Fairy List

Extracted from Hedersons Books

Bogles

" At Dalton, near Thirsk," writes Mr. Baring-Gould, " is an old barn, which is haunted by a headless woman. One night a tramp went into it to sleep. At midnight he was awakened by a light, and sitting up he saw a woman coming towards him from the end of the barn, holding her head in her hands like a lantern, with light streaming out of the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. He sprang out of the barn in a fright, breaking a hole in the wall to escape. This hole I was shown six years ago. Whether the barn still stands I cannot say." there were plenty of ghosts or bogles about the village of Melsonby, a district with which he used to be well acquainted. A well there, called the Lady Well, was haunted by a lady without a head, and Berry Well by a bogle in the form of a white goose. Not far off was a conical hill, called Diddersley Hill, on Gatherley Moor, where an old farmer declares the fairies used to dance in his young days. And near this hill an arch spanned the road, not of any great antiquity, certainly; still a mounted horseman was to be seen upon it in the early morning light, to
the great terror of the farmers' lads who had to pass beneath, starting before dawn with carts for coals into " Bishoprig," i. e. the county of Durham.


I do not find that in Yorkshire 'the Bogle bears the peculiar character of a minister of retribution here assigned him. At least the following story, communicated by Mr. Eobinson, does not represent him in exactly that light. In a village in Arkingarthdale a house had long been haunted by a Bogle, and various means had been resorted to in order to drive him out. At last the owner adopted the following plan. Opening his Bible he placed it on a table with a lighted candle and said aloud to the
Bogle, " Noo, thoo can read or dance, or dea as ta likes." He then turned round and walked up stairs. The Bogle, in the form of a grey cat, flew past him and vanished into the air. Years passed without its being seen again. However one day as the man was going to work the thing met him on the stairs. He turned back, told his mother of the apparition, went out again, and was killed that day in the mines. A Bogle, or some- thing akin to one, appears however in the following narration as the protector of a poor widow. At the village of Hurst, near Eeeth, lived a widow who had been wronged out of some candles by a neighbour. This neighbour saw one night a figure
in his garden, so he brought out his gun and fired it, on which the figure vanished. The next night while he was in an outhouse the figure appeared in the doorway and said, " I'm neither bone, nor fl.esh, nor blood, thou canst not harm me. Give back the. candles, but I must take something from thee." So saying he pulled an eyelash from the thief's eyelid and vanished. The candles were promptly restored the next morning, but the thief " twinkled " ever after.