escape
and take Grace with him. He knew this
was a spell and had knowledge that a spell such as this could be
broken by turning his garment inside out.
He did exactly this in a flash. Just as quickly, everything around
him changed. Grace, together with the
hundreds of small people vanished. The house became a ruin. The
orchard turned into bogs and bracken
stream and the garden into wilderness of thicket of thorns and
brambles which buried the ruins of the house.
Then he was struck by a mysterious lightning and fell unconscious.

After searching three days and three nights, William's friends
found his horse by which he eventually was
also rescued. Found sound asleep in the ruins of a house
underneath some almost impenetrable and
massive thicket of thorns and brambles, he was awaken without sense
of time and place. Although he
had not lost recognition of his friends, he was retrospectively
confused and had plenty of questions about
this puzzling event before him. His friends brought him home.
Much later on, he finally recovered himself
and was able to recall and tell the story of the bewildering events
from the time he left St. Buryan to the
mysterious lightning which fell him on the exact spot where he was
rescued. He went on with his life and
persisted in his desperate search for Grace in the wilderness of
the moor until he finally languished and
passed away. His body was buried alongside Grace's grave at the
St. Buryan churchyard. It is believed
that he had joined Grace in the enchanted land.