A. K. Hamilton Jenkin says that although the goodwill of the piskies was often courted by leaving them something, "their capriciousness made them generally feared:"
Particularly was this so among the fishermen, many of whom objected to landing from their boats at night on account of the dread of being carried off by these visitants from the spirit world. 'Some time ago', wrote Mr H. Michell Whitely in 1912, 'my brother was staying at a lonely fishing village on the coast of Cornwall. On one occasion whilst he was there some of the fishing boats came into the harbor in the middle of the night, and he at once went to the pier to see what would happen. He found the fishermen would not come on shore before the morning; and after much pressing, they told him that the reason why they stopped in their boats until daylight was that they were afraid to land foe dread of the 'little people'.
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