“... A wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads th’ amazed night–wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond and pool.”
(_Paradise Lost_, Bk. 9).
He elsewhere calls him “the frier’s lantern.”—(_L’ Allegro_).
This facetious spirit only misleads the benighted traveller (generally
an honest farmer, in his way from the market, in a state of
intoxication) for the joke’s sake, as one very seldom, if ever, hears
any of his deluded followers (who take it to be the torch of Hero in
some hospitable mansion, affording “provision for man and horse”)
perishing in these ponds or pools, through which they dance or plunge
after him so merrily.
“There go as manie tales,” says Reginald Scot, “upon Hudgin, in some
parts of Germanie, as there did in England of Robin Good–fellow....
Frier Rush was for all the world such another fellow as this Hudgin,
and brought up even in the same schoole—to wit, in a kitchen, inasmuch
as the selfe–same tale is written of the one as of the other,
concerning the skullian, who is said to have beene slaine, etc., for
the reading whereof I referre you to frier Rush his storie, or else to
John Wierus, _De Præstigiis Dæmonum_.”
In the old play of _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_, printed in 1575, Hodge,
describing a “great black devil” which had been raised by Diccon, the
bedlam, and being asked by Gammer—
“But, Hodge, had he no horns to push?”
replies—
“As long as your two arms. Saw ye never Fryer Rushe,
Painted on a cloth, with a side–long cowe’s tayle,
And crooked cloven feet, and many a hoked nayle?
For al the world (if I schuld judg) chould reckon him his brother;
Loke even what face frier Rush had, the devil had such another.”
The fairies frequented many parts of the bishopric of Durham. There
is a hillock, or tumulus, near Bishopton, and a large hill near
Billingham, both which used, in former time, to be “haunted by
fairies.” Even Ferry–hill, a well–known stage between Darlington and
Durham, is evidently a corruption of Fairy–hill. When seen, by accident
or favour, they are described as of the smallest size, and uniformly
habited in green. They could, however, occasionally assume a different
size and appearance; as a woman, who had been admitted into their
society, challenged one of the guests, whom she espied in the market,
selling fairy–butter. This freedom was deeply resented, and cost her
the eye she first saw him with. Mr. Brand mentions his having met with
a man, who said he had seen one who had seen the fairies. Truth, he
adds, is to be come at in most cases. None, he believes, ever came
nearer to it in this than he has done. However that may be, the present
editor cannot pretend to have been more fortunate. His informant
related that an acquaintance in Westmoreland, having a great desire,
and praying earnestly, to see a fairy, was told by a friend, if not a
fairy in disguise, that on the side of such a hill, at such a time of
day, he should have a sight of one, and accordingly, at the time and
place appointed, “the hobgoblin,” in his own words, “stood before him
in the likeness of a green–coat lad,” but in the same instant, the
spectator’s eye glancing, vanished into the hill. This, he said, the
man told him.
“The streets of Newcastle,” says Mr. Brand, “were formerly (so vulgar
tradition has it) haunted by a nightly _guest_, which appeared in the
shape of a mastiff dog, etc., and terrified such as were afraid of
shadows. I have heard,” he adds, “when a boy, many stories concerning
it.”
The no less famous _barguest_ of Durham, and the Picktree–_brag_, have
been already alluded to. The former, beside its many other pranks,
would sometimes, at the dead of night, in passing through the different
streets, set up the most horrid and continuous shrieks to scare the
poor girls who might happen to be out of bed. The compiler of the
present sheets remembers, when very young, to have heard a respectable
old woman, then a midwife at Stockton, relate that when, in her
youthful days, she was a servant at Durham, being up late one Saturday
night cleaning the irons in the kitchen, she heard these _skrikes_,
first at a great and then at a less distance, till at length the
loudest and most horrible that can be conceived, just at the kitchen
window, sent her upstairs, she did not know how, where she fell into
the arms of a fellow–servant, who could scarcely prevent her fainting
away.
“Pioneers or diggers for metal,” according to Lavater, “do affirme that
in many mines there appeare straunge shapes and spirites, who are
apparelled like unto other laborers in the pit. These wander up and
down in caves and underminings, and seeme to bestuire themselves in
all kinde of labour, as to digge after the veine, to carrie to–gither
oare, to put it in baskets, and to turne the winding–whele to draw it
up, when, in very deede, they do nothing lesse. They very seldome hurte
the labourers (as they say) except they provoke them by laughing and
rayling at them, for then they threw gravel stones at them, or hurt
them by some other means. These are especially haunting in pittes where
mettall moste aboundeth.”—(_Of ghostes_, etc., London, 1572, 4to, p.
73.)