Folklore of Yorkshire (18 page)

Julian Park near Goathland, haunt of the terrifying guytrash. (Kai Roberts)

With this accomplished, they retreated to a safe distance and kept watch as midnight drew near. Sure enough, the guytrash soon came prowling round and disappeared into the pit to inspect the ‘corpse’. Only moments thereafter, the ghostly maiden appeared. She bore her spindle as ever, but this time she did not wail and her face bore a look of calm satisfaction. Upon reaching the pit, she began to weave her thread across it and as she did so the guytrash let out a terrible howl, but could not escape. Finally, the walls of the pit collapsed inwards, imprisoning the fiend forever, and the spinning phantom just melted away.

It seems this narrative may have been devised at a relatively late date to tie together two unconnected legends around Goathland – the unusual spinning ‘white lady’ apparition and the relatively traditional guytrash, both of which were already regarded as portents of tragedy – and provide them with a satisfactory origin story, something often lacked by such traditions. The tale also accounts for an anomalous landscape feature in that area known as the Killing Pits, now thought by archaeologists to be the remains of an ancient settlement or quarry.

This is a process known as ‘back-formation’ and it may have transformed a number of phantom hounds traditions from ambiguous demonic entities to comprehensible revenants. For instance, a crossroads at Brigham in East Yorkshire, was haunted by ‘Willie Sled’s dog’, supposedly the ghost of a dog that had once belonged to a man who attended the local sandpit. However, as no further legend seems to be attached to it and the crossroads is such a classically liminal location, we may suspect that this belief was laid over an earlier, more ambiguous
genius loci
in the phantom hound mould.

Similarly, the headless hound which haunts the woods around Sheepridge, near Huddersfield, may originally have been the same. To the pre-modern mind, its headlessness needed no explanation. However, by the time the story was properly recorded in 1944, such an uncommon motif required a narrative. Thus, the hound found itself cast as the go-between for two forbidden lovers in the seventeenth century. It would carry messages around its neck from its master at Toothill Hall to the beautiful Sybil Brooke at Newhouse Hall, until one night Sybil’s father discovered the ruse and severed the dog’s head in a fit of anger. Its decapitated ghost continues to run nightly between the two and in an echo of its former status, portends misfortune to anybody who glimpses it.

Yet, whilst the first wave of folklorists saw the phantom hound as a relic of ancient superstition and the following generation integrated them into conventional ghost lore, there is evidence that the more ambiguous, liminal version of the motif lingers in the collective unconscious. Rumours of such entities have persisted through the twentieth century, with classic sightings recorded at Anston in South Yorkshire, in 1993, and Brackenhill Park in Bradford, in 2002, to name but two examples. Meanwhile, some folklorists have argued that the countless anomalous ‘big cat’ sightings over the last forty years share a similar epistemological status to encounters with the phantom hound.

It seems that we just cannot let sleeping dogs lie. Much as our efforts to classify the barguest, padfoot, guytrash and skriker are forever doomed to failure by the rich multiplicity of the archaic tradition, attempts to confine the phenomenon to the annals of superstition are similarly frustrated. The phantom hound remains irreducibly liminal, stalking the boundary between fading memory and visceral experience. It is neither one thing nor the other, neither fish nor fowl – but it is that very ambiguity which allows the motif to adapt and endure. Modernity may have destroyed padfoot’s traditional harbour, but its brethren prowl the pathways of our imagination still.

W
hilst the phantom hound was typically conceived as inimical to mankind, another class of ambiguous spiritual entity seemed to take a much greater interest in human affairs. Indeed, they were happy not only to exist in close quarters with mortals, but to interact and even cooperate with them. These beings tend to be categorised as ‘household spirits’ or ‘tutelary spirits’, however, as with so many folkloric taxonomies, neither term is quite satisfactory. Although in many cases these spirits were associated with a particular household, they were frequently known to haunt outdoor sites as well. Similarly, the word ‘tutelary’ implies that they acted primarily as a guardian or protector, but whilst this is sometimes true, in English folklore these spirits often present a dual aspect and prove a formidable nuisance for either the household or community to which they are attached.

In Yorkshire, such spirits were known as ‘hobs’ (with variations such as ‘hobthrush’) or ‘boggarts’. The former seems to have been a more standard appellation in the North and the East of the county, the latter in the South and the West. Generically, they are often classified as ‘hobgoblins’ or subsumed under the more widely recognised title of ‘brownie’, which has become an all-purpose term for these spirits in English folklore, despite having originated in the Borders and Scottish lowlands. Nonetheless, there has been some debate about how our ancestors perceived the nature of these entities. Writing in 1802-3, Sir Walter Scott was satisfied that they ‘formed a class of beings distinct in habit and disposition from the ... elves (fairies).’ However, more recent scholars, such as Katharine Briggs, have chosen to regard them as a species of fairy, albeit one that typically acted individually and preferred to live amongst humans, rather than their own kind.

The most common narratives concerning hobs and boggarts portray them very much as household spirits, closely connected to a particular family or house. Yet they differ from certain tutelary or ancestral spirits in that they are not irrevocably bound to specific people or places. The cooperation they extend to humans is clearly a matter of choice and it can be revoked at any moment, leading the spirit to abandon the family or building forever. They are not like the glaistigs or bean-sidhs of Celtic folklore, fated to serve one dynasty forever. Rather, they come and go on a whim, offering support or creating mischief as they fancy. The capriciousness of such creatures is one of their defining features, and it is never entirely obvious whether their involvement in human affairs was considered a blessing or a curse.

Their representation was also more consistently anthropomorphic than many denizens of the Otherworld, and on the rare occasion hobs or boggarts were actually seen, they were usually described as small, wizened men, naked but for the thick black hair that covered their bodies. Nonetheless, most narratives make clear that it was an uncommon experience to witness these beings in their household capacity. In some cases they were literally invisible, but more often it seems that they were merely very shy and preferred to conduct their business at night, away from prying eyes. That business usually consisted of all the least gratifying farm and household chores, such as sweeping, churning, spinning, weaving, winnowing, threshing and so forth. In return, the hob or boggart usually asked for nothing more than a bowl of milk, to be left out every night on the hearth.

The model spirit in this regard seems to have been the hob that resided for many generations at Hart Hall at Glaisdale on the North York Moors. The Reverend J.C. Atkinson, an avid nineteenth-century folklore collector who served for many decades as the vicar of nearby Danby, noted,

In the barn, if there was a weight of work craving to be done and time was scant or force insufficient, Hob would come unasked to the rescue. Unaccountable strength seemed to be the chief attribute ascribed to him ... What mortal strength was clearly incapable of, that was the work which Hob took upon himself ... There was no reminiscence of his mischievousness, harmless malice or even tricksiness. He was not of those who ... resent the possibly unintended interference with elfish prerogative.

Yet despite this spirit’s evidently placid disposition, Hob left Hart Hall in high dudgeon, as was the case with so many of his kind. The story was told that one night the master of the house happened to catch sight of Hob about his work in the barn, and noticed that through all the creature’s labour he was as naked as sin. The master concluded that to reward the industrious hob for his patient toil, he would provide it with a Harding smock, much like the other household servants wore. It was placed out for the creature on the hearth overnight and the master hid himself nearby to observe its gratitude. However, Hob was not impressed at all – after examining the clothes, he was heard to remark,

Hart Hall in Glaisdale, home to a famous hob. (Kai Roberts)

Gin Hob mun hae nowght but a Hardin’ hamp

He’ll come nae mair nowther to berry nor stamp.

And with these words he abandoned Hart Hall, never to return.

Although this tale in relation to Hart Hall is one of the most famous concerning hobs in the canon of Yorkshire folklore, it is far from unique. A similar narrative is told at several other locations in the county. The boggart of Sturfit Hall at Reeth in Wensleydale left the house for exactly the same reason, whilst the boggart of Close House near Addingham in Craven was offended by the gift of a red cap, and in a novel twist, the hob attached to the Oughtred family at Upleatham departed when a farmhand forgetfully left his coat hanging on the winnowing machine overnight, which the creature then believed had been placed there as an offering for him. In all cases the essence of the story is the same: a hob or boggart would take umbrage at any attempt to present him with clothes, and forsake the house and family for good.

This tale is not only common in Yorkshire; it is well known in relation to household spirits throughout England and the Scottish lowlands. A similar narrative was recorded concerning an unnamed demon as early as the fourteenth century by the preacher John of Promyard; then again in connection with brownies by Reginald Scot in his influential treatise of 1584,
The Discoverie of Witchcraft
;
and once again about Puck in an influential sixteenth-century chapbook,
The Mad Pranks and Merry Jests of Robin Goodfellow
(which famously influenced William Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
). In recent years, it has been incorporated in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter mythos as a trait of house-elves, meaning the motif will remain familiar to children for generations to come, albeit in a consciously fictional context.

The moral of the story is somewhat uncertain and regional variations make it difficult to identify a single theme. For instance, in the case of the Hob of Hart Hall the phrasing of the rhyme suggests that he was offended by the paucity of the offering. He indicates that he believes he deserves better than a mere Harding smock. However, in other versions, it seems to be the very notion of being rewarded for his work at all that provokes the household spirit. Writing in 1856, George Henderson suggests that such spirits were regarded as ‘commissioned by God to relieve mankind under the drudgery of original sin, hence they were forbidden to accept wages or bribes.’ However, this seems unlikely given that Christianity and the belief in household spirits generally stood in tension with each other.

It seems more likely that it is another expression of the hob or boggart’s fierce individuality and free will. Hilda Ellis Davidson notes, ‘It is clear in the Icelandic tales that the guardian spirits made a contract with the farmers they chose to help, but they could never be regarded as servants. They were the luck-bringers and the luck must be freely given.’ A functionalist approach might cynically speculate that the story impressed on the rural labouring classes the virtue of treating work as its own reward. It implied that the servant should be happy to do all the sweeping, and the farmhand should be content to get on with the threshing without any expectation of advantage – certain
other
creatures were thus satisfied and why should human ingrates think any differently? Conversely, it may be taken to indicate that hard work
would
be rewarded and the recipients should be appropriately thankful for their master’s largesse.