Afanc - (Welsh Rhy, Celtic Folklore.) A Welsh
water demon who haunted a pool in the river Conway, and dragged down all
living things into its depth. He was at length captured through the
treachery of a girl whom he loved, and dragged ashore by oxen. The
Deluge in Welsh folk-lore is connected with a monstrous crocodile called
Afanc i Llyn
Banshee - The banshee is known both in Ireland and
Scotland. In Scotland she is sometimes called the Little Washer at the
Ford, or the Little Washer of Sorrow. She can be heard wailing by the
riverside as she washes the clothes of the man destined for death. If a
mortal can seize and hold her, she must tell the name of the doomed man,
and also grant three wishes. She is no beauty, for she has only one
nostril, a large, starting out front tooth and web feet. The Irish
banshee only wails for the members of the death of someone very great or
holy. The banshee has long, streaming hair and a grey cloak over a green
dress. Her eyes are fiery red from continually weeping. In the Highlands
of Scotland the word Banshi means only a fairy Woman and is chiefly
used for the fairies who marry mortals.
Baobhan Sith - (Highland. D. Mackenzie, Scottish Folk Lore and Folk
Life.) Malignant, blood-sucking spirits, who sometimes appeared as
hoodie crows or ravens, but generally as beautiful girls, with long.
trailing, green dresses hiding their deer's hooves.
Barguest - (Yorkshire. Henderson.) A creature of something the
same kind as the bogy beast. It sometimes appears in a human
form, but generally as an animal. In the fishing villages, a
barguest funeral is the presage of death. the barguest in
whatever form has eyes like burning coals; it has generally
claws, horns and a tail, and is girdled with a clanking chain.
Billy Blind - (F. Child, English and Scottish Ballads (New York,
1957), Vol. l.) A friendly domestic spirit of the Border Country,
chiefly mentioned in ballads. He wears a bandage over his eyes. Auld
Hoodie and Robin Hood are perhaps only different names for the same
spirit. Billy Blind's chief function seems to be to give good advice. It
was he who advised and helped Burd Isobel in the Ballad of Young
Bekie, and it was the Billy Blind whose advice cured the young wife
bewitched by her mother-in-law.
Black Annis - (Leicestershire. C. J. Billson, Country Folk Lore,
Leicestershire.) A malignant hag with a blue face and only one eye,
very like the Cailleach Bheur in character. Her cave was in the Dane
Hills, but has been filled up. She devoured lambs and young children.
Black Dogs - The black dog is large - about the size of a young calf -
black and shaggy, with fiery eyes. It does no harm if left alone; but
anyone who speaks to it or touches it is struck senseless and dies soon
thereafter. There are stories of the black dog from all over the
country. One haunted the guard-room of Peel castle in Man. There are
stories about it in Buckinghamshire. Hertford, Cambridge, Suffolk,
Lancashire, Dorset, and Devon. There is a very good and full account of
black dogs in English Fairy and Folk Tales. In the seventeenth
century a pamphlet of Luke Hulton's described and attempted to explain
the Black Dog of Newgate.
Blue Men of the Minch - (Highland. D. Mackenzie, Scottish Folk Lore
and Folk Life.) These men belong to the Minch, and particularly
haunt the strait between Long Island and the Shiant Islands. They are a
malignant kind of mermen, but they are blue all over. They come swimming
out to seize and wreck ships that enter the strait; but a ready tongue,
and particularly a facility in rhyming, will baffle them. They have no
power over the captain who can answer them quickly and keep the last
word. Beyond their activities as wreckers they conjure up storms by
their restlessness. The weather is only fine when they are asleep. The
islanders think they are fallen angels like the fairies and the Merry
Dancers, as the Aurora Borealis is called there.
Bodach - (Highland. J. G. Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in
the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.) The Scottish form of a
Bugbear or Bug-a-boo. He comes down the chimney to fetch naughty
children.
Boggart - A North Country Spirit. (Henderson, Folklore of the
Northern Counties.) He is like a mischievous type of brownie. He is
exactly the same as the poltergeist in his activities and habits.
Bogle - The Scottish version of the Yorkshire boggart, though perhaps
less exclusively domestic in his habits.
Bogy beast - A general name boggarts, brashes, grants, and mischievous
spirits. Widely distributed.
Brash - See Skriker
Brollochan - (J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the Western Highlands.)
Brollochan is Gaelic for a shapeless thing. and it probably something
like Reginald Scot's Boneless. There is a story of one, the child of a
Fuath, told by Campbell. It is something the same plot as Ainsel.
Brownie - The best known of the industrious domestic hobgoblins. The
brownie's land is over all the North of England and up into the
highlands of Scotland. The brownie is small, ragged and shaggy. Some say
he has a nose so small as to be hardly more than two nostrils. He is
willing to do all odd jobs about a house, but sometimes he untidies what
he has been left to tidy. There are several stories of brownies riding
to fetch the nurse for their mistress. The brownie can accept no
payment, and the surest way to drive him away is to leave him a suit of
clothes. Bread and milk and other dainties can be left unobtrusively,
but even they must not be openly offered. The Cornish Browney is of the
same nature. His special office is to get the bees to settle. When the
bees swarm the housewife beats a tin, and calls out: 'Browney! Browney!'
until the brownie comes invisibly to take charge.
Brown Men of the Muirs - (Border Country. Henderson, Folklore of the
Northern Counties.) A sprite of the moors, who guards the wild life,
but is malignant and dangerous to man.
Buccas or Knockers - (Cornish. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of
England.) These are the spirits of the mines, something like the
German Kobolds. They are said to be the spirits of the Jews who once
worked the tin mines, and who are not allowed to rest because of their
wicked practices. They are, however, friendly to the miners, and knock
to warn them of disaster, and also show what seams are likely to be
profitable.
Bug-a-boo, Bugbear, Boggle-bo - There is a great variety of names for
this bogle, which is generally used to frighten children into good
behaviour.
Bwbachod - The Welsh Brownie People. (W. Sikes, British Goblins (London
1880).) They are friendly and industrious, but they dislike dissenters
and teetotalers. Sikes gives an amusing story of a bwbach and his
quarrel with a Methodist minister.
Cailleach Bheur - (The Blue Hag.)
(Highland. D. Mackenzie, Scottish Folk Lore and Folk Life.) A
giant hag who seems to typify winter, for she goes about smiting the
earth with her staff so that it grows hard. When spring comes and she is
conquered, she flings her staff in disgust into a whin bush or under a
holly tree, where grass never grows. She is the patroness of deer and
wild boars. Many hills are associated with her, particularly Ben Nevis
and Schiehallion. Her general appearance is terrible and hideous, but in
some stories she changes at times into a beautiful maiden. There is a
version of the Wife of Bath's Tale told of her, and she is also the
villainess of a story rather like Nix Nought Nothing. At times she turns
into a sea serpent. Particulars are given of her Mackenzie's Scottish
Folk Lore and Folk Life and she is mentioned in Campbell's Tales
of the Western Highlands.
Cauld Lad of Hilton - A brownie haunting Hilton Castle who is definitely
described as a ghost, and yet was laid, as brownies are always laid, by
the present of a cloak and hood.
Ca Sith - (The Fairy Dog.) (Highland.) This is a great dog, as large as
a bullock with a dark green coat. He is very like the English Black
Dog.
Cluricane - (Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the
South of Ireland.) Another name for the leprechaun.
Daoine Sidhe - (Irish.) These are the Heroic
Fairies of Ireland, very like the Highland Sleeth Ma. May Eve - Beltane
- and November Eve - Samhain - are their great festivals. On Beltane
they revel, and - the door being open from fairyland to the mortal world
that night - they often steal away beautiful mortals as their brides. On
Samhain they dance with the ghosts. They live under the fairy hills,
offerings of milk are set out for them, and in all ways they partake of
the fairy nature. Some say that they are the fallen angels who were too
good for hell and some say that they are the remnants of the heroic
Daanan race.
Devil's Dandy Dogs - (Cornish, Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of
England.) A pack of black hounds, fire-breathing and with fiery
eyes, which the devil leads over lonely moors on tempestuous nights.
They will tear any living man to pieces but they can be held off by the
power of prayer.
Dobie - (Border Country. Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties.) A rather clownish and foolish brownie. The dobie is
sometimes invoked as the guardian of hidden treasure; but those who can
get him prefer the cannier brownie as less likely to be outwitted.
Ghosts are called dobies in Yorkshire.
Dracae - Water spirits. (English. Gervase of Tilbury.) It was their
custom to entice women to the water by appearing as wooden dishes
floating down the stream. When a woman took hold of one it would resume
its proper shape and drag her down into the water to nurse its children.
Gervase of Tilbury tells a story of the Dracae and a magic ointment
which is very like the Somerset story of the Fairy Midwife.
Elves - The Anglo-Saxon word for spirits of any
kind, which later became specialized creatures very like the
Scandinavian light elves. Sir Walter Scott, in his Demonology and
Witchcraft, describes elves as 'Sprites of a coarser sort, more
laborious vocation and more malignant temper and in all respects less
propitious to humanity than the Fairies'. This, however, applies only to
Scottish elves, and the little Scandinavians light elves who looked
after flowers, and whose chief faults were mischief and volatility, fit
the general conception better. In Orkney and Shetland flint arrow-heads
are called elf shot, and are said to be fired by the trows, so that trow
and elf seem synonymous terms with them.
Fetch - A common term for a double or wraith. When
seen by daylight it portends no harm, but at night is is a certain death
portent.
Fuath - (Highland. J. G. Campbell, etc.) The general name for a Nature
spirit, often a water fairy and malignant. Urisks were sometimes called
Fuaths. The Brollachan was the child of a Fuath.
Gabriel Ratchets - (Northern Counties. E.
M. Wright, Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore.) The Gabriel Ratchets are
like the Wisht Hounds except that they hunt high in the air. and can be
heard yelping overhead on stormy nights. To hear them is a presage of
death. Some say that they are the souls of unchristened children, who
can find no rest.
Ganconer or Gacanagh - (The Love-Talker.) (Irish. E. M. Wright, Rustic
Speech and Folklore.) The Love-Talker strolls along lonely valleys
with a pipe in his mouth, and makes love to young girls, who afterwards
pine and die for him. In a story quoted in Irish Fairy and Folk Tales the
Ganconers appear in mumbers, live in a city under a lough, hurl and play
together, and steal human cattle, leaving only a stock behind, just like
ordinary trooping fairies.
Glaistig - (Highland. D. Mackenzie, Scottish Folk-Lore and Folk Life.)
The Glaistig is a female fairy, generally half-woman, half-goat, but
sometimes described as a little, stout woman, clothed ion green. She is
a spirit of mixed characteristics, and seems, indeed, to be all fairies
in little. She is supposed to be fond of children and the guardian of
domestic animals. Milk is poured out to her, and she does something of a
brownie's work about the house. She is specially kind, too, to old
people and the feeble-minded. On the other hand she has darker
qualities; there are stories of her misleading and slaying travellers.
If the traveller named the weapon he had against her she could make it
powerless; but if he only described it he could overcome her. The
Glaistig seems partly a water spirit. She might often be seen sitting by
a stream, where she would beg to be carried across. She could be caught
and set to work something like a kelpie.
Grant - (English.) A demon, mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis, very like
the Picktree Brag. He is a yearling colt in shape, but goes on his hind
legs and has fiery eyes. He is a town spirit, and runs down the middle
of the street at midday or just after sundown, so that all the dogs run
out barking. His appearance is a warning of danger. Some people connect
him with Grendel, whom Beowulf killed; but Grendel was a sea monster.
Gwragedd Annwm - (Welsh. Sikes, British Goblins.) Lake maidens,
not unlike Malory's Lady of the Lake. They are beautiful, and not so
dangerous as the mermaids and nixies. They often wedded mortals.
Habitrot - (Scottish Border. Henderson, Folk-Lore
of the Northern Counties.) The Spinning-Wheel Fairy. A shirt made by
a Habitrot was considered effacious against illness. Habitrot, though
very ugly, was friendly to mankind.
Hedley Kow - (Northumbrian. Henderson. Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties.) A kind of bogy beast that haunted the village of of
Hedley. Its great amusement was to transform itself into one shape after
another so as to bewilder whoever picked it up; but, like most spirits
of its kind, it was fond of turning itself into a horse. Once it assumed
the likeness of a pair of young girls, and led two young men into a bog.
It is rare for a spirit to be able to make a double appearance.
Hob or Hobthruth - (Yorkshire and Durham. Henderson. Folk-Lore of the
Northern Counties.) A brownie with most of the usual brownie
characteristics, but a specialist in whooping cough. Children with
whooping cough used to be brought to Hobhole in Brunswick Bay to be
cured by Hob. The parents would call; 'Hobhole Hob! Hobhole Hob! My
bairn's got kincough. Tak't off! Tak't off!' Like other brownies he is
driven away by a present of clothes.
Jenny Greenteeth - (Lancashire.
Henderson. Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties.) A malignant water
fairy. She drags people down into the water and drowns them. Her
presence is indicated by a green scum on the water.
Kelpie - (Scottish.) A malignant water spirit,
which is generally seen in the form of a young horse, but sometimes
appears like a handsome young man. A kelpie's great object is to induce
mortals to mount on its back and plunge with them into deep water, where
it devours them. A man who can throw a bridle over the kelpie's head,
however, has it in his power, and can force it to work for him.
Mara - An old English name for a demon, which
survives with us in Night-mare and Mare's Nest. In
Anglo-Saxon the echo was called the Wood-Mare. In Wales at
Twelfth Night the boys used to carry round a horse's skull decked with
ribbons, which they called Mari Lwyd.
Maug Moulach or Hairy Meg - (Highland. Grant Stewart, Highland
Superstitions and Amusements.) A spirit something between a brownie
and a banshee. She haunts the Tullochgorm and gives warning of the
approaching death of any of the Grants. She also does brownie work. Maug
Vulucht, a spirit very like her, once haunted a Highland household with
a companion Brownie Clod.
Mermaid - The mermaid is a much more sinister character than the mild
roane, though harmless mermaids have been known. Her appearance and
habits are well known to everyone from Scotland to Cornwall. It was
considered a certain type of omen of shipwreck for a ship to sight a
mermaid. The mermaids sometimes penetrated into rivers and sea lochs as
the story of the Mermaid of Knockdolian shows. In Suffolk,
indeed, they are said to haunt ponds as well as rivers. Like many other
fairies the mermaids have a great desire for human children. In the
folk-lore of a good many countries the mermaids and other water fairies
are supposed to be very anxious to gain a human soul. Their lives are
long, but when they die they perish utterly.
Merrows - (Crofton Croker, Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South
of Ireland.) The merrows are the Irish mer-people. Like the roane
they live on dry land and under the sea, and need an enchantment to make
them able to pass through the water. The merrows' charm lies in their
red caps. The merrows' women are very beautiful, but the men have long
red noses, green teeth and hair and short finny arms.
Muryans - (Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England.) The
muryans are the dwindling fairies of Cornwall. Long ago they were of
more than human size, but for some crime they committed they were
condemned to dwindle year by year, til they turned into ants and so
perished.
Nuckelavee - (Scottish. Scottish Fairy Tales
and Folk Tales.) A horrible monster who came out of the sea,
half-man and half-horse, with a breath like pestilence and no skin on
its body. The only security from it was that it could not face running
water.
Old Lady of the Elder Tree -
(Lincolnshire. County Folk-Lore, Lincolnshire.) A tree spirit
rather like Hans Anderson's Elder Flower Mother.
Padfoot - (Yorkshire. Henderson. Folk-Lore of
the Northern Counties.) A demon dog that haunts lonely lanes near
Leeds.
Peg o'Nell - (Mrs. Gutch, County Folk-Lore, North Riding of Yorkshire.)
The Spirit of the Ribble. She is said to be the ghost of a servant girl
from Waddow Hall who was drowned in the river. She is supposed to demand
a life every seven years.
Peg Powler - (County Folk-Lore, North Riding of Yorkshire.) The
Spirit of the Tees. She has long green hair, and is insatiable for human
life. The frothy foam on the high reaches of the Tees is called Peg
Powler's suds.
People of Peace - (Tales of the Western Highlands.) This is the
Highland name for the fairies, corresponding to the Lowland "Good
Neighbours". They are much like them in character. Campbell's story of
the Woman of Peace and the Kettle is characteristic.
Picktree Brag - (Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties.)
This is a Durham version of the bogy beast. It appears in various forms,
sometimes as a horse, sometimes as a calf or dick ass, sometimes as a
naked man without a head. It plays all the usual tricks of the bogy
beast.
Pixies or Pisgies - (Devonshire and Cornwall.) These are small trooping
fairies of which many stories are told by Hunt and Mrs. Bray. There are
occasional stories of the brownie type told of them. The white moths
that come out in twilight are called pisgies in parts of Cornwall, and
are regarded by some as fairies and by others departed souls. In parts,
too, they say that pixies are the spirits of unbaptized children.
Pooka or Phooka - (Irish.) The Irish Puck is in many ways like the
Dunnie or Brag. He is in appearance like a wild, shaggy colt, hung with
chains. He generally haunts wild places, but in one story, though still
keeping his animal form, he works like a brownie, and is stopped in his
career of usefulness in the same way by the present of a coat. In this
story, like the Cauld Lad, he is said to be the ghost of a servant.
Portunes - (English.) These are a strange kind of fairy reported by
Gervase of Tilbury and not surviving in any modern folklore. They came
in troops into farmhouses at night, and, after working, rested
themselves at the fire and cooked frogs for their supper. They were very
tiny, with wrinkled faces and patched coats. It was their nature to do
good, not harm. Their only mischievous trick was that of misleading
horsemen.
Pwca - (Welsh. Sikes. British Goblins.) The Welsh Puck is much
the same character as in England and Ireland. He likes his nightly bowl
of milk, but does not seem to work for it as the bwbachod do. He is
specially fond of misleading night wanderers.
Rawhead and Bloody Bones -
(Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire. County Folk-Lore.) A
malignant pond spirit who dragged children down into ponds and old marl
pits. Sometimes called Tommy Rawhead.
Redcap - (Border Country. Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties.) A malignant spirit who haunts old peel towers and places
where deeds of violence have been done. He is like a squat old man. with
grim, long nailed hands and a red cap, dyed in blood. It is dangerous to
try and sleep in any ruined castle that he haunts, for if he can he will
re-dip his cap in human blood. He can driven off by words of Scripture
or the sight of a cross-handled sword. In other places he is less
sinister. There is, for instance, a redcap who haunts Grandtully Castle
in Pertshire, who is rather lucky than unlucky.
Roane - (The Highland mermen. Grant Stewart, Highland Superstitions
and Amusements.) These mermen are distinguished from others by
travelling through the sea in the form of seals. In the depths of the
sea caves they come to air again, and there, and on land, they cast off
the seal skins which are necessary to carry them through water. The
roane are peculiarly mild un-revengeful fairies of deep domestic
affections, as the stories of Fisherman and the Merman and the Seal
Catcher's Adventure show. The Shetlanders call the roane sea trows,
but their character is substantially the same.
Seely Court - (Lowland Scots.) Seely means
blessed, and this name stands for the comparatively virtuous heroic
fairies. The malignant fairies and demons were sometimes called the
Unseely Court.
Silky - (Northern Counties. Henderson, Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties.) A name for a white lady. The Silky of Black Heddon in
Norhtumberland had one close resemblance to a brownie. If she found
things below stairs untidy at night she would tidy them, but if they had
been tidied she flung them about. She was dressed in dazzling silks, and
went about near the house, swinging herself in her Silky's Chair - the
crossed branches of an old tree which overhangs a waterfall - riding
sometimes behind horsemen or stopping them by standing in front of their
horses. But on the whole she belonged more to the class of ghosts than
of brownies, for she was laid by the discovery of treasure, which must
have been troubling her.
Skriker - (Yorkshire and Lancashire. Hartland, English Fairy and Folk
Tales.) A death portent. Sometimes it is called a brash, from the
padding on its feet. It sometimes wanders invisibly in the woods, giving
fearful shrieks, and at others it takes the form of like Padfoot, a
large dog with huge feet and saucer eyes.
Spriggans - (Cornish. Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England.)
Some say the Spriggans are the ghosts of the giants. They haunt old
cromlechs and standing stones and guard their buried treasure. They are
grotesque in shape, with the power of swelling from small intro
monstrous size. For all commotion and disturbances in the air,
mysterious destruction of buildings or cattle, loss of children or
substitution of changelings, the spriggans may be blamed.
Tom Tit Tot - (Suffolk.) The English
Rumplestiskin. He is described as a black thing with a long tail, and
sometimes as animpet. Tom-Tit, or Tut or a Tut-gut is a Lincolnshire
name for a hobgoblin.
Trwtyn-Tratyn - The Welsh Tom Tit Tot. (Clodd, Tom Tit Tot.)
Tylwyth Teg, or Fair Family - (Welsh.) It is difficult to get a clear
picture of the Tylwyth Teg. The name is very much used and for differing
types of fairies. They are sometimes described as of mortal or more than
mortal size, dressed chiefly in white. They live on an invisible island;
they ride about and reward cleanliness with gifts of money; they dance
in fairy rings, and mortals joining them are made invisible and carried
off forever, unless they are rescued before cockcrow. Others wear rayed
clothes of green and yellow, are small and thieving, particularly of
milk and children. Unlike many fairies the Tylwyth Teg are golden haired
and will only show themselves to fair-haired people. The usual brownie
story is also told about them. They are very friendly with goats whose
beards they comb on Thursdays.
Urisk - (Highland. Grahame, Picturesque
Descriptions of Perthshire, G. Henderson, The Norse Influence in
Celtic Scotland, etc.) A kind of rough brownie, half-human and
half-goat, very lucky to have about the house, who herded cattle and
worked on farms. He haunted lonely waterfalls, but would often crave
human company, and follow terrified travellers at night, with out,
however, doing them any harm. The Urisks lived solitary in recesses of
the hills, but they would meet at stated times for solemn assemblies; a
corrie near Loch Katrine was their favorite meeting place.
Werewolves - The earlier attitude to the
werewolf is more tolerant than that towards the loup-garou in
seventeenth century France. Giraldus Cambrensis has a story of a priest
called to shrive a dying woman in wolf form. It was thought in Ireland
to be a curse that might fall on any man for a certain number of years.
In the medieval romance of William and the Werewolf the wolf is a
good character, and the victim of enchantment.
Whuppity Stoorie - (Scottish. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland.)
The name is apparently taken from the circular scud of dust upon which
fairies are supposed to ride. It was the name of a Scottish Tom Tit Tot
fairy, and also of the fairy on one version of the Habitrot story.
Will o' the Wisp - This is the commonest of the many popular names for
the ignis fatuus. It is sometimes described as the soul of a
wicked man, but more generally as a kind of pixy.