This account comes in Ray Loveday’s supplement and describes Paul’s experience of growing up with the hikeys around as night bogeys near Dereham in Norfolk.

I grew up in the 1980s in a small group of cottages with some livestock. So, winter evenings, me or my brother would head up to cover rabbits up or shut chickens away after dark. My Nanna, a weekly visitor, would often say to us, ‘I don’t know how you dare go up there with those Hikey Sprikes’ or ‘Be you careful them Hikey Sprikes don’t get you!’ I don’t think there was ever an explanation of what a Hikey Sprike is. But I can remember running up the path past the open doors of the cottage coal sheds expecting a goblin or something to jump out! (Loveday 2010, 3)

‘On the day after the examination of the Irish schools,’ continues Mr. Brannigan, ‘[Dr Edgar] took a walk with me on the Killala Road, when a man in an adjoining field attracted his attention. We wended our way to him, and, in answer to our inquiries, he informed us that he was searching for potatoes; but that, as others had been there before him on the same errand, it was nearly labour in vain — adding that he saw nothing but death before himself and the children. Dr. Edgar asked him for the loy, or spade; and, when it was presented to him, handled it as skilfully as if he had been trained to husbandry. He dug fully seven yards, and made several other experiments on spots around him. All the fields were then treated as common property, for the owners thought it only loss of time to turn over the soil. When the digging was completed, Dr Edgar gathered up the potatoes, carried them to St. Patrick’s Well adjoining, washed them there, tied them up in a silk pocket-handkerchief, and deposited the parcel in his pocket. On handing back the loy, he put a piece of silver into the hand of the poor man, who seemed confounded, not well knowing how to interpret what had just occurred. It was then currently believed in the neighbourhood that, in a pitched battle at Downpatrick Head, the Connaught fairies had been vanquished, and that the northern fairies had blighted, or rather carried off, the potato crop. The poor man, as I subsequently learned, after witnessing the odd performance of his odd-looking visitor — and particularly the washing of the potatoes in St. Patrick’s Well — was impressed with the idea that the dark-visaged stranger might be the commander-in-chief of the victorious gentry, and that it would be prudent to beware of him. But the piece of silver, under the circumstances, was a temptation too strong for him to resist. He therefore turned his back on us, and after spitting on the coin by way of precaution, lodged it in his pocket (Killen 1869).’

A near female relation of the compiler [i.e. Ritson], who was born and brought up in a small village in the bishopric of Durham, related to him many years ago [late eighteenth century] several circumstances which confirmed the exactitude of Milton’s description. She, particularly, told of [brownie] thrashing the corn, churning the butter, drinking the milk, &c. and, when all was done, ‘lying before the fire like a great rough hurgin [?] bear’ (Ritson 22).

Editor’s Note: This anecdote dates to the early nineteenth century and Northumberland.

I never met with any one who could positively assert that he had either received benefit or injury from the fairies, or who had ever witnessed their revels; though I have heard several persons tell of fairies having been seen by their immediate ancestors. I however knew an old man whose dog had pointed a troop of fairies; and though they were invisible to himself yet he plainly heard their music, sounding like a fiddle and a pair of very small pipes. He believed that they were dancing under a small green hillock in the direction of which the dog pointed (Chatto 106).

Editor’s Note: This first appeared in a review of Crofton-Croker’s Fairy Legends in 1825 and it was later included by Keightley in a slightly dressed down version. The viewing took place in the East Riding, though the author P, gives us no other clues where. We should probably imagine a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century date.

A respectable female, who is nearly related to the writer of this, and who is now alive, beheld, when she was a little girl, a troop of fairies, ‘deftly footing a rounel daunce’, in her mother’s large old wainscoted parlour, even in the ‘garish eye of day.’ I have frequently heard it related by her venerable mother, and subsequently by herself. I shall give the tale as I received it from the old lady. My eldest daughter Betsey was about four years old; I remember it was on a fine summer’s afternoon, or rather evening, I was seated in this chair which I now occupy. The child had been in the garden, she came into that entry or passage from the kitchen (on the right side of the entry was the old parlour-door, on the left the door of the common sitting-room; the mother of the child was in a line with both the doors); the child, instead of turning towards the sitting-room made a pause at the parlour-door, which was open. I observed her to stand, and look in very attentively, she stood several minutes, quite still; at last I saw her draw her hand quickly towards her body; she set up a loud shriek and ran, or rather flew, to me crying out ‘Oh! Mammy, green man will hab me! green man will hab me!’ It was a long time before I could pacify her; I then asked her why she was so frightened. ‘O Mammy,’ she said, ‘all t’parlour is full of addlers and menters.’ Elves and fairies I suppose she meant. She said they were dancing, and a little man in a green coat with a gold-laced cocked hat on his head, offered to take her hand as if he would have her as his partner in the dance. The mother, upon hearing this, went and looked into the old parlour, but the fairy pageant, like Prospero’s spirits, had melted into thin air.  Such is the account I heard of this vision of fairies. The person is still alive who witnessed or supposed she saw it, and though a well-informed person, still positively asserts the relation to be strictly true.

We once questioned a girl from Norfolk on the subject of Fairy-lore. She said she had often  heard of and even seen the Frairies [sic]. They were dressed in white, and lived under the ground, where they constructed houses, bridges, and other edifices. It is not safe, she added, to go near them when they appear above ground.

In Suffolk the fairies are called ‘farisees’. Not many years ago, a butcher near Woodbridge went to a farmer’s to buy a calf, and finding, as he expressed it, that ‘the cratur was all o’ a muck,’ he desired the farmer to hang a flint by a string in the crib, so as to be just clear of the calf’s head. ‘Becaze,’ said he, ‘the calf is rid every night by the farisees, and the stone will brush them off.’ (Keightley 306, borrowed from Brand)

Editor’s Note: Huntingdonshire is part of England where fairy traditions have either died out or whether perhaps they never existed. However, sometimes there are stories from the region that recall fairy sightings elsewhere. For example, this report of a spectral army would have been interpreted as a fairy army in Ireland and perhaps in the north of England.

What may be called a Huntingdonshire Fairy Morgana is recorded to have taken place near St Neots in 1820. The real Fata Morgana is the appearance of spectral ships on the sea, and is due to reflective peculiarities in the atmosphere. I have only an indirect description of the phenomena said to have been witnessed at St. Neots; it is stated to have been similar to phenomena which occurred on Souterfell in 1743 and 1744. On referring to this I obtain the following: ‘On the 23rd of June, 1744, about 7 o’clock in the evening, a number of persons witnessed a troop of horsemen riding apparently on the side of Souterfell, in pretty close ranks, and at a brisk pace. The spectres became visible at a place called Knott, and advanced in regular troops along the side of the fell, till they came opposite Blake Hills, when they passed over the mountain after describing a kind of curvilinear path. They moved at a regular, swift, and walking pace, and were watched for upwards of two hours, during which time it is alleged they were visible, the approach of darkness at length concealing them from view. Many troops were seen in succession, and frequently the last but one in a troop quitted his position, and galloped to the front and took up the same pace with the rest. The number of persons who saw this spectral army amounted to about 26, and the attestation of the facts signed by two of the party bears date, 21st July, 1785.’ In the previous year ‘on a fine summer’s evening a singular meteorous appearance was observed on Souterfell. It resembled the figure of a man with a dog in pursuit of horses, running at a rapid pace till they got out of sight at the other end of the fell. On the following morning, two men ascended the mountain in full expectation of finding the man dead, and of picking up some of the horses shoes, which they thought must have been cast while galloping at such a furious pace, but no traces of man or horse could be found. Indeed the place is so exceedingly steep that a horse could scarcely travel on it at all.’ I have referred to these matters at length, because the phenomena witnessed at St. Neots is said to have been similar to them, but no further details are given. There are records of spectral troops and persons being seen near Stockton in the Forest, Yorkshire, in 1792, and at Harrogate, on June 28th, 1812. Saunders (1888), 169-171

Editor’s note: there is not much evidence for fairy belief in Huntingdonshire. However, as a marshy territory there are plenty of will-o-the-wisp sightings including Jinny with one of the most vivid fairy surnames of all.

‘[Will-o’-the-wisp] generated by marsh gas was regarded with fear and superstition as a power of evil. It must have been much less common once the fens were drained, but was remembered by people on the west side of the fens where it was called Jinny Burntarse. In 1944 Mr W Dear of Hollow Farm, Alconbury, described it as a bright as a torch and seeming to travel around the fields. Earlier, Mrs Sam Wilson of Leighton remembered that as a child she had been frightened into coming home early at night by the threat otherwise Jinny, with her light, would get her’ (Tebbutt 1984, 88).

There is an old abbey on the river, in County Mayo, and people say the fairies had a great battle near it, and that the slaughter was tremendous. At the time, the fairies appeared as swarms of flies coming from every direction to that spot. Some came from Knock Ma, and some from South Ireland, the opinion being that fairies can assume any form they like. The battle lasted a day and a night, and when it was over one could have filled baskets with the dead flies which floated down the river (Evans-Wentz 39).