Hardwick, 'The north of England domestic or flitting boggart its Scandinavian origins', 1880 (original) (raw)
Related papers
McKay, The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts
This talk was given 27 Nov 1888 at Burnley for the Burnley Literary and Scientific Club. It was, then, published in the Club’s Transactions: the bibliographical reference is – James McKay, ‘The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts’, Transactions of the Burnley Literary & Scientific Club 6 (1888), 113-127. There are three good reasons for reprinting it here. First, though there are lots of scattered references to boggarts from nineteenth-century Lancashire this is the single longest sustained piece of writing on the subject. Second, McKay’s essay is not easy to get hold of. The pdf of the Transactions is floating around online, but for 95% of the population, perhaps 99% of these who would be interested, it will prove difficult to find. Third, the publishers of the Transactions cut McKay’s talk towards the end. However, at three points contemporary newspapers were more generous in reporting McKay’s words. It has been possible, then, in the footnotes, to restore some of the original text or at least the original content. Welcome, then, to ‘The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts’ a century and a quarter after it was first given.
MA Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2023
This thesis examines the boggart, a supernatural creature, in nineteenth-century North-West homes. It challenges the disenchantment thesis, suggesting industrial developments and changing ideas of home and parenthood contributed to the decline of boggarts. I also explore boggart disturbances in corridors, staircases, and cupboards, comparing them to domestic servants. The kitchen, where milk was heavily featured, was seen as a vulnerable space, allowing boggarts to represent a form of personalised uncanny. The bedroom, where boggarts often tormented children, can be seen as a manifestation of parental anxieties. I also explore the concept of the 'boggart house', comparing it to haunted houses, hinting at hidden disorder within the home. I conclude that the concepts of supernatural creatures causing disturbances have shifted, with contemporary folklore focusing on ghosts and poltergeists.
The author maps the supernatural onto the landscape of eleven nineteenth-century, north-western communities: Bradford (WY), Burnley (La), Delph-Dobcross (WY), Droylsden (La), Gorton (La), Greenfield (WY), Hawkshead (La), Lees (La), Moston (La), Natland (We) and Worsthorne (La). Here locals feared boggarts, dobbies, fairies and phantom dogs and ‘public bogies’ (celebrated local spirits) were often associated with specific points in the landscape. These bogies, in fact, typically appeared radially around towns and villages, on human or natural boundaries and they, generally, were to be found on the edge of but not within urban centres. The almost total absence of public bogies from urban centres in the case studies is surprising and runs against the grain of contemporary scholarship. Does this represent a problem with the data, or a previously underappreciated aspect of the supernatural in the north-west and perhaps in Britain more generally? Time and Mind 13 (2020), 399-424
This paper explores the folklore of Boggart Hole Clough, an inner-city park in Blackley, North Manchester. This park consists of 171 acres of dense forest and deep ravines, situated three miles north of Manchester’s city centre, and it possesses a wealth of local folktales and traditions. The majority of these tales centre on a supernatural character known as ‘the Boggart’. These folktales and traditions are recounted in the works of 19th-century folklorists and historians, and survived the 20th century through oral transmission amongst local residents. However, by the late 20th/early 21st centuries, a different form of dissemination became prominent: commercialisation. Drawing on ethnographic material gathered in the area of Blackley, this paper considers how local Manchester societies and merchandisers have utilised and, more importantly, adapted the figure of the Boggart for various purposes. These include an environmental group, a drama group, primary school art and nature schemes, and a local beer brewery, not to mention the park itself, which draws on the folktales in order to attract visitors. As a consequence of this relatively recent rise in the commercial utilisation of folklore, tales of the Boggart have become both more well-known and more varied amongst local residents. By ‘sponsoring the supernatural’ in such a way, these societies and merchandisers are not only contributing greatly to the continuing dissemination of local folklore; they are also shaping and colouring it to suit their purposes. They are changing and adapting the figure of the Boggart in order to appeal to 21st century ‘consumers’
There follows a taster for Higson, South Manchester Supernatural (978-1-8380969-0-8) This is southern Manchester as you have never seen it before. We have: shape-changing ghosts; cow-levitating Boggarts; child-murdering Jenny Greenteeth; the tree-haunting Nut Nan; Dicky, a railway-destroying skull; din-making Clap Cans; border-guarding Pad Feet; and, beware, above all, Raura Peena the last fairy of Saddleworth. All this in a hundred-and-three pages, in the Pwca Ghost, Witch and Fairy Pamphlet series. The author, John Higson (1825-1871) wrote, from the 1850s, a series of supernatural sketches of Gorton (where he was born and grew up), Droylsden (where he lived), Lees (where he died), Saddleworth (where he walked) and other areas he visited, including Preston and Derbyshire. Born to a poor family, raised without an education, Higson became, through hard-work and talent one of the most exciting Lancashire folklore writers of his generation, and got to be friends with some of the most influential county authors of his day. However, because Higson never brought his folklore work together in a single volume his supernatural prose (and two songs) have been lost in obscure and, in some cases, forgotten publications. For the first time now his folklore compositions, from fifteen different articles and books, are gathered together in the hope of giving Higson (and the supernatural world he inhabited) the attention they so richly deserve. Also included: a short biography and William E. A. Axon’s ‘Hartshead Boggart’ (a tribute to Higson from a friend).
Bog Bodies from Scotland: Old Finds, New Records
Journal of Wetland Archaeology, 2011
Book Reviews edited by Anthony Harding Altes Holz in neuem Licht: archäologische und dendrochronologische Untersuchungen an spätneolithischen Feuchtbodensiedlungen in Oberschwaben by Niels Bleicher, reviewed by A. Whittle