A. K. Hamilton Jenkin says that it "was not always that the small people chose to display themselves to mortal eyes in order to make their presence felt. Though, at times, not unwilling to render useful service to man, they appear more often to have delighted in playing tricks upon him." Jenkin then relates a story from Doctor Couch's History of Polperro:
'Old Robin Hicks,' who formerly lived in a house on Quay Head, was more than once on stormy nights alarmed at his supper by a voice calling sharp and shrill: "Robin! Robin! your boat is adrift". Loud was the laughter and 'tacking of hands when they succeeded in luring Robin as far as the Quay, where the boat was lying safely at her moorings.
Margaret Ann Courtney also mentions this same Couch story and summarizes almost exactly as above.
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