Who are the Pixies?
‘Pixie’ is the name for a type of fairy that resides in West Country. Some British pixie folklorists and experts, including myself, have categorised them as a race apart from other fairies. They were believed to be helpful to homeowners and farmers, though they could also be unpredictable and tricky.
Pixieland
Pixies first came to my attention as a child growing up in the 1970s. On family trips to Dartmoor in my parents’ car, we’d sometimes stop at the Pixieland gift shop near Dartmeet, with its eye-catching garden, full of cheerily painted pixie statues. This local treasure is still thriving. But how did pixies become so popular?
Popularisation of Pixie Folklore
The acceptance of British pixie folklore into the canon of faerie folklore, and its popularisation, were due to a series of letters written by Mrs Anna Eliza Bray (1790-1883), a historical novelist, to her friend and mentor, the poet laureate, Robert Southey. These were published in three volumes in ‘A Description of the Part of Devonshire Bordering on the Tamar and the Tavy’ (1836). Bray was the wife of Rev. Edward Atkyns Bray and resided at Tavistock Vicarage.
Local Pixie Research
The pixies had been briefly mentioned by earlier writers, including Coleridge in his poem ‘Songs of the Pixies’ (1793). However, Southey encouraged Bray to delve more deeply into the history and customs of her local area. In her letter dated 24th April 1832, Bray introduces the pixies by saying, ‘as no historian has here been found to record the acts of our pixies, I, unworthy as I may be to accomplish the task, will, nevertheless, adventure it’, and confesses that she has collected the pixies’ traditions at the risk of being ‘laughed at’ by her wealthy and educated peers.
A Race Apart from Other Fairies
Bray notes that the local elders believed they were a race apart, “the souls of infants” who had died before being baptised. Bray describes them as wearing green, changing their forms at will, enjoying music and dancing in a ring, being helpful yet mischievous tricksters, and sometimes malevolent. Their occupations, by command of the Pixy King, included helping farmers thresh and farm maids churn butter. Some pixies were tasked with leading travellers astray, known as being ‘pixie-led’. The best remedy against this was to turn one’s pockets or apron inside out, though there are several others.
Mary Colling's Pixie Folklore Research
Local maid-servant and talented poet Mary Colling (1804-1853), who became Bray’s protégé, played a key role in gathering Dartmoor pixie folklore from the ‘local gossips’. Bray said that the locals were ‘less suspicious’ of Colling because they trusted her (and were untrusting of the upper classes - i.e. Bray, who was part of the aristocracy). Bray helped to publish Colling’s poetry collection Fables (1831).
A Peep at the Pixies
Bray later shaped these descriptions into children’s tales in her book ‘A Peep at the Pixies’ (1854). She also standardised the spelling as ‘pixie’, in preference to ‘piskey’ or ‘pisgie’, which may come from the same root as “pooka” or “Puck”.
Pixie Places in the Landscape
Bray wrote that the pixies ‘delight in solitary places, to love pleasant hills and pathless woods; or to disport themselves on the margins of rivers and mountain streams.’ They were also believed to live beneath tors, to emerge from rocks, and to disappear into boulder fields at dawn.
The Pixies Cave Dartmoor
She also visited the ‘Pixies’ Cave’, Sheepstor. Reverend Polwhele wrote about the cave and its traditions in A History of Devonshire (1797), the earliest known historical account of a Dartmoor pixie dwelling. Bray added more topographical detail to the account of her visit. The entrance was only big enough for pixies, and the interior was ‘a hovel’. Whereas Bray succeeded in accessing the cave, I was defeated in my ungainly attempt, apologising profusely to its inhabitants.
On a beautiful summer evening in 1854, William Crossing (1847-1928), one of the greatest writers about all things Dartmoor, also visited the ‘Pixie’s Cave’ (Folklore and Legends of Dartmoor by William Crossing, Messurier 1997). Aged six at the time, he was accompanied by ‘good Ann Wilcocks’, his childminder. William recalls he felt excited at the prospect. As they approached the cave, ‘suddenly a little creature darted out from between the masses of granite, and as suddenly disappeared. I felt quite sure it was a pixy’. However, Ann dismissed the boy’s sighting as probably being a rabbit. William writes of Ann’s response; ‘This disappointed me but was not convincing.’ Crossing’s ‘Tales of the Dartmoor Pixies’ was published in 1890, with additional stories that he had collected from interviewing local people. Crossing introduces his pixie tales by guiding the reader along the Dart gorge to Newbridge and its ‘green sward’, where the pixies gathered to dance, stopping at their other haunts along the way.
Later Collections of Pixie Tales
More Dartmoor pixie tales were published in the wake of Crossing, including The Crock of Gold (Sabine Baring-Gould, 1899), The Magic Mist (Rogers, E.C, 1901) Tales of the Tors (Skinner, A.G. 1939), Devon Traditions and Fairy Tales (Coxhead, J.R.W, 1959). In The Saving, B J Burton (1985), tells the tale of a tribe of little folk, the Dini, who’s plight is at the hands of ecological crisis created by the ‘Big-uns’(humans).
Modern Pixie Encounters
Bray, Crossing, and other nineteenth-century authors emphasised that the pixies were long gone from Dartmoor, driven away by the ‘marching of intellect’. However, records of pixie sightings continued to be recorded by folklorists, such as Theo Brown (Tales of a Dartmoor Village, 1961) and up to the present day, by Mark Norman and Jo Hickey-Hall in their chapter ‘Pixies and Rocks’ for Magical Folk (Young, S & Holbrook, C, 2018). Norman and Hickey-Hall cite an account by a farmer from 2010, who on burning down an old barn, saw a ring of small green figures standing around its smouldering embers.
Listen to my guest, Paul Rendell, sharing his childhood pixie encounter and other pixie tales!
Pixies in the Fairy Census
Refer to Dr Simon Young’s Fairy Census (1 & 2) for several modern pixie encounters. Listen to my fairy encounters submitted to the excellent Folklore Library in Crediton, Devon.
In recent years, more of us have been reconnecting with the outdoors, realising its importance to our wellbeing. Perhaps the pixies never went away; maybe it is we who replaced the wild wastes of our imaginations with our smartphone screens.
Claire Casely 2026