Chapter 9

Bogies

In this chapter, I discuss a broad category of supernatural creatures whose exact place in the taxonomy of Faery can be hard to fix. They may sometimes look almost human, inclining us to label them as faeries, but they can just as often appear as hounds or as other animals. Many of them have a single function—usually to scare or to warn us—which makes them less than true faeries, with their rich and complex society. For these reasons I include all the bogeys, bogles, boggarts, and others in a single group of “bogies” under the overall heading of “faery beasts.”

Names & Classification

The problem of defining bogies has been with us for centuries. Tudor poet Thomas Churchyard wrote about them collectively in 1592:

“Of old Hobgoblings guise

That walkt like ghost in sheetes

With maides that would not early rise

For feare of Bugs and spreets.”323

Although they do share features with ghouls and spirits, there are many characteristics shared by these beings with the faes that argue for their inclusion with the “faery beasts.” Sir Walter Scott characterised these creatures very well as “freakish spirit[s], who [delight] rather to perplex and frighten mankind, than either to serve, or seriously to hurt them.”324 In addition, whatever form these bogies may take, there are certain common characteristics that are found consistently across all forms, uniting them as a family as well as demonstrating their membership of the wider faery race. This may well be why poet Samuel Rowlands in 1612 lumped together a wide range of supernatural beings, describing how:

“Great store of Goblins, Faeries, Bugs, Night-mares,

Urchins and Elves, to many a house repaires.”325

Once, the people of the British Isles identified a host of different bogies, many very localised and each no doubt with their own characteristics and habitats. For most of us, all we have now are the enigmatic names, from which we may try to distil some scant information about their natures. We know, for example, of Boggy-bo, tints, hodge-pokers, bygorns, bomen, flay-boggarts, and alholders. Part of this ignorance derives from something that seems to be alluded to in Churchyard’s rhyme. There is a clear suggestion from him that—even at the turn of the seventeenth century—credence in bogles and hobgoblins had largely disappeared and that they survived in popular culture largely as a joke and as a means of scaring children into behaving themselves. I’ll give attention separately to the diminution of these sprites into mere bywords for “things that go bump in the night.”326

A huge variety of these related faery creatures exist, whose affinities and connections are reflected in their very similar names: bugs, bogles, bogies, boggarts, bug-a-boos, and others. Across the British Isles there is a host of connected names, the bwg and bwgan of Wales, their versions of the English hobgoblin and bugbear whose names seem to have been borrowed into English as “bug.” These names derive from bwgwl (threat) and bw (terror) and are also related to our “bogle,” the Gaelic bocan, and the spirits called puck, pwca, bucca, and bokie.

This dense web of scary beings is by no means unique to Britain. In German there are related words such as spuk (a spook, bug, or hobgoblin) and bögge and bogglemann. Ireland has its pooka, and much further afield in Lithuanian there are baugus (terrific) and bugti (terrify), and in Maharatta, from India, bagul, a boggle. Very evidently, the Indo-European peoples from deep in their history have been terrified by bogeymen during the night. Scottish shepherd poet James Hogg therefore caught the essence of the bogie family when he spoke of “the gomral [stupid] fantastic bogles an’ spirits that fley [scare] light-headed fok up an’ down the country …”327

In light of the wealth of names that exist, a final word on terminology is necessary here. The names for the many types of bogies and other such faery beasts are very far from fixed or precise, and we should not worry overly about categorising these supernatural creatures correctly. Uncertainty is understandable: we are dealing with beings that have been glimpsed only briefly and which have caused alarm and horror in the witnesses, meaning that careful descriptions are unlikely ever to be forthcoming. This sense of doubt is compounded by the fact that the bogles can change shape, so that determining their core identity and appearance can be extremely difficult. Separating bogles from boggarts and shucks from padfoots can seem a hopeless task. The names chosen may be down entirely to local taste or the preference of the folklorist who first recorded the apparitions. Accordingly, we shouldn’t try to insist upon strict and consistent divisions between hobs and brags and goblins. They’re not scientific terms, and we shouldn’t try to pretend they are; they’re just convenient labels for an otherworld we still don’t understand very well.

Common Bogie Traits

What ties together all the strange creatures in this second part of the book—and what associates them with the better known faes, mermaids, and pucks? As we examine the many different types of bogey and boggart, you may repeatedly notice similar patterns of behaviour or of responses to humankind.

Fear

These creatures were, as a class, seen as malevolent and terrifying. This is confirmed by a rhyme from the Isle of Man in which an unfaithful lover is cursed, successively, with injury from the water bull, the night steed, the “rough satyr” (that is, the glashtyn), the faery of the glen (ferrish ny glionney), and with bogles. Pity the two-timing partner who faces this supernatural assault.328

A bogie in the shape of a white dog was known to haunt a crossroads near the village of Brigham in the East Riding of Yorkshire, alarming all those nocturnal travellers who passed by. Creech Hill in Somerset was the abode of a “bullbeggar,” another variant upon the bogie, but one that seems in most places to have very early on been demoted to a bugaboo to scare children. The Somerset example was a black figure that chased or attacked those crossing the hill at night. It could grow to enormous size and was believed to be associated in some way with two bodies dug up on the hill during quarrying.329

Humans fear bogies not just because they are supernatural and unknown, but because they can be extremely violent. At Mulgrave Wood near Whitby was to be found a violent and ill-tempered sprite called Jeanie. Locals were unsure whether to call her a bogle or a faery but, certainly, she didn’t like to be called by the name she’d been allotted. One man who did was pursued viciously by her; she killed his horse, and he only escaped by crossing a stream.330

In Scotland March 29 was once celebrated as “Bogle Day.” Just as faeries and other sprites are believed to roam abroad on Halloween, it looks as though on this day of the year the assorted Scottish goblins had the run of the countryside, free to behave as they wished.

Portents & Protection

When these beings manifest themselves, it is very often for a particular purpose, such as to predict some death or disaster or to draw a person’s attention to concealed riches. By way of illustration, the being known as “Silky” at Black Heddon in Northumberland acted in many ways like a typical domestic brownie or hobgoblin—tidying an untidy house or disarranging a neat one—but she disappeared forever once a skin filled with gold fell through the ceiling of the old manor house.331

Silky also behaved like a sort of guardian spirit, appearing at night on the darkest part of a road in dazzling splendour and then accompanying a rider for a while until the route improved. Many other bogies will undertake tasks for humans, whether that is by performing domestic or agricultural chores or by giving them specialist knowledge, such as healing abilities. Silky gets her name from her rustling dress and, in this, she seems to be related to banshee-like protective spirits.

Many bogies can be a nuisance rather than a benefit. Silky, for all her goodwill, would make horses freeze with terror, and it was often necessary to carry a sprig of rowan in order to dispel her influence. Similar measures need to be taken against plenty of other bogies, either to prevent their mischief or to defend against their aggression. Throughout the chapter that follows, you will also encounter procedures for “laying” or exorcising these creatures. A fascinating example of this aspect comes from Arkengarthdale. A man laid a bogle in his cottage by opening his Bible, lighting a candle and then pronouncing the injunction “Now then, you can read, or dance, or do as you like.” The bogle was observed to vanish in the form of a grey cat and wasn’t seen again for many years. However—as will often be found to be the case—the banishment was not permanent. One day the man met the bogle again on the stairs—and this spelled his doom. Soon after the encounter, he left the house to go to his work in the mine and died in an accident.332

Bawling Bogies

Another common feature of bogles and boggarts is the noise they make. They will announce themselves with their shrieks and yells. Sometimes there is no purpose to this bellowing other than to alarm people living in the vicinity, as appears to be the case with the Mickleton Hooter or Belhowja in Gloucestershire, or else to annoy and inconvenience them, as with Jack o’ the White Hat at Appledore in Devon who would shout “boat ahoy,” summoning the ferryman across the mouth of the Torridge River, only for there to be no prospective passenger waiting. Nonetheless, omens are often read into the barks and howls these creatures emit.333

Several of these vociferous beings are known. At Sennen Cove, in the far west of Cornwall, the “hooper” is known for the whooping noise it made. In otherwise fine weather a dense fog bank settles on the reef of rocks just outside the harbour, cutting the quay off from the open sea, and at night a dull light may be seen inside the cloud and the cries of the hooper will be audible. The reason for the hooper’s arrival is, it seems, to act as a warning against storms coming in from the Atlantic. If you ignore the augury and head out to sea regardless, you will never be seen again. At Claife, on the shore of Lake Windermere in the Lake District, the “Crier of Claife” was heard summoning the ferrymen from Bowness on the opposite shore, rather as at Appledore. The voice was disembodied and there was never a passenger waiting when the boatmen rowed across; often, they would return pale and speechless with horror and would die within a short time. The Crier was laid in a nearby quarry in Tudor times.

On the Isle of Man, a similar sprite called the dooiney-oie or night caller performs the same function. He’s been called a “banshee,” because he sometimes seems attached to a single family, although he isn’t predicting death. Rather, if his dismal howls of “Hoa! Hoa!” are heard during a winter’s night on the coast, it is a sure sign that storms are approaching in the Irish Sea. Because of his warnings, the Manx people have regularly avoided considerable loss: fishermen were able to get in their nets, lines, and pots and farmers could shelter their flocks. Other writers have associated the night man with particular locations around the island, such as the glen at Ballaconnell in Malew parish and a cave on Cronk-y-Thonna. As with all faery beings, it is wise not to affront him: some men who once insulted the dooiney-oie promptly found themselves pelted with stones from an invisible source, and any group of boys who have tried to creep up to his cave to get a glimpse of him invariably end up with sprained wrists and ankles. The worst injury he can inflict is the shock caused by his very loud shouting.334

Lastly, mention should be made of the “Long Coastguardsman” of Mundesley in Norfolk, who at midnight on cloudy nights will walk along a stretch of the coast, singing and laughing in the wind whenever a storm is raging. Unlike the previous two sprites, the coastguard seems to mark bad weather rather than to forewarn of it.

Moral Purpose

The Scottish shepherd poet James Hogg said of bogies that “they are a better kind o’ spirits, they meddle wi’ nane but the guilty; the murderer, an’ the mansworn, an’ the cheater o’ the widow an’ the fatherless, they do for them.” As an illustration of this moral function of the bogie class, there is the tale of a poor widow from Reeth whose neighbour stole some candles from her. The thief soon found himself haunted by a bogle; he tried shooting it, but it had no body that could be wounded. The next day it came to him, warning, “I’m neither bone, nor flesh, nor blood, thou canst not harm me. Give back the candles, but I must take something from thee.” It plucked an eyelash, which may seem harmless enough, except that his eye “twinkled” for ever after that day.335

Appearance

The shape-shifting tendencies of bogies have already been mentioned. Their propensity for assuming different forms is part of the source of our problem in defining bogies and in separating out the different types of bogie. One folklore writer has said that there is nothing more uncertain than the manner in which a boggle manifests itself. “Any shape, human or animal or composite, any unaccountable noise, may be a boggle.” Animal shapes are preferred, but these range from dogs and horses to cats or even rabbits. As will be seen in the next section, this mutability can be taken to extremes.336

Formless Bogies

As will be discussed, many of the different classes of bogie are able to use magic to appear in a number of different forms, but there are some that have such anomalous manifestations, or no fixed shape at all, that they deserve separate discussion.

Cloth-Like Bogies

A bizarre but persistent feature of reports is of encounters with beings that are neither human-like nor animals. Although we have grown used to the idea of apparitions that may be lights, encounters with supernatural beings that look like rolls of cloth is extremely surprising and disorientating. Nonetheless, these cases are common enough for us to conclude that it is a genuine aspect of faery. Moreover, they have been experienced for centuries: a report from Byland, North Yorkshire, dates to before 1400 and describes the apparition of a four cornered spinning sheet.337

In Lancashire, people have often met with the Holden Rag, a boggart that resembles a scrap of white linen, hanging in a tree at Holden near Burnley. If anyone tries to remove the rag from the tree, it will shrivel up and then vanish with a flash of light. The rag may also appear as a large black dog and cause a nuisance; it can blight crops and cattle and create vexation around farmsteads. The boggart was eventually laid under a rock— “so long as a drop of water runs through Holden Clough, which has never been dry since.” At Norton near Darlington a supernatural being was seen that transformed from a white heifer to a roll of Irish linen and then into a white female figure.338

The “Picktree Brag” at Pelton in Durham has had a variety of manifestations, including four men holding up a white sheet, in which form it was considered a premonition of a death. The padfoot seen near Leeds has sometimes looked like a woolpack, which will roll on the ground before vanishing through a hedge. A female sprite found in Petty Lane, Glowrowram, near Chester-le-Street in Durham, would, if approached, collapse and spread out on the ground like a sheet or a pack of wool before disappearing. The apparition would terrify riders and milkmaids out late and could even upturn carts.339

Following people disconcertingly at night is a common bogie habit—and it’s one practiced by the cloth-like types just as much as the black dogs and horses I’ll describe in due course. Yorkshire poet Thomas Shaw described a faerie being called Will of Delph who:

“If you on errands went,

He’d catch you in the dark

And like a sheet of wool,

Come rolling close behind.”340

What is consistent in all these apparitions is the fact that they move and that they will transform as the witness watches. Other examples are even more free-ranging and exotic. The troubled ghost of Lady Howard was believed to haunt the area between Okehampton Park and Fitzford House in Devon. She ran back and forth between the two as a great black hound, a calf, a coach of bones, a greyhound, and “a woolsack full of eyes, rolling along.” At Cowley’s Corner in Oxfordshire in 1837, farmer George Andrews was riding his horse when he saw a thing looking like a woolpack that was rolling over the fields from the Corner towards a fishpond. Other people passing there had glimpsed something looking like a calf, a sheep, a naked man, and a flash of lightning.341

These bizarre entities are seen across the length and breadth of Britain. As mentioned in part 1, one of the many forms that the Highland water horse can assume is that of a tuft of wool and, you may recall from earlier, it is said that the bochdan feels like a bag of wool—shapeless and weightless—if you try to fight it.342

At Creagan in Argyllshire there are stories of something called an sac ban, the white sack, which once again seems to have been some sort of supernatural piece of material. It was said to look like a bag but to be mobile: it chased people, it could wrap itself around a person’s feet so that they tripped up and then it would get on top of them, flatten them, and kill them. In Galloway the “seckyban” was known, plainly sharing its name with the Highland version. This southern sack would roll ahead of people in the road, and any house outside which it stopped would soon experience a death. Normally the sack should be white, but a black version of the “sacbaun” or “sedgeband” has also been reported. A similar apparition was met by the grandfather of Dorset poet William Barnes when out riding: a rolling “fleece of wool” entangled itself in his horse’s legs, after which the poor animal was permanently lamed.343

Rolling Bogies

The previous paragraphs grouped together objects which observers compared to man-made materials. There have been other sightings, though, in which the fae creatures resembled more natural substances. Once, during the 1930s, a woman taking a walk on the Cornish coast encountered a creature she described (perhaps for want of an alternative) as a “pisky” that changed into “a long furry black roll, which gambolled about on the grass and then disappeared.” One day during the early 1940s, a woman out for a ramble in rural Kent saw a small furry ball rolling up a slope towards her. It briefly opened when it drew close to where she was sitting to reveal a being, whom she again labelled as a “pixie,” within—and then it disappeared. Odd as these incidents sound, they’re not wholly unknown within Faery.344

Devon pixies have been said to move around like “balls of fern or heather, swept before the wind,” and a Welsh sprite called the pwca looks like a handful of grass blowing along. A shepherd at Benderloch in Argyll saw a large bundle of ferns rolling down a hillside before falling over a waterfall and disappearing. This might have been nothing more than what it appeared to be—foliage propelled by the wind—but he knew that it was really “Black Donald,” the devil, or—we might say—a malign spirit of some description. Observers have struggled to find the right names for what they have witnessed, but given how unlike conventional pixies and faeries these beings were, I think they are better classed as “bogeys” along with the other rolling, organic apparitions.345

It isn’t just soft shapes that can come rolling at you. At Hellsgill, Nether Auchinleck, in Clydesdale, a sprite in the shape of the outer rim of a cartwheel would come bounding down the brae, heading straight for any nighttime traveller. Just as it looked to be about to collide with its victim, the wheel would vanish with an eldritch laugh. Other such Scottish “wheels” have been reported. You may recall from earlier how a fuath scared off a man on Skye who had been fishing during spawning time, against social norms, by turning into something that looked like a mill wheel. At Lag nam Bocan (Bogle’s Hollow) on South Uist, a woman saw an iron car wheel rim rolling along the road. A comparable—and equally inexplicable—incident occurred at Mynydduslwyn in Gwent: a reddish, grey object, round like a bowl, was encountered rolling back and forth across a lane. The witness believed it was a living thing, because it grew larger and smaller as it moved; he enquired what in God’s name it was, and the apparition instantly disappeared. Perhaps it’s significant that both the nuggle and the shoopiltee discussed in Chapter 5 are said to have tails resembling waterwheels.346

Amorphous Beings

If animated rolls of cloth or wagonless wheels were not alarming enough, there are supernatural entities that can take on forms even more shapeless and strange. It’s very possible that some of the references to fleeces may in fact be trying to describe these creatures.

A well-attested amorphous Scottish being is the Morag, which lives in Loch Morar near Lochaber. This creature has been described as a “huge, shapeless, dark mass”; when it surfaces on the lake it might be mistaken for a small islet. Its appearance may be a source of terror, but its primary purpose was to mark the death or departure of a member of one of the local clans, and it can, accordingly, be the cause of great distress in the neighbourhood. The Morag is unusual in that she is seen in broad daylight and by a large number of people. Another witness described a “black heap or ball slowly and deliberately rising in the water and moving along like a boat waterlogged.” It has to be admitted the other sightings portray her in far more conventional terms: for example, “the lower portions of her body are in the form of a grilse (salmon) and the upper in the form of a small woman of highly developed breasts with long flowing yellow hair.” She is, therefore, a meremaid—very beautiful but timid—and she rushes about in great distress because of the impending loss that her appearance forebodes. In contrast, a witness in 1968 described something that was lacking “eyes or anything like that. It was a snake-like head, very small compared to the size of the neck—flattish, a flat type of head. It was very dark, nearly black. It looked as if it was paddling itself along.” In this manifestation, the Morag sounds more like the plesiosaur by which the Loch Ness monster has been explained.347

There seems to be a lot of overlap between the more conventional water horses and kelpies and these shapeless bogies. Once, on the Scottish island of Raasay, a blacksmith, whose daughter had been abducted and killed by a water horse, managed to trap and kill the monster using heated irons. When he inspected the corpse of the animal afterwards, he said it resembled only grey turves or a soft mass like a jellyfish. A closely related account concerns a man from Tubernan in the Highlands who decided to catch the kelpie of Moulin na Fouah and then take his bound prize to the inn at Inveran to boast of his achievement. Equipped with a dog to help corner the beast and an iron needle and awl to help subdue it, he succeeded in his mission and led his burdened horse to the inn in triumph. However, when he arrived, the kelpie had dwindled away to nothing but a lump of jelly.348

There are related sprites in England. From Oxford, in or before 1916, comes an account of “Boneless,” a big, shapeless shadow that slips along beside and behind people in the dark, terrifying them. A later report from Somerset seems to be a very similar entity, although it resembled a white bank of fog but very concentrated. It slides and slips along the ground, engulfing people and animals in its path in an icy, damp, and stale-smelling cloud as it passes. Finally, one Lancashire boggart manifested itself as “a column of white foam, like a large sugar loaf, in the midst of a pond.”349

The culmination of these weird tendencies is another Scottish being. From Shetland, it is called simply “It.” This entity lacks any fixed form: some have described a large lump like a jellyfish, others a bag of wool, yet others an animal without legs, or a human without a head. It could move incredibly quickly, though it lacked legs or wings, and it made no sound and yet conveyed meaning to people. It seemed indestructible too: an attempt to kill and bury it apparently failed, as the entity rose up in a glowing mist and then spun off into the sea.350

Summary

All faery beings have the ability to be shape-shifters, and many of the faery beasts deploy the power as a means of tricking or trapping humans. Bogies are especially known for being able to take on new forms and for the astonishing variety of shapes they can assume. My last example (from 1883) underlines this but does not fit into any of the categories so far suggested. A Suffolk “goblin” was known for harassing (and even scaring to death) horses along a certain stretch of country road. It could look like a dog, a cat, a donkey, or another horse, but it particularly favoured appearing as a brown paper parcel.351

Land Fuathan

In part 1, I mentioned the family of terrifying beasts called fuathan. Some of these are intimately associated with rivers and bodies of water; others are not so clearly water sprites, but many of them are notable for their shape-shifting abilities so, accordingly, are described here.

Bochdan

A bochdan, whatever shape it takes, is an inherently terrifying type of fuath. This fear can be compounded by several additional factors. They may make unearthly sounds, such as the clanking of chains, horrific cries, loud whistling, or the sound of someone being throttled. They add to this effect by appearing in churchyards or at lonely fords or on isolated roads. In most cases, seeing a bochdan foretells a sudden or violent death at the location where the apparition occurs.

There are several traditional protections against bochdan and their kin. All over the Hebridean island of Eriskay regular blessings took place to protect against fuathan; for example, annual masses were held at Creag Shiant (the Faery Rock) at Baile to keep the resident goblin in check. If a person is chased by a bochdan, they should try to reach the seashore, because the “black shore” below the line of the seaweed is safe from all faeries and fae beasts. As ever, these land beasts are unable to cross flowing freshwater either. However, if you aren’t near a stream or the sea when a bochdan assails you, you may need to fend it off. The bochdan are averse to iron, as are all their kind, but it will be necessary to partly draw your knife before you meet the sprite, otherwise you’ll never be able to get it out of its sheath. If you’re asked by the sprite what it is you have on you to defend yourself, you should never name it directly: use a phrase such as “my father’s sister,” and this will guard the blade against being enchanted. Finally, you can draw a protective circle around yourself, using a stick or a knife, and pronounce the words “the cross of Christ be upon this.” This will be an insurmountable defence.352

If it comes to a fight with a bochdan, humans very often find themselves at considerable disadvantage. Their opponents seem like bags of wool, soft and insubstantial, but at the same time they can overpower a man. If you are accompanied by a female dog or horse, you may find your difficulties doubled because they will turn against their owners, the only remedy to which is to draw blood from one of the animal’s ears or to bind it with your belt.353

Brollachan

In one of its manifestations, the bochdan is nothing but a dark moving object—a shape without recognisable form that can maul men and dogs horribly. This amorphousness is the essential quality of the brollachan, a creature said to be the child of a fuath. The brollachan has eyes and a mouth but otherwise it is simply a dark mass. Because it lacks any definite form, it will try to possess animals and steal their bodies for a while. Any creature possessed by the brollachan will be recognisable because it will darken in colour and have red eyes, but the host body will soon wither and die and the possessor will need to move on. In spite of their fearsome nature, brollachans aren’t apparently very clever: the best-known story about the monster follows the “ainsel” plot. All the being could say was “me” and “you;” when a man burned it so as to keep it at a safe distance, the outraged fuath mother wanted to know who’d injured her child and was told only “me” and “you”—hearing which, she gave up seeking a culprit to punish.354

Other Land Fuathan

There are numerous other land fuathan about which relatively little is known, except that many of them are shape-shifters. Amongst them are the beithir, a snakelike being that lurked in caves and corries; the cearb or “killer,” and the fachan, a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed monster who might be armed and was (we must assume) dangerous. A relation of the fachan is the fahm of Glen Airn. This is an ugly little monster who frequents the mountain peaks in that vicinity. Perhaps fortunately, he’s only seen at daybreak, as he has an evil and dangerous nature. He can shrink his body and enlarge his head until it’s twice as big as the rest of him, and he can kill his victims by making their heads swell up and burst. Any creature that crosses the fahm’s track before sunrise is sure to die. The name fahm derives from the Gaelic famhair, meaning “giant,” a true example of which is the ferla mhor or “big grey man” who is sometimes seen—or heard—deep in the Scottish mountains.355

The direach of Glen Etive is very similar to the fahm (as, too, is the bochdan in one of its manifestations), but it can also be seen as a headless man, a billy goat, and a black dog who accompanies a traveller for part of his journey. Without doubt, part of the danger of fuathan is the fact that they can assume so many shapes—a pig, a dog, or even a length of coiled rope—so that you may never know when they are present. At the same time, it is very easy to summon them and fall into their power. In the Outer Hebrides, it was said that you should never call your dog by name after dark because then a fuath would come and would call away both the dog and its owner, who would have to follow.356

Puck

Thanks to William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Puck is probably one of the most famous faery beings in the world. In fact, by the time he appeared in the play, he was already well known within England. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, several ballads and other publications appeared, attesting the popularity of this spirit, who was also known affectionately as Robin Goodfellow. He ceased to be merely “a puck” and came to rank with other named faeries such as Oberon and Mab. Oddly, this national success seems to have come at the expense of being recalled at local level. There are now almost no folktales about him, as opposed to the “literary” records.

Puck is a bogie (his name is a variant upon “bug”), and he displays many of the traits of the bogies to be described in this chapter. For example, in the play Wily Beguiled, Robin Goodfellow claims that he plays “the Bugbeare, wheresoere I come” and in More Knaves Yet? he has huge saucer eyes, typical of many bogie beasts.357

Even more bogie-like are Puck’s habits of pranks and nuisance, mischief he often inflicts by changing shape. One Elizabethan poet rhymed about “bogges … [and] pretty little pogges, / As Monkies, Owles and Apes”358 and it is very likely that he had Robin in mind. Puck can look like different people (including a disabled beggar, soldier, old woman, tradesman, minstrel, young maid, and fiddler), or can appear like an ox, a crow, an owl, a raven, a hound, a hog, an ape, a fox, a hare, and a frog. He can also transform into inanimate objects, such as trees and stools, the better to play his tricks.359

Puck became famous precisely because of his rich and varied character. Besides his bogie-like traits, he was known to behave like a Will of the Wisp, and I examine this aspect in chapter 12. He was also recognised as a sort of hobgoblin, prepared to labour in a house or farm. In this guise, I might have included him with the “helpful boggarts” (see later, especially the story of the Levenshulme boggart who’s called Puck), but I chose instead to include him with the hardworking hobs in the last chapter.

Boggarts

“Stars are shining, moon is breet,

Boggard won’t come oot toneet.”360

Boggarts are a species of bogey universal to Lancashire and believed to live primarily in holes and caves but also to haunt dells, ponds, gates, and wells, from all of which they will only emerge at night. There is a Boggart Hole in Pendle Forest and, near to Manchester, there is the famous Boggart Hole Clough (or valley). There used to be dozens of boggarts attached to localities around the county, many with their own highly memorable names—Matty Kew, Old Moss, Thrasher, Young Grange Bump, and the Clough Spout Clogger. As this very brief list only begins to illustrate, there are many “rural boggarts” linked to localities like bridges, woods, lanes, and—most particularly—steep sided valleys with streams, but there are also “domestic boggarts” associated with old houses and mansions.361

Boggart Origins

One writer has suggested that boggarts arise from three different sources: there are those that embody the ghosts of murder victims, such as a headless boggart seen at Whitegate Lane in Blackpool; there are those that appear to be the souls of those suffering punishment for their mortal sins; and, lastly, there are those that function as banshees—warning of imminent death within certain families. Thus, the boggart of Clegg Hall near Rochdale was related to the murder of two orphan children there; even after the Hall was demolished in 1620, the angry spirit persisted—hence a saying: “It always keeps coming again, like the Clegg Hall boggart.” At Kersal Hall, the murder of the English occupier by the incoming Normans was reputed to have given rise to the boggarts, who in due course took revenge on the French usurper. A boggart in the form of a black dog at Radcliffe Tower was linked to a girl murdered there. Overall, it’s clear that many boggarts are ghosts who have acquired many of the powers of goblins.362

Appearance

Boggarts can change both their size and their shape. One seen by a boy at Frandley in Cheshire during the 1880s appeared first as a little old man but then silently swelled bigger and bigger until the boy fled in terror. This boggart kept his human shape; others may be witnessed as animals (such as the unalarming sounding group of little cats reported from Lancashire), as skeletons, or as monsters—which may include a headless woman. At Elland in West Yorkshire the boggart was called the Long Wall Mouse—a name suggestive of its appearance but not of its reputation for bringing bad luck to those who saw it. As I described earlier, the “Holden Rag” was, indeed, a piece of material. At Longridge in Lancashire, a boggart was encountered in the form of a woman carrying her own talkative head in a basket. Terrifying as this is in itself, worse was the fact that the boggart would pursue victims, hurling her head with snapping jaws after them. Luckily, as is so often the case, this particular apparition could not cross flowing water.

As this last example suggests, boggarts were often found haunting stretches of road. At Fairfield and Ashton in Lancashire the boggart assumes the shape of a woman dressed in white or black silk and glides along in front of travellers on the road before vanishing. A West Yorkshire man who joked about whether or not a companion engaged in mending a road near Todmorden had seen any boggarts was straight away felled by a heart attack. These bogies aren’t tied exclusively to highways, though: the ancient stone circle at Arbor Low in Derbyshire is also said to be frequented.363

Evil Boggarts

The majority of boggarts are unfriendly and unpleasant beings. The more malicious of these creatures will attempt to pull people down into their underground lairs, as with the boggarts of Hellen Pot and Hurtle Pot near Chapel-le-Dale, both in Yorkshire. At the Bee Hole area of Burnley there used to be a boggart who lurked in wait for solitary people. It was said to have once killed a woman there and then to have hung up her skin on a rosebush. The boggart at Horbury near Wakefield also attacks the unwary; it is hairy with glowing eyes and is reported to be icy to the touch.364

Other boggarts seem to be more likely simply to alarm travellers. For instance, at Bunting Nook in Norton outside Sheffield, a boggart haunts the place where three roads meet and has been a particular terror to children passing by there. In this guise, as I’ll describe later, the boggart very much resembles many of the supernatural black dogs that lurk along Britain’s highways.

Helpful Boggarts

Boggarts are not all bad by any means. Some will take on the labouring roles usually performed by brownies and hobs. They can work for free for humans and make them rich.

The helpful boggart at Hackensall Hall near Fleetwood in Lancashire assumed the shape of a horse, it was said, solely so that it could enjoy a warm stable and a hot fire at night. However, unlike the hobs, most labouring boggarts do not seem to have expected any sort of recompense at all; in fact, it’s said that thanking or acknowledging the boggart is just what you shouldn’t do.365

They may appear looking like large horses and, in that disguise, will work well for farmers and hauliers if they are well used by them. If they are mistreated or neglected though, the boggart will cry out loudly in complaint. At Levenshulme in Lancashire, a boggart (who is termed Puck, King of the Faeries) helped out an elderly farmer with his reaping and gleaning, but a falling out occurred between them when the man half-seriously questioned whether the boggart had tired out his best horses whilst getting in the harvest overnight. In consequence of these careless words, the crop ended up back in the fields, and the peevish boggart refused to do any more tasks in the fields. Nonetheless, Puck carried on doing the household chores until he overheard a neighbour asking the farmer whether he missed the boggart’s help with the farmwork. The man confessed he did—and invoked a blessing upon him. With a shriek, Puck abandoned the farm entirely.366

Unfortunately, it is most common for boggarts to combine both desirable and alienating qualities. The boggart of Syke Lumb farm near Blackburn was known as a very hard worker when he was content—he would milk the cows, bring in the hay, fodder the cattle, harness the horses, load carts, and stack harvested crops; when he was irritated by some casual remark or insult, he would smash the cream jugs and prevent the butter churning, interfere with stock, such as setting them loose (or even driving them to the woods), make it impossible to get hay out of the stack, upset loaded carts, and pull off bedclothes and drag hapless sleepers down the stairs.367

The boggart resident in the farm at Boggart Hole Clough, mentioned earlier, had fewer redeeming qualities than that at Syke Lumb. He undertook small domestic tasks, such as churning and scouring pots and pans, and he could be very merry, playing with the children and joining in the laughter and jollity at Christmas. Nonetheless, his interminable pranks were very wearing—he’d put buckets up chimneys and would crack table legs. He’d scare the domestic servants and worry the farmhands, frighten the children, and drive everyone to bed early to avoid him. He became more and more presumptuous, snatching the children’s bread and butter out of their hands and interfering with their porridge, milk, and other food—for example, putting spiders in the buttermilk and cinders in the bread. In the same manner, the sole occupation of the boggart at Greenside seemed to be disturbing the people in the house he shared with them: he would drum on an oak chest, shake the bed hangings, and drag off the sheets during the night. These japes were unquestionably trying, but they were not intended malevolently.368

Nuisance Boggarts

It is when domestic boggarts turn wholly against their former masters that the real problems come, and life can become miserable, if not intolerable. It’s been suggested that an angry boggart is in fact little different from the modern idea of a poltergeist. In West Yorkshire some homes were so notorious for the trouble caused by the vexed household sprite that they came to be known as “boggart houses”—quite a few of these can still be found, for example at Midgeley, Luddenden, Brighouse, Elland, and Leeds. Some “boggart chairs” are also known, stones on which the boggarts would sit outside these houses. Misbehaving boggarts seem to have caused such a nuisance in West Yorkshire that the little town of Yeadon took desperate measures—the “town book” records payments expended on boggart catchers.369

In fact, even helpful hobs might spend their leisure time elsewhere, scaring innocent travellers. There was a tradition that boggarts would disguise themselves as stones on moorland tracks, deliberately to trip up passersby. Animals, especially horses, can see them better than people, and often when they rear up unexpectedly it’s because they have “taken the boggart”—they’ve spotted one, even if it doesn’t look like a boggart to the human observer. Another trick of the beings was to shrink to the size of a flea and then to scare horses by speaking inside their ears.370

Banishing Boggarts

When boggarts become an unbearable nuisance, one solution is to “lay” them: to cast them out or imprison them in just the same manner in which a troublesome ghost might be expelled. In the county of Lancashire, the boggarts have become especially confused with ghosts, and one story from Over Darwen illustrates how the ancestors, the unsettled dead, and Faery have all merged into one: a boggart was said to haunt an ancient burial tumulus in the area and, as late as the 1860s, children passing would take off their shoes and clogs for fear of awakening the dreaded being. People who have committed suicide after love affairs, who have been murdered or executed, or whose deaths were otherwise dramatic often seem to have been prime boggart material.371

Exorcising Boggarts

Sometimes religion can be used to drive out a boggart. This may happen almost unconsciously or accidentally, as in the story of the Blackley Boggart. His pranks included souring the milk, scaring the stock, and driving off customers for the farm’s produce, and eventually the farmer decided to quit the farmhouse and move elsewhere. Then, in response to the neighbour’s enquiry about their departure, the farmer thanked God that they were leaving. This banished the boggart forever.372

The last account plays upon the common aversion that all faery beings are supposed to have for any aspect of the Christian religion. Sometimes, though, a much more formal religious rite is required to get rid of a boggart, and these cases in particular highlight the fact that the difference between boggarts and ghosts is not always very clear and that the places they frequent can often be the sites of murders or burials. The Lancashire boggart known as the Gatley Shouter seems in many respects to be a repentant ghost, who remained on earth regretting the number of the customers he had cheated during his life as a grocer. The unsettled spirit was laid by the parson with prayers, Bible passages, and a chalk circle: the sprite tried to return to the graveyard where it lurked, but the ritual was too strong for it. The boggart called “Old Scrat” at Brindle in Lancashire was a mischievous being who never did any great harm, but he was laid one day for an ill-judged prank. Old Scrat used to like to jump up onto carts and stop them; one time he did this with a hearse, and the furious vicar promptly exorcised him. The so-called “Lumb Boggart” of Bradwell in Derbyshire was exorcised by a local Baptist and cast into a pool in the form of a fish after the residents of the house it had haunted could no longer put up with its nocturnal terrors.373

Certainly, very many bogies seem to be nothing but ghosts—as with the famed Jemmy (James) Lowther of Lowther Hall in Westmorland. He had been notorious in life, and after death continued to cause a nuisance until he was laid forever under a large rock by a Catholic priest. A similar story is told of a man called Shepperd, from Appleby. He, too, was laid by a priest under a rock, but within a few decades he was reputed to have emerged from under the stone in the guise of a large white horse and to have gone into the stream nearby.374

Only the combined prayers of an entire Lancashire village managed to lay the nuisance boggart called the Gatley Shouter. At Rowley Hall in the same county prayers alone were not enough; a headstone also needed to be set up at the junction of two streams. In the north of Scotland, the only way to terminate the nuisance caused by the bogle of Auld-na-Beiste was to organise a religious service which consecrated the spot where he lurked. The ceremony was repeated annually until the bogle finally took the hint and gave up his haunting completely.375

Laying Boggarts

Exorcisms are expressly religious ceremonies. Boggarts can also be banished using magical techniques.

There are still quite a few spots identified in Britain where boggarts have been laid—for instance under a laurel tree at Hotheshall Hall near Ribchester. Milk is regularly poured on the tree roots, both for the benefit of the plant and to prolong the spell. The boggart of South Clock-House used to annoy residents by pulling off their bedclothes or by sitting unnervingly in a yew tree in the shape of a huge white-robed figure. It was eventually laid beneath that same tree.

In Written Stone Lane, Dilworth, Lancashire, there is a stone slab which measures around nine feet by two feet by one foot, upon which is inscribed “Rauffe Radcliffe laid this stone to lye for ever, AD 1655.” It’s believed that this was done to lay a boggart who had haunted the lane and scared travellers. A local farmer later decided to ignore Radcliffe’s wishes (and warning) and took the slab to use as a counter in his buttery. It took six horses several laborious hours to drag the rock to his farm and, after the stone was installed, nothing but misfortune followed. No pan or pot would ever stay upright upon it, eventually persuading the avaricious man to return the slab whence it came. It took only one horse a short while to pull the rock back, and once it was restored, the disturbances promptly ceased. In County Durham, Hob Headless, who haunted a highway, was laid under a large slab of stone for ninety-nine years and a day; rather as in the Dilworth case, it was said that the rock was not a safe place to sit. At Grislehurst in the county of Lancashire a boggart was laid in spectacular manner, in a grave under an ash and a rowan tree and along with a staked cockerel. The method didn’t work, though, as in 1857 the creature was still reported to be terrifying locals at night. Perhaps because of these partial successes there was the parallel belief that only Catholic priests could successfully lay or outwit boggarts, often by imposing impossible tasks upon them, such as spinning a rope from the sands of the River Ribble before they could be released. It’s to be observed that, despite resorting to a priest of the “old religion” in these cases, the remedies employed were not church rites but magical tricks.376

Tricking Boggarts

Notwithstanding their malign reputations, boggarts can sometimes be overcome simply by outwitting them. Quite a few of them seem to be very slow on the uptake. There is a well-known story of a farmer whose field was claimed by a boggart. They reached a settlement of their dispute whereby, in alternate years, they agreed to have what grew above and below ground. In the first year the boggart chose to take the “bottoms” of the crops—and the farmer planted wheat. In the following year, he planted turnips. Eventually, too late, it dawned upon the boggart what a bad deal he’d made, and he abandoned the farm in frustration.

Indeed, the fact that some boggarts seem to be a little slow-witted was exploited in a couple of the layings. At Holden Clough in Lancashire the boggart who’d inflicted nightly disturbances promised not to return so long as there was ivy on the trees—forgetting that it is an evergreen. A comparable trick was played at Hollin Hey Clough where the undertaking was to stay away as long as there were green leaves growing in the clough. The “hollin” of the name is a holly tree, and the valley is full of them and green all year round.377

Killing Boggarts

Laying or exorcism may not work long term, and sometimes it doesn’t even work immediately. Some bogies don’t seem to be in the least perturbed by priests and incantations. Orton, near Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland, was plagued by a bogie that took the shape of a glowing light and would harass late-night travellers. A Methodist preacher was brought in to lay the sprite, but all he seemed to achieve was to get hit on the back of his head with his own hat. Fortunately, there may be other options in such intractable cases.378

Two boggarts made a nuisance of themselves around a farm at Gorsey Bank in Shropshire, not doing any great harm but constantly disturbing the inhabitants. Worn down by this, the farmer called in the parson to lay the pair, but they couldn’t be banished. As is so often the case in these situations, the family then decided to remove itself instead. They did so but were dismayed to find that the bogeys followed them, bringing a salt box that had been left behind. In this case, rather than reach an accommodation with the sprite as is the usual outcome in these “we’re flitting too” tales, the family acted more decisively. They made up the fire, invited the two boggarts to sit before it, and plied them with beef and ale. Just when the bogies were relaxed and off guard, they were thrown into the fire and held in the flames with pitchforks until they were burned to ashes.

Despite all that’s been said, there’s some evidence that all the great effort of moving house or staging religious ceremonies would have proved unnecessary if people had been patient. Between Droylsden and East End there was a boggart who used to appear regularly in the form of a rabbit or dog, or bear. The growth of factories in the area appears to have been what banished him, as he has not been seen for nearly two hundred years now.379

Padfoots

The bogey called padfoot, which haunts the environs of the Yorkshire cities of Leeds and Wakefield, has several forms, but it always has large padding feet and moves quickly and lightly. It can appear as a beast the size of a small donkey, with black shaggy hair and eyes like saucers, and it will follow people along roads at night or waylay them in narrow places. If you try to speak to it or strike it, the bogie will have power over you and might drag you all the way home.

Sometimes the padfoot takes the form of a white dog with huge eyes but an insubstantial body. At other times, it is something larger than a sheep but with long smooth hair. Sometimes it gives a terrible howl, sometimes the padfoot is accompanied by the sounds of chains.

Seeing the padfoot might be a premonition of a death, not least because the encounter itself might prove fatal. The padfoot that haunted Horbury has been seen as a pale hound that can walk on its two hind feet; one man who found it obstructing his route tried to strike it with his stick and found that the blow passed right through the dog, which continued to sit and stare at him unnervingly. He turned and ran all the way home, but then took ill and died.

Other padfoots are reported from Staffordshire, where they are particularly linked to graves which they guard (for example at Swinscoe, Bradnop, and Ipstones); there is also some link with springs, as with the padfoot of Indefont Well at Ipstones.380

Kows

The word “kow” is completely unfamiliar to us now, but it formerly implied some sort of malicious spirit. For example, in the Scots poem “The Cursing of Sir John Rowll” maledictions are wished upon those stealing the knight’s hens and eggs. His curses include a brownie that can “play kow, Behind the claith, with mony mow”—that is, dressed up in a sheet with lots of grimacing.381 Another Scottish writer describes a woman fleeing “from a shelly-coated kow,” relating this creature to the coastal sprites who were examined in chapter 5.382

Very similar to the padfoot in its polymorphous nature is the Hedley Kow, which haunts Hedley near Ebchester. This bogie is notoriously mischievous, but it is not malignant. It might appear as a bundle of sticks lying in the road; if someone picks up the bundle of firewood, it will get heavier and heavier until they have to stop for a rest—at which point the bundle will become animated and shuffle away laughing.

The Hedley Kow would torment milkmaids on farms in various ways: it might assume the form of a cow and lead her on a chase round and round a field; when caught it would misbehave in the milking parlour, kicking over the pail and then slipping its tether and running off laughing; lastly, it might imitate the voice or the appearance of farm servants’ lovers. Amongst the kow’s other cruel pranks were giving all the cream to the cats, unravelling knitting, and breaking spinning wheels. If a man was trying to set out to fetch a midwife for his wife, the Kow would hinder him; if he was returning with the midwife, the Kow might try to make the horse bolt or buck. It has also been known to appear at farmhouse windows, tormenting the woman in labour inside, but if you go outside with a stick to drive off the prankster, you’ll end up with a beating yourself. Where a person was riding alone at night, the kow would appear just ahead of them on the road. The solitary rider would try to catch up, hoping for company in the dark, but the horse ahead would always speed up until they were racing madly across the countryside, at which point the Kow would cackle mockingly.383

Brags

Another variant on the bogie sprite is the “brag.” Four especially famous ones are known. That at Pelton in Durham, known as the Picktree Brag, has several forms. It might be encountered as a calf wearing a white scarf round its neck and with a bushy tail; however, other witnesses have met with a coach horse or a jackass that would trot along in front of them before stopping at a pond and whinnying or would try to unseat the rider into the pond. The brag has also been seen as four men holding up a white sheet and as a naked, headless man. On one occasion, its appearance marked a death.384

The Portobello Brag, which appears around Birtley in County Durham as a donkey, will also try to throw people into bogs or gorse bushes and will then gallop off, apparently celebrating its conquest and their misfortune. The Hylton Lane Brag is to be met with on the highway to Sunderland in the form of a donkey, a horse, or a woman. Its habit is simply to walk with a traveller but nothing more. Lastly, the Humbleknowe Brag is found at a farm near Sedgefield, where it will disturb the occupants either by making it sound as though all the stock have got out and are running wild or by battering against the doors and windows.385

Bocain

The bocain, baucan, or bochan of the Scottish Highlands is very like the bogies of the rest of Britain—a nuisance and a source of alarm rather than a real threat to life and health. They tend to lurk in isolated places—such as mountain roads and lonely fords.386

On the Hebridean island of Lewis one of these bogles was to be found in the hollow named after it: Lag-a’-Bhocain. This creature’s habit was to fight any travellers that passed that way, wrestling with them and throwing them down violently. Eventually it met its match, though. A man resolved to vanquish the bocain and set out deliberately to fight it, trusting in his strength and skill rather than any magical powers. His confidence was well placed, and he overcame the bogie and held it down, forcing it to speak and to tell its story, after which humiliation it was never seen again. A bocain can only speak to you if you address it first and, if you do ask it a question, it’s wise always to ask it “in the name of God.”387

So many locations were infested with bocains that the practice on Lewis was for travellers always to carry a copy of the Latin New Testament with them. This measure was considered to be a complete protection against the bogies’ assaults—as is so often the case with faery beings.388

It’s reasonable to suppose that the boodie of the Buchan district in the northeast of Scotland is another relative of the bocain and the bogie. These phantoms have been described as “something other than ghosts.” They have no fixed shape and can shift form from minute to minute, at first appearing as a cloud of black smoke, then perhaps turning into something resembling two huge wooden boards that slap together as they swell. The main and constant feature of the boodie, without doubt, is the extreme terror which it induces in witnesses.389

Barguests

Barguests (or bargheists) tend to haunt tombs and ancient burial barrows and are known by the loud and terrible cries they make. This association with ancient monuments and graves is very strong indeed. Barguests often manifest as huge chained dogs, but they’ve also been seen as donkeys, calves, and pigs. The derivation of the name is disputed; some think that it means a “borough or town ghost” but barguests are very far from being urban-only phenomena. Some interpret the name as “gate-ghost,” and it’s certainly true that most seem to be rural, and some have even been known to help with farmwork and assist with other human activities, as we shall see.390

The barguest is known for its low roar, which is widely regarded as a presage of death—as is its mere appearance in a locality. Thus, the example found at Oxwells near Wreghorn in Leeds only appears when any notable person in the community has died. It takes the form of a large black dog, the size of a donkey, with blazing eyes the size of saucers, and all the other dogs in the vicinity will follow it in a pack, barking and howling. Any person who gets in the barguest’s way on such an occasion will receive a blow with its paw that will prove fatal. A very similar barguest is known at Egton in Yorkshire, appearing just in advance of a local death. At Yaddlethorpe in Lincolnshire the barguest is believed to be associated with a spot where a staked body was found buried; at Northorpe in the same county the black dog barguest haunted the village churchyard. Curiously, though, a wizard was said to have lived nearby who would transform into a dog and then bite the cattle in the fields.391

The barguest (or ghost) that haunts Glassensikes near Darlington has taken many forms: headless men and women (some of whom vanish in flames), white and black dogs, white cats, and even rabbits. In the shape of a large black dog, often pulling chains along with its feet, it has noiselessly followed travellers along on a road and even barred their way. A man walking home at night near Grassington in Yorkshire heard chains rattling and tried to escape what he felt sure was a barguest by crossing a bridge. To his profound dismay, this particular bogie followed him over the running water and, when he got to his home, he found a large beast, bigger than a sheep, and woolly, lying across the threshold. Desperate to get inside, he raised his stick to it, but the sprite turned its eyes upon him—they were as huge as saucers with red, white, and blue rings within them that shrank to a dot in the centre. The beast only moved when the man’s wife inside the cottage came to open the door.392

Not all barguests are seen as living wholly outside human society. The one known as the Capelthwaite, that was to be found around the borders of Yorkshire and Westmorland, lived in a barn at Cappleside Hall and, although it could appear as any sort of four-legged animal, it was most often encountered as another black dog. In this shape it would assist on farms by driving in the sheep. Like many hobs and brownies, it was said to be so enthusiastic in this work that it would occasionally round up a hare as well. Whilst some farmers were favoured, most just suffered mischief from the Capelthwaite, and so it was eventually laid in the River Bela by the vicar of Beetham. A black dog known as Hairy Jack was said to live in an old barn at Grayingham in Lincolnshire too.393

In Northumberland, barguests are said particularly to favour the company of midwives. They will accompany them to the houses they have to visit, sometimes in the shape of dogs, sometimes looking like monkeys or small, deformed men. Once the midwife is inside assisting her patient with the childbirth, the barguest chatters at the window or imitates the cries of the woman in labour. In the city of Newcastle, the dog went further. If it laughed when the midwife reached her destination, she knew that all would go well; if the hound howled, she knew she would face problems.394

Not everyone can see a barguest nor, presumably, many of the other bogies I have been describing. Only those with second sight have this (mis)fortune, although anyone else who touches them at the right time will also have the horror revealed to them.395

Bugganes

The Isle of Man equivalent to the bogie or boggart is the buggane. Like many of their species, they have been described as “polymorphous creatures.” They can be encountered as a strong man with big eyes, a black monster, little stacks of hemp or corn, or sacks of chaff; they might appear as cows, pigs, dogs, or black cats—albeit ones that might suddenly swell to the size of a horse. Their main habit is to block roads to travellers, although luckily a blessing or some other holy words will dispel them.396

Even odder and more puzzling variants of the buggane are reported from around the island. In Malew parish the “Big Buggane” was once seen looking like a large man shining all over, as if he was dressed in an oilskin coat. At Grenaby, the buggane called Jimmy Squarefoot has a pig’s head and face with two large tusks and has been known to charge at passersby on the highway and even to carry off people to a cave. Another “pig buggane” menaces travellers on the highway at Lezayre. The Kione Dhoo (black head) buggane takes the form of a horse. Gob-ny-scuit gully in Maughold parish is haunted by a buggane in the shape of a man with a cat’s head and fiery eyes. This last example is an especially mischievous creature, for it likes to vex the locals. It will tear the thatch off haystacks, blow smoke back down chimneys, deposit soot in the inhabitants’ food, and push sheep over the edge of cliffs. Lastly, at Spooyt Moor in Patrick parish the buggane tends to be seen as a big black calf that crosses the road in front of a traveller with the sounds of chains being rattled and then plunges into a pool. In his human form he tried once to abduct a local girl; he threw her over his shoulder and carried her off towards his lair, which was the cave behind a nearby waterfall, but she was luckily able to cut the strings of her apron and escape his clutches.397

There was quite a strong moralistic streak in at least some of these creatures. The buggane of Glen Maye tried to throw a lazy housewife into a waterfall because she postponed her baking until after sunset. Had she not cut loose the strings of her apron to escape, she would at the very least have had an icy soaking. The buggan ny Hushtey lived in a large cave near the sea and had no liking for lazy people, it was said. Nonetheless, this work ethic was paired with a sense of pity for the less fortunate. When Poor Robin of nearby Chou Traa lost his faithful dog and a barrel full of buttermilk through a cruel prank, the buggane took care of him by bringing in the cows, lighting the fire, and boiling the kettle, ready for when he came home. The loss of his faithful companion at the same time made Robin depressed, so that he slept poorly, got up late, and fell behind with his farm tasks. Late one evening
when he was still out in the field ploughing by the light of a lantern, the buggane made the plough horse bolt through a hedge. It was found dead the next day, near to the entrance to the buggane’s cave—and this provoked the villagers into blocking the hole and then placing a stone cross there to bar the buggane’s passage.398

For all this criticism, some manifestations of the buggane were helpful to humans; there is a very clear crossover here with the dooiney-oie whom I mentioned earlier. The being that lived in Towl Buggane (the Buggane’s Hole) at Gob-ny-Scuit would shout a warning before stormy weather, enabling local farmers to get in their harvests in time. He was just as likely, though, to give these warnings when no storms were due, just to tease the locals.

The Scottish version of this sprite, the bauchan or bogan, is a slightly pleasanter character. In one story from Lochaber a farmer had a love-hate relationship with the bauchan who lived in the vicinity. They often used to fight each other, but at the same time the bauchan would gather fuel for the farm in bitter weather and helped the family move house. When the farmer had to leave his land because of the Highland clearances, the bauchan travelled with him to the United States and (in the shape of a goat) helped clear the new land he settled.399

Another bauchan was known at Morar on the mainland coast facing the Isle of Skye. It was called the colannn gun cheann or “headless body” and would waylay and maul men on their own at night—women, children, and groups of people were never assaulted. Eventually, it killed the local laird’s son, and he resolved to destroy it. He fought the creature alone. The battle raged all night until finally the bauchan was subdued; fearing the coming dawn it asked to be freed. This was allowed, on condition that it leave the district for ever.400

Bugbears

Regardless of how terrifying these creatures may have been when we first encountered them, some have lost their capacity to shock and have been demoted to “nursery sprites” whose primary function is to scare children—to get them into bed and to keep them there once they’ve been tucked in. The sprite called Mumpoker is one such, and quite a few of the boggart family have suffered this fate. Another example is the Suffolk “clim,” a sort of imp that inhabits nursery chimneys and was sometimes called down to take naughty children away.401

The “bogey-man” is now a generic phrase for such empty horrors, and “bugbear” now denotes something that’s more of a source of irritation than terror. Indeed, some groups of sprites seem to exist solely to ensure that children behave and stay safe. These include “Jack up the Orchard” from Shropshire, whose name and function scarcely need explanation and, from further north, Churn Milk Peg and Melsh Dick whose presence dissuades boys and girls from going into nut groves. From Eyemouth in Berwickshire comes mention of “the bogle in the Billy-Myre, / Wha’ kills our bairns a’.” Scaring children away from the dangerous bog has evidently become his sole function. In Yorkshire homes, Knocky Boh was a being who lived behind the wainscoting, tapping on it to terrify the infants. The last element of his name is highly significant: it takes us back to bugs and boggarts.402

This process of devaluation has been going on for a long time. By the mid-seventeenth century, “bullbeggars” had been reduced to a “mere nursery scare word,” which had no really precise meaning and simply suggested any kind of bugaboo that might terrify children. Examples of similar scare words are found in George Gascoigne’s play The Buggbears, which is a translation from Tasso dating to about 1565. He lists:

“puckes, puckerels, hob howlard, bygorn and Robin Goodfellow …

Pickhornes, hob Goblin, Rawhead, bloudiebone the ouglie,

Hagges, Buggbears and hellhoundes and Hecate the nightmare.”403

What we have here is a roster of former monsters, mostly now reduced to names for parents to conjure with—they are an undefined shape lurking in the shadows of a darkened bedroom, they are a sound in the corner of a nursery, they are something unsafe and uncertain. Other such bugbears whose identities and functions are today almost completely forgotten are scarbugs, caddies, mock beggars, bugabos, tom-pokers, snapdragons, and todlowries.

Occasionally a few scraps of information give us a better picture of the decline of these creatures into bedtime stories. Raw Head and Bloody Bones was a half-human, half-animal sprite that lived in disused coal pits in the Black Country area of Staffordshire. It was a very dangerous being, but it would from time to time emerge from the abandoned mines and go door to door at nearby cottages, begging for food and other things. By late Victorian times this monster dwindled to not much more than a name used to scare children away from the mouths of the pits.404

The Scottish equivalent of these bugbears are the bodachs in the far north of the country. They sound a little more ferocious and intimidating than their English kin, but they perform the same functions. They are consistently seen in the vicinity of places where children would be at risk: for example, the bodach an smeididh, “the beckoner,” tries to lure the unwise and the unwary into danger. The corra-loigein looks in windows at night, scaring children and trying to steal them away. This bodach can only enter a house if it is invited inside in some way; parents therefore stress how important it is for children to be very quiet after dark.405

Conclusions

Bogies, in all their forms, are a baffling species of faery beast. They are, on the whole, terrifying—but not uniformly so. Many seem to exist solely to instil horror and dread in us, but some confound this description by providing us with assistance or warnings. Most baffling of all, though, is the sheer variety of forms that bogies can take. Many will be seen as large dogs, but they can also show themselves as horses, donkeys, cows, pigs, cats, goats, pigs, rabbits, and hares. I will turn next to discuss daemon dogs and other fae animals, and it may well seem extremely difficult to determine when a faery beast ought to be classed as a “barguest,” a “black dog,” or as a fae donkey choosing to appear in canine form. Given that a supernatural hound is a supernatural hound however it’s labelled, it may not matter very much, except that there are distinct differences in temperament between the different groups. That said, I think we must trust the experience of generations. People who have had encounters with these beasts over the centuries knew when they were dealing with a brag, a padfoot, a boggart, a fuath, or a direach. It seems simplest and wisest to accept their designation—and leave it at that.

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323. Churchyard, A Handful of Gladsome Verses, 1592.

324. Walter Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: Consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads […], vol. 1 (Kelso: James Ballantyne, 1802), 181.

325. Samuel Rowlands, More Knaves Yet?, 1612.

326. Lists of British faeries are found in Scott, Discoverie of Witchcraft, book 7, chapter 15 and Michael Aislabie Denham, The Denham Tracts, vol. 2, ed. Dr. James Hardy (London: David Nutt, 1895), 77–80.

327. James Hogg, “The Wool-Gatherer,” in The Brownie of Bodsbeck; And Other Tales, vol. II (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1818), 140.

328. Harrison, Mona Miscellany, 65.

329. Nicholson, Folklore of East Yorkshire, 79; Tongue, Somerset Folklore, 121.

330. Atkinson, A Glossary, 56; Arthur H. Norway, Highways and Byways in Yorkshire (London: Macmillan, 1899), 146; Walter White, A Month in Yorkshire (London: Chapman and Hall, 1861), 104.

331. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 268.

332. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 268, 247.

333. J. B. Partridge, “Notes on Folk-lore,” in Folklore 27 (1916): 308.

334. Train, Isle of Man, vol. 2, chapter 18; Gill, A Manx Scrapbook, chapter 4—Malew; S. Morrison, “Dooinney-Oie, The Night-Man: A Manx Folk-Tale,” Folklore 23 (1912): 342; Henry Irwin Jenkinson, Jenkinson’s Practical Guide to the Isle of Man (London: Edward Stanford, 1874), 40.

335. James Hogg, “The Wool-Gatherer,” 140; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 247.

336. Jeremiah Sullivan, Cumberland & Westmorland, Ancient & Modern: The People, Dialect, Superstitions and Customs (Kendal, John Hudson, Jos. Dawson, and Jas. Robinson, 1857), 155–6.

337. Simon Young, “The Mysterious Rolling Wool Bogey,” Gramarye 8 (Winter 2015): 11, https://www.academia.edu/24973729/Young_The_Mysterious_Rolling_Wool_Bogey.

338. Longstaffe, The History and Antiquities, 15; Simon Young, “In Search of the Holden Rag,” Retrospect 35 (2017): 3–10. https://www.academia.edu/38310291/Young_In_Search_of_Holden_Rag

339. Cuthbert Sharp, comp., The Bishoprick Garland: Or, A Collection of Legends, Songs, Ballads, &c, Belonging to the County of Durham (London: Nichols, and Baldwin & Cradock, 1834), 41; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 270, 273; William Brockie, Legends & Superstitions of the County of Durham (Sunderland: B. Williams, 1886), 74–75.

340. Thomas Shaw, “Narrative of Shantooe Jest,” in Recent Poems, on Rural and Other Miscellaneous Subjects (Huddersfield: J. Lancashire, 1824), 130.

341. Elias Tozer, Devonshire & Other Original Poems; With Some Account of Ancient Customs, Superstitions, and Traditions (Exeter: Devon Weekly Times, 1873), 90; Percy Manning, “Stray Notes on Oxfordshire Folklore,” Folklore 14 (1903): 65.

342. John Campbell, More West Highland Tales, trans. John Mackay, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1940), 203; Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 181, 220.

343. Campbell, More West Highland Tales, vol. 1, 488; Trotter and Trotter, Galloway Gossip- Eighty Years Ago (1901), 231.

344. Johnson, Seeing Fairies, 28, 236.

345. Choice Notes & Queries (London: Bell and Daldy, 1859), 35; Richard John King, “The Folk-lore of Devonshire,” Fraser’s Magazine 8 (1873): 781; Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands, 303.

346. C. T. C. S., “Popular Superstitions of Clydesdale,” Edinburgh Magazine 3 (1818): 156; Campbell and Hall, Strange Things, 263; Jones, A Relation of Apparitions, 9; Goodrich-Freer, “Powers of Evil in the Outer Hebrides,” Folklore 10, 273.

347. “Morag, the Monster of Loch Morar—1,” The Carmichael Watson Project, University of Edinburgh, Blogger, December 22, 2011, http://carmichaelwatson.blogspot.com/search?q=morag; “Morag, the Monster of Loch Morar—2,” The Carmichael Watson Project, University of Edinburgh, Blogger, December 26, 2011, http://carmichaelwatson.blogspot.com/2011/12/morag-monster-of-loch-morar-2.html.

348. Campbell, More West Highland Tales, vol. 1, 209; Campbell, Popular Tales, vol. 2, 204.

349. P. P., “Folklore of Lancashire,” Choice Notes & Queries—Folklore, 188–189.

350. Briggs, Dictionary of Fairies, “It”; Saxby, Shetland Traditional Lore, chapter 9.

351. M. H. James, Bogie Tales of East Anglia (Norwich: Pawsey & Hayes, 1891), 47–48.

352. Goodrich-Freer, “The Powers of Evil in the Outer Hebrides,” Folklore 10, 261.

353. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, chapter 5.

354. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 189 (Islay), 208 (Schiehallion); Campbell, Popular Tales, vol. 2 no. 37, 203; Briggs, Dictionary of Fairy Tales, “Brollachan.”

355. James Hogg, “Night The Second,” in The Queen’s Wake: A Legendary Poem (Edinburgh: Andrew Balfour, 1815), 68.

356. Briggs, Dictionary of Fairies, “Direach”; Goodrich-Freer, “The Powers of Evil in the Outer Hebrides,” Folklore 10, 265, 273.

357. W. W. Greg, ed., Wily Beguiled, 1606, Malone Society, 1912, line 479; Rowlands, “Of Ghosts and Goblins,” in More Knaves Yet?.

358. T. Churchyard, A Handful of Gladsome Verses, 1592, first stanza.

359. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, 1; Robin Goodfellow—His Mad Pranks and Merry Jests, 1628; The Ballad of Robin Goodfellow; The Pranks of Puck; Jonson, The Devil Is an Ass, 1616, I, 1.

360. Traditional Lancashire saying.

361. Notes & Queries, series 4, vol. 5, 156.

362. William Thornber, An Historical and Descriptive Account of Blackpool and its Neighbourhood (Blackpool: Smith, 1837), 332; John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports &c, […] (London: Routledge, 1873), 11, 42, 192.

363. Choice Notes & Queries—Folklore, 188; James Bowker, Goblin Tales of Lancashire (London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1878), 131; John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, comps., Lancashire Folk-lore (London: Warne & Co., 1867), 54; John Billingsley, West Yorkshire Folk Tales (Stroud: The History Press, 2010), 41.

364. Roberts, Folklore of Yorkshire, 101; Sabine Baring-Gould, Yorkshire Oddities, Incidents, and Strange Events (London, Methuen and Co., 1900), 334.

365. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 58.

366. Bailey and England, Lancashire Folk Tales, 91; Thornber, An Historical and Descriptive, 333; Bowker, Goblin Tales of Lancashire, 52.

367. Charles Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore (Chiefly Lancashire and the North of England) […] (Manchester: Ireland & Co., 1872), 127.

368. Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, 128; Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 54.

369. Sugg, Fairies: A Dangerous History, 141–153.

370. Roberts, Folklore of Yorkshire, 98; Billingsley, West Yorkshire Folk Tales, 37–39; Bailey and England, Lancashire Folk Tales, 94.

371. Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, 141.

372. Bailey and England, Lancashire Folk Tales, 93.

373. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 54.

374. Sullivan, Cumberland & Westmorland, 159–160.

375. Bailey and England, Lancashire Folk Tales 93; Bonning, Dumfries & Galloway Folk Tales, 57; Sutherland, Folk-lore Gleanings, 93.

376. For Dilworth, see Ian, “The Written Stone, Dilworth,” Mysterious Britain & Ireland: Mysteries, Legends & the Paranormal, January 30, 2013, www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/folklore/the-written-stone-dilworth/; Hardwick, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folklore, 131; Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 56.

377. James McKay, “The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts,” Transactions of the Burnley Literary & Scientific Club 6 (1888): 113–127; Harland, Lancashire Folklore, 55.

378. Sullivan, Cumberland & Westmorland: Ancient & Modern, 162.

379. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-lore, 55.

380. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 273; W. P. Witcutt, “Notes on Staffordshire Folklore,” Folklore 52, no. 3 (1941): 126.

381. John Rowll, Sir John Rowll’s Cursing (Heir Followis the Cursing of Sr. Johne Rowlis, Upoun the Steilaris of His Fowlis) with an Introductory Note by David Laing (Aberdeen, 1822), lines 101–2.

382. Allan Ramsay, The Gentle Shepherd, Act I, scene 1, in Bell’s British Theatre, vol. 9, 1780.

383. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 270; Oliver, Rambles in Northumberland, 101.

384. Sharp, The Bishoprick Garland, 41; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 270.

385. Thomas Wilson, The Pitman’s Pay and Other Poems (Gateshead: William Douglas, 1843), 95; Brockie, Legends & Superstitions, 53–55.

386. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 220.

387. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 220; MacKenzie, The Book of Arran, 273.

388. Malcolm MacPhail, “Folklore from the Hebrides,” Folklore 7 (1896): 400, 402.

389. Milne, Myths and Superstitions, 13.

390. John Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, vol. 1 (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1872), 376.

391. Thomas Parkinson, Yorkshire Legends and Traditions, as Told by Her Ancient Chroniclers, Her Poets, and Journalists (London: Elliott Stock, 1888), 139; Sullivan, Cumberland & Westmorland, Ancient & Modern, 157; Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 275; County Folk-lore 5, 52, 54.

392. Parkinson, Yorkshire Legends and Traditions, 127, 131; Longstaffe, The History and Antiquities, 13–14; William Hone, The Every-day Book and Table Book […], vol. 3 (London: William Tegg, 1878), 655.

393. Henderson, Notes on the Folk-lore, 275; County Folklore 5, 53.

394. Oliver, Rambles in Northumberland, 98.

395. James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words […] (London: John Russell Smith, 1865), n.p.

396. Roeder, Manx Folk-Tales, part 1, 28.

397. Gill, A Manx Scrapbook, chapter 4; Gill, A Third Manx Scrapbook, chapter 3; Douglas, “Restoring to Use Our,” 21.

398. S. Morrison, “The buggane ny hushtey—a Manx Folktale,” Folklore 34 (1923): 349.

399. Campbell, Popular Tales, 1860, vol. 2, 91.

400. Briggs, Dictionary of Fairies, 79; see, too, the version in Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 191.

401. County Folk-lore 3, 85.

402. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-lore, 198; George Henderson, The Popular Rhymes, Sayings, and Proverbs of the County of Berwick; With Illustrative Notes (Newcastle-on-Tyne: W. S. Crow, 1856), 2–3.

403. Henk Dragstra, “‘Bull-beggar’: An Early Modern Scare-Word,” in Airy Nothings: Imagining the Otherworld of Faerie from the Middle Ages to the Age of Reason […], Karin E. Olsen and Jan R. Veenstra, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 192; Gascoigne, The Buggbears, in Richard Warwick Bond, ed., Early Plays from the Italian: Edited, With Essay, Introductions and Notes by R. Warwick Bond (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 84–157, act 3, lines 57, 70.

404. Charlotte Sophia Burne, “Staffordshire Folk and Their Lore,” Folklore 7 (1896): 371.

405. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight, 187.