The Yorkshire Boggart

A boggart intruded himself, upon what pretext or by what authority
is unknown, into the house of a quiet, inoffensive, and laborious
farmer; and, when once it had taken possession, it disputed the right
of domicile with the legal mortal tenant, in a very unneighbourly and
arbitrary manner. In particular, it seemed to have a great aversion to
children. As there is no point on which a parent feels more acutely
than that of the maltreatment of his offspring, the feelings of the
father, and more particularly of his good dame, were daily, ay, and
nightly, harrowed up by the malice of this malignant and invisible
boggart (a boggart is seldom visible to the human eye, though it is
frequently seen by cattle, particularly by horses, and then they are
said to “take the _boggle_,” a Yorkshireism for a shying horse). The
children’s bread and butter would be snatched away, or their porringers
of bread and milk would be dashed down by an invisible hand; or if they
were left alone for a few minutes, they were sure to be found screaming
with terror on the return of the parents, like the farmer’s children in
the tale of the _Field of Terror_, whom the “drudging goblin” used to
torment and frighten when he was left alone with them.

The stairs led up from the kitchen; a partition of boards covered
the ends of the steps, and formed a closet beneath the staircase; a
large round knot was accidentally displaced from one of the boards of
this partition. One day the farmer’s youngest boy was playing with
the shoe–horn, and, as children will do, he stuck the horn into this
knot–hole. Whether the aperture had been found by the boggart as a
peep–hole to watch the motions of the family, or whether he wished
to amuse himself, is uncertain, but sure it is the horn was thrown
back with surprising precision at the head of the child. It was found
that as often as the horn was replaced in the hole, so surely it was
ejected with a straight aim at the offender’s head. Time at length
made familiar this wonderful occurrence, and that which at the first
was regarded with terror, became at length a kind of amusement with
the more thoughtless and daring of the family. Often was the horn
slipped slyly into the hole, and the boggart never failed to dart it
out at the head of one or the other, but most commonly he or she who
placed it there was the mark at which the invisible foe launched the
offending horn. They used to call this, in their provincial dialect,
“laking wit boggart,” _i.e._, playing with the boggart. As if enraged
at these liberties taken with his boggartship, the goblin commenced
a series of night disturbances. Heavy steps, as of a person in wooden
clogs, were often heard clattering down the stairs in the dead hour of
darkness, and the pewter and earthen dishes appeared to be dashed on
the kitchen floor, though, in the morning, all were found uninjured on
their respective shelves.

The children were chiefly marked out as objects of dislike by their
unearthly tormenter. The curtains of their beds would be violently
pulled backward and forward. Anon, a heavy weight, as of a human being,
would press them nearly to suffocation. They would then scream out for
their “daddy” and “mammy,” who occupied the adjoining room, and thus
the whole family was disturbed night after night. Things could not long
go on after this fashion. The farmer and his good dame resolved to
leave a place where they had not the least shadow of rest or comfort.

The farmer, whose name was George Gilbertson, was following, with
his wife and family, the last load of furniture, when they met a
neighbouring farmer, whose name was John Marshall, between whom and the
unhappy tenant the following colloquy took place—

“Well, George, and soa you’re leaving t’ould hoose at last?”

“Heigh, Johnny, ma lad, I’m forc’d till it, for that boggart torments
us soa we can neither rest neet nor day for’t. It seems loike to have
such a malice again’t poor bairns. It ommost kills my poor dame here at
thoughts on’t, and soa, ye see, we’re forc’d to flitt like.”

He had got thus far in his complaint when, behold! a shrill voice, from
a deep upright churn, called out—

“Ay, ay, George, we ’re flitting, you see.”

“Confound thee,” says the poor farmer, “if I’d known thou’d been there
I wadn’t ha stirrid a peg. Nay, nay, it’s to na use, Mally,” turning
to his wife, “we may as weel turn back again to t’ould hoose, as be
tormented in another that’s not sa convenient.”

They are said to have turned back, but the boggart and they afterwards
came to a better understanding, though it long continued its trick of
shooting the horn from the knot–hole.