Ghosts Never Appear on Christmas Eve
Ghosts Never Appear on Christmas Eve
...dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits...
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From 1846 until his death in 1859, a Yorkshireman named Michael Aislabie Denham published fifty-four pamphlets—later republished in two volumes and titled The Denham Tracts—in which he had collated hundreds of his favourite pieces of folklore. In one of those slim booklets, in a section titled ‘Ghosts Never Appear on Christmas Eve,’ could be found this wonderful list: approximately two hundred types of supernatural beings, all of which, Denham announced, had once roamed the earth.
Note: All but the first of the footnotes are taken from the original text.
Ghosts Never Appear on Christmas Eve
So says the immortal Shakespeare; and the truth thereof few now-a-days, I hope, will call in question. Grose1 observes, too, that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact. What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles2, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies3, bugbears, black dogs, spectres, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests4, Robin-Goodfellows5, hags6, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hob-goblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies7, hob-thrusts8, fetches9, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars10, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubusses, spoorns, men-in- the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tails, knockers, elves11, raw- heads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees12, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprats, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes13, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yett-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag- foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraithes14, waffs15, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers16, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gally-beggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars’ lanthorns, silkies17, cauld-lads18, death-hearses, goblins19, hob-headlesses20, buggaboes, kowes21, or cowes, nickies, nacks, waiths22, miffies, buckles, gholes, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins, pigmies, chittifaces, nixies23, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers24, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men25, cowies, dunnies26, wirrikows27, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricanns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles, korigans, sjlvans, succubuses, black-men, shadows, banshees, lian-banshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles28, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sybils, nick-nevins29, whitewomen, fairies30, thrummy-caps31, cutties32, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its spectre, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and cross-roads, were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!
Francis Grose. Lexicographer responsible for A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) and A Provincial Glossary, with a Collection of Local Proverbs, and Popular Superstitions (1787).
Boggle-house, parish of Sedefield. Bellinham Boggle-Hole, Northd.
There is also a river of this name in the Bishopric of Durham. Also at York is Browney Dike, a portion of the Foss.
The York Barguest. See Memoirs of R. Surtes. Esa.: new ed., p. 80, 1852.
This merry fay acted the part of fool or jester, at the court of Oberon, the fairy monarch.
Hag-House. A farmstead near Braneepeth.
The Mortham Dobby. A Teesdale goblin.
Hob-o-t'-Hursts, i.e. spirit of the woods. Hobthrush Rook, Farndale, Yorkshire.
The spirit or double of a dying person.
Mock-beggar Hall. Of houses, rocks, etc., bearing this name we meet with many instances.
Elf-Hills, a parish of Hutton-in-the-Forest, Cumberland. Elf-How, a parish of Kendal. Elf-Hills, near Cambo.
There is a village of this name near Chester-le-Street; and singular enough a ghost story, called the "Picktree Bragg," is attached to it. See Keightley's Fairy Mythology, Bohn's ed. p. 310.
The same as note 8.
The same as note 8.
The same as note 8.
This oulde ladye is the evil goddess of the Tees. I also meet with a Nanny Powler, at Darlington, who from the identity of their sirnames, is, I judge, a sister, or it may be a daughter of Peg's. Nanny Powler, aforesaid, haunts the Skerne, a tributary of the Tees.
The Heddon Silky, and Silky's Brig, near Heddon. See Richardson's Table Book, Leg. Div., vol. ii., p. 181.
Occasionally, we may hear Cowed, or rather Cowd Lad. The meaning, however, is the same; Cowd being a variation of the more refined world, cold.
Goblin Field, near Mold, Flintshire.
Hob-Cross-Hill. A place near Doncaster.
"The Hedly Kow," a Northumberland ghost story.
The same as note 8.
"Know you the nixies, gay and fair?
Their eyes are black, and green their hair,
They lurk in sedgy waters."
Keightley.
The same as note 8.
See ghost story of the "Brown Man of the Moor." Richardson's Table Book.
The Hazelrigg Dunny. An excellent Northumberland ghost story.
"Frae gudame's mouth auld warld tale they hear,
O' warlocks louping round the wirriknow."
The same as note 8.
Mother witches.
Fairy Dean, two miles above Melrose. Fairy Stone, near Fourstones, in the parish of Warden, Northumberland. This stone, in which a secret cavity, has attained a celebrity in history owing to the letters being placed therein, to and from the unfortunate Earl of Derwentwater, during the '15.
Thrummy Hills, near Catterick. The name of this sprite is met with in the Fairy tales of Northumblerand.
These are a certain class of female Boggles, not altogether peculiar to Scotland, who wore the lower robes, at least, a-la-bloomer. The are named by Burns, in his inimitable poem Tam-o'-Shanter. Mr. Halliwell gives the word as localized in Somersetshire.