This short anecdote illustrates piskey ridden, as in the story 'Piskey–Ridden' Pony in Lostwithiel.

D'ye see that 'ere hoss there?" said a Liskeard farmer to a West–Country miner.

"What ov it?" asked the miner.

"Well, that 'ere hoss he'n been ridden to death a'most by the pigsies again."

"Pigsies!" said the miner;"thee don't b'leve in they, do 'ee?"

"Ees I do; but I specks you're a West–Country bucca, ain't 'ee? If you'd a had yourn hosses wrode to death every nite, you'd tell another tayl, I reckon. But as sure as I 'se living the pigsies do ride on 'em whenever they've a mind to."

This story also may illustrate the tension between Cornish farmers and miners, the ants and the grasshoppers. Farmers were tied to their land and labor, and rarely traveled further than five miles from their place of birth in their lifetimes. Miners had no land, and went where there was work. My great–grandfather is said to have been on a sailing ship in his twenties. I found him in Cuba once. And, just after the American Civil War, he emigrated to America and brought the rest of his family over a year later. From New Jersey to Pennsylvania, and finally to Nebraska, he crossed half of America once he was here. One son went looking for his fortune and died in New Mexico under suspicious circumstances. Another son, my grandfather, migrated to Illinois. Miners could get up and leave a place and never come back; farmers rarely did.