_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's "Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars" in
_Folk-Lore_, ii., somewhat abridged and the dialect removed. The story
was derived from a little girl named Bratton, who declared she had heard
it from her "grannie." Mrs. Balfour thinks the girl's own weird
imagination had much to do with framing the details.
_Remarks._--The tale is noteworthy as being distinctly mythical in
character, and yet collected within the last ten years from one of the
English peasantry. The conception of the moon as a beneficent being, the
natural enemy of the bogles and other dwellers of the dark, is natural
enough, but scarcely occurs, so far as I recollect, in other
mythological systems. There is, at any rate, nothing analogous in the
Grimms' treatment of the moon in their _Teutonic Mythology_, tr.
Stallybrass, pp. 701-21.