An Encyclopedia of Fairies_ Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures ( PDFDrive.com )

Shag-foal, or tatter-foal 360

And counted them ! And oftentimes will start,

For overhead are sweeping Gabriel's hounds,

Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart
To chase for ever on aerial grounds.

[Motif: E500]

Shag-foal, or tatter-foal. These are practically the same. They are the
Lincolnshire members of that tribe of bogy or bogey-beasts that are
adept at shape-shifting, can take many forms but seem to prefer to
go about as shaggy, fiery-eyed horses, foals or donkeys. The Picktree

BRAG and the HEDLEY KOW are famous examples. Examples are given

in County Folk-Lore (vol. v) by Gutch and Peacock:

Shag-foal. - An old lady used to talk of a mysterious phantom like an

animal of deep black colour, which appeared before belated travellers.

On hearing that we had been attacked at midnight by a large dog, she

eagerly inquired: 'Had it any white about it?' and when we assured

her that it had a white chest, she exclaimed in thankfulness: 'Ah! then

it was not the !

shag-foal

Here the old lady makes no distinction between the shag and the shag-
foal. Eli Twigg in the next extract sticks closer to the usual type:

Tatter-foal. - 'Why, he is a shagg'd-looking boss, and given to all
manner of goings-on, fra cluzzening hold of a body what is riding home
half-screwed with bargain-drink, and pulling him out of the saddle, to

scaring a old woman three parts out of her skin, and making her drop

her shop-things in the blatter and blash, and run for it.'

[Motifs: E423.i.3.5(a); F234.1.8]

Shape-shifting. A magical accomplishment, common in a greater or

lesser degree to fairies, wizards and witches. Not all fairies are shape-
shifters. The small, powerless fairies like skillywidden have no power
to take any other shape or even to alter their size, asSPRiGGANS can do,
and CHERRY OF zennor's master. Some, like the each uisge, have
two forms at their disposal, a young man or a horse. The Cornish fairies
whose habits are treated in such detail in 'The fairy dwelling on
SELENA moor' seem to be able to assume only the form of a bird, and
they pay for each change by a diminution in size. The fairies into whose
house the human midwife to the fairies is brought can change

their appearance and the appearance of their dwellings, but this is prob-

ably not a real shape-shift, only the effect of glamour, a kind of

hypnotism which affects the senses of the beholder, and a hypnotism

against which stcollen was armed by his sanctity.

361 Shape-shifting

The BOGY OR BOGEY-BEASTS and all their kind are true shape-
shifters, and so are such hobgoblins as puck. They exercise their

Apowers for mischief rather than for malevolence. typical story is that

of the HEDLEY KOW.
Wizards, and particularly supernatural wizards, are the true

shape-shifters, able to change the form of other people as well as to shift

from one shape to another. The ordinary fairy people seem as helpless as
humans against this kind of magic, as eta in was when the wizard turned
her into a midge. Some fairies, however, presumably those who had

studied magic, had the power. Uchtdealb turned Tuiren into a dog and

herself into the appearance of Finn's messenger. The second seems to

have been an illusion, the first a real change of form, for Tuiren's off-

spring were irrecoverably puppies.

Human wizards as well as supernatural creatures are capable of

becoming masters of shape-shifting according to the fairy-tales, and to

Asome legends . Celtic tale of which there are a good many variants is

that of which McKay's story, *The Wizard's Gillie', to be found in

AMore Highland Tales, is a good example. man apprentices his son to a

MAGICIAN for a stated period of years, which is afterwards extended and

then extended more indefinitely, until the son does not return at all and

his father goes out to look for him. He finds him a captive of the

magician's and manages to get him away by recognizing him in his
transformed shape. The father and son go off together, and in order to

gain money the son transforms himself into various creatures whom the

father sells, but he must always retain the strap by which the creature is

led, for the son's soul is in that, and as long as his father has it he can

always resume his own shape and return. The wizard is the purchaser each
time, and each time the gillie escapes until the father is so much elated

by the magnificent price paid that he forgets to remove the strap and his
son is thrown into harsh captivity. By his ingenuity he manages to
escape, the wizard pursues him and the two engage in a transformation

combat, at the end of which the wizard is destroyed. The theme is
roughly the same as that of the folk-song 'The Coal Black Smith'. Other
tales on the same plot are 'The King of the Black Art', a particularly
good version collected by Hamish Henderson from John Stewart, and
'The Black King of Morocco ', from Buchan's Ancient Scottish Tales.

Tales of people changed into another shape by a wicked enchantment

are very common. Many of them are variants of the Cupid and Psyche

story. 'The Black Bull of Norroway' is the best-known of these, but
there are others, such as 'The Hoodie'. Escapes by temporary trans-

formations are another use of shape-shifting, morgan le fay used this

expedient once in Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Ordinary witches were
commonly accused of shape-shifting, generally into stereotyped forms
such as hares or hedgehogs, but here we are off the road of fairy-lore.

[Motifs: A1459.3; d6io; F234.0.2]

Shefro, or Siofra 362

Shefro, or Siofra {Sheaf-ra). In Crofton CROKEr's Fairy Legends of the

South of Ireland^ Shefro is the name given to the small trooping
FAIRIES of Ireland. They are supposed to wear caps like foxglove bells
on their heads. Stories of changelings, of the carrying off of young

girls and of the usual fairy activities are told of them. In the * Legend of
Knocksheogowna\ the queen of the clan inhabiting that hill plays as

many shape-shifting pranks as a brag or hedley kow could do.

Like the Highland fairies, the Shefro show anxiety about their possible

salvation.

[Motifs: F234.0.2; F241.1.0.1]

Shellycoat. A Lowland water-BOGLE described by SCOTT in Minstrelsy

of the Scottish Border. He frequented fresh-water streams, and was
festooned about with shells which clattered when he moved. Scott has a
tale of two men being led all one dark night up the banks of the river
Ettrick by a voice calling dolefully from the stream, *Lost! Lost!' By
daybreak they had reached the source, when Shellycoat leapt out from
the spring and bounded down the other side of the hill with loud bursts
of laughter. Like the Picktrce brag and the hedley kow, Shellycoat
delights in teasing, tricking and bewildering human beings, without doing
them actual harm; and like robin good fellow, he applauds his

success with loud laughter.

[Motif: F402.1.1]

Shock, the. The Suffolk shock is a bogy or bogey-beast, generally

appearing like a horse or donkey. County Folk-Lore (vol. i) includes some

Mrpersonally collected material, among it some letters written to a

Redstone. One records an example of a very palpable shock:

In Melton stands the ' Horse and Groom ' - in the days of toll-gates

(thirty years ago) occupied by one Master Fisher. It was a dark night

when Goodman Kemp of Woodbridge entered the inn in a hurried

frightened manner, and asked for the loan of a gun to shoot a * Shock'
which hung upon the toll-gate here. It was a 'thing' with a donkey's
head and a smooth velvet hide. Kemp, somewhat emboldened by the
support of companions, sought to grab the creature and take it to the
inn to examine it. As he seized it, it turned suddenly round, snapped at

Kemp's hand and vanished. Kemp bore the mark of the Shock's bite

upon his thumb to his dying day.

Some of the Suffolk shocks take the form of dogs or calves with
shaggy manes and saucer eyes. They are supposed to be ghosts. The
Shock is not unlike the Lincolnshire Shag, or shag-foal.

[Motif: E423]

Shony {shaw nee). An ancient sea spirit of the Isle of Lewis, to whom an

Aoblation was made even as late as the i8th century. Martin, in Descrip-

363 Short Hoggers of Whittinghame

tion of the Western Isles of Scotland (171 6), gives an account of the
celebration by which Shony was propitiated at Hallowtide, not for a
yield offish, but of seaweed to manure the land:

They gathered to the Church of St Mulvey, Lewis: each family
furnished a peck of malt, and this was brew'd into ale: one of their
number was picked out to wade into the sea up to the middle, and

carrying a cup of ale in his hand, standing still in that posture, cry'd
out with a loud voice saying: ^ Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping
that you'll be so kind as to send us plenty of sea ware, for enriching our
ground the ensuing year^ and so threw the cup of ale into the sea. This
was performed in the night time. At his return to land they all went to
church; there was a candle burning on the altar: and then, standing
silent for a little time, one of them gave a signal at which the candle
was put out, and immediately all of them went to the fields, where they
fell a-drinking their ale, and spent the remainder of the night in dancing
and singing.

Ruth Tongue records tributes paid to a similar sea spirit in Somerset,
INA PIC WINNA.

[Motif: A421; VI 2.9]

Shoopiltee. The Shetland water horse, or cabyll-ushtey. He is
described by keightley in the Shetland section of Fairy Mythology

(p. 171):

The water-spirit is in Shetland called Shoopiltee; he appears in the

form of a pretty little horse, and endeavours to entice persons to ride
on him, and then gallops with them into the sea.

[Motif: F420.5.2.1]

Short Hoggers of Whittinghame. A solitary example of the little
ghosts who cannot rest because they have died unchristened. When these

ghosts congregate together, they are called spunkies in Lowland
Scotland and in Somerset, and ' Pisgies ' in the West Country, where they
take the form of small white moths. In this story we are shown that it is
the name not the baptism that is important to the little spirit.

The village of Whittinghame was haunted for a long time by the
unhappy spirit of an unwanted baby who had been murdered by his

mother and buried at the foot of a tree near the village. On dark nights

it used to run up and down between the tree and the churchyard wailing,

'Nameless me!' and no one dared to speak to it, for it was believed that
whoever addressed it would die. Late one night, however, a drunk man,
too merry for fear, heard it wailing, and called out: 'How's a wi' you
this morning. Short Hoggers ?

The little ghost was delighted.

Si 364

*0 weePs me noo, I've gotten a name;
They ca' me Short-Hoggcrs o' Whittinghamc !

he cried, and ran joyfully off to Heaven.

Chambers learned the story and the rhyme from an old woman of
Whittinghame, who claimed to have seen the ghost. 'Short-hoggers' is a
name for babies' bootees.

PUDDLEFOOT, the BROWNIE, was kid in the same way by a drunk

man, but he was displeased and driven off by the naming.

[Motif: F251.3]

Si. SeesiDH.

Sib. The principal female fairy, who acts as spokeswoman of the rest in
the LIFE OF ROBIN GOODFELLOW. She spcaks for herself and her sister

fairies:

To walke nightly, as do the men fayries, we use not; but now and

then we goe together, and at good huswives fires we warme and dresse

our fayry children. If wee find cleane water and clcane towels, wee

leave them money, either in their basons or in their shoocs; but if wee

find no cleane water in their houses, we wash our children in their

pottage, milke or bcere, or what-ere we finde; for the sluts that leave

not such things fitting, wee wash their faces and hands with a gilded

child's clout, or els carry them to some river, and ducke them over

Wehead and eares. often use to dwell in some great hill, and from

thence we doe lend money to any poore man or woman that hath need

but if they bring it not againe at the day appointed, we doe not only

punish them with pinching, but also in their goods, so that they never

thrive till they have payd us.

[Motif: F361.17.5]

Sidh, Sith, or Si (shee). The Gaelic name for fairies, both in Ireland
and the Highlands of Scotland, as in the bean si or the daoine sidh.

Sili Ffrit and Sili-Go-D wt. The names of two female fairies to whom
the same rather fragmentary story as trwtyn-tratyn is attached by
Rhys. It is a version of the tom tit tot or whuppity stoorie tale

and hinges on the power given by knowledge of the name of a super-

natural creature, or a secret name of the fairies.

[Type: 500. Motif: C432.1]

Silky, brownies are generally male spirits, though there are occasional
female brownies, such as meg mullach, mentioned by aubrey as

365 Siofra

attached to the Grants, and gruagachs, who were as much female as

male. The Northumbrian and Border silky, however, is always female,

like the banshee. She is a spirit dressed in rustling silk, who does

domestic chores about the house and is a terror to idle servants. Like the

CAULD LAD OF HILTON, she is a ghostly spirit. The Silky of Black

Heddon, mentioned by William Henderson in Folk-Lore of the Northern
Counties (p. 269), was the most famous of them all, and more mischievous
than helpful, for though she tidied what was left in disorder, she would

often throw about anything that had been neatly arranged. She would

spend a great part of the night sitting in an old tree near an artificial lake.

The tree was long called * Silky's Chair'. From this position she used

often to stop carts and halt horses, and could only be countered by some-

body wearing a cross made of rowan wood. One day a ceiling in

Heddon Hall suddenly gave way and a large, rough skin filled with gold

fell into the room below. The silky never haunted Heddon Hall after

that, and it was thought that she was the ghost of someone who had

hidden treasure and died without disclosing it. There was one at Hurd-

wood in Berwickshire, and another mentioned by Henderson at Denton

Hall near Newcastle. There is later news of this silky ; for a friend, one

of the Sowerbys of Northumberland, used to visit two old ladies, the

Hoyles of Denton, long ago, when she was a girl. The hall was too big

for them, and they used sometimes to say to their intimate friends that

they did not know how they could manage if it had not been for Silky,

who laid and lighted fires for them and did all manner of chores about the

Myhouse. friend married and moved away, and did not return to New-

castle till the Second World War. The Misses Hoyle had died long before

and the house had been let to another old acquaintance of Margery

Sowerby. He was not at all the kind of person to commend himself to a
spirit, and he had become the victim of all sorts of practical jokes. He was

so angry that he could not bear to talk about it, and at last he had to

move out of Denton Hall. The brownie had become a boggart.

A story with an ultimate gipsy origin, 'Gilsland's Gry', is told by Ruth

Tongue in Forgotten Folk-Tales of the English Counties (pp. 201-4). Here
the silky is a more formidable character than in any of the other tales. She

is devoted to the interests of Gilsland, and does full brownie labours about

the house, but at night she guards the gate from her tree, and lets any

friend through, though with a scared horse, but she remorselessly kills

any ill-wisher to the house. In this tale she slowly strangles a murderous

Arobber who falls into her clutches. silky who did little domestic work

but haunted an avenue near North Shields, seems to have been more

truly a ghost, the spectre of a mistress of the Duke of Argyll in the reign

of William III, supposed to have been murdered by her lover.

[Motifs: E451.5; F480; F482.5.4; F482.5.5]

Siofra {sheaf-ra). See shefro.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 366

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This Superb medieval poem was

written somewhere about 1350 in north-west Midland dialect, that of
Cheshire or South Lancashire, treated with great richness and mastery.

The poem exists only in one manuscript (ms. Nero A.x. in the Cotton
Collection at the British Museum). The Pearly Cleanliness and Patience
are in the same volume and written in the same hand. They are judged

to be the work of the same author by the evidence of dialect and style.

The name of the author is unknown, but Ormerod Greenwood, working

on The Pearly has suggested on the evidence of numerology - a cryptic
method very fashionable in the 14th century - that he was a member of

the Masci family, called Hugo de Masci. A short comment on the poem

itself will be found under fairies of medieval romances.

Sir Launfal. One of the early romances about Arthur or the matter

OF BRITAIN, written by the 13th-century Marie de France, was translated
with some alterations by a man calling himself Thomas of Chester. It is
a true fairy bride story, something after the style of the Irish tale
*Oisin and Niam of the Golden Hair'. Lancelot has not yet appeared on
the scene, though Guinevere is there in the role of a villainous character.
Sir Launfal was a famous and liberal knight of King Arthur's court, who
disapproved of his marriage with Guinevere, and was accordingly hated
by her. She put a public slight upon him at her marriage feast, and he
withdrew from the court at Carlisle to go to Caerleon. King Arthur
parted from him regretfully and gave him two knights to attend him.
Launfal's liberality, however, outran his means, and after a while he
could no longer afford maintenance for his knights. Things had come to a
bad pass with him, when he was one day approached by two dazzlingly
beautiful maidens who invited him to visit their mistress, the fairy
princess Try amour, the daughter of the fairy king Olyroun. He found her
in a gorgeous pavilion lying on a bed with all her charms alluringly dis-
played. They came immediately to an understanding. She would bestow
on him all earthly riches with a fairy squire and a milk-white fairy horse,
and if he went into any secret place and wished for her company, she
would immediately appear to him. She only made one stipulation: their
love must be kept secret. If he boasted of her love he would lose her and

all her gifts for ever.

The pact was concluded with great joy. Tryamour gave Launfal a
Fortunatus, or inexhaustible, purse - out of which he could draw limitless
stores of gold - a great white charger, and Gyfre, Tryamour's own

Aattendant, as squire. procession of young knights brought him rich

clothes and equipment, and he gave out his charity more lavishly than he

had ever done. A great tournament was given in his honour in which he

distinguished himself signally. After some time of great happiness,
Launfal was summoned to a tournament in Lombardy by an orgulous

knight, Sir Valentyne. He went and, with much help from Gyfre, killed