Fairies, Folklore and Forteana

SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF

BOGGART OUTREACH

It is not an everyday question, but, reader, does your gran, your great aunt or the retired chap who lives next door know something about boggarts?

Let me explain why I ask. I’m presently finishing a book on boggarts, the supernatural monsters that enlivened existence through much of the Midlands and northern England in the 19th century (see FT129:52, 133:51, 136:53, 139:50, 326:25). The boggart was well documented in our books and newspapers from about 1840 to 1914. I’ve managed to gather together, over the last few years, several hundred thousand words on the subject. But neither folklorists nor forteans proved interested in boggarts after the Great War. Indeed, the next decades are a boggart black hole. We know, thanks to very occasional references, that in the 1930s and 1940s, some still talked of boggarts and that kids were still sent petrified to bed with the threat that “the boggart will get you!” There are even some places where in the 1950s and 1960s people confessed to boggart fear. Then it was all over; the next we hear of the boggart is its appearance in Katharine Briggs’s fairy dictionary, from where it made its way into Susan Cooper’s books, the Spiderwick Chronicles and the Harry Potter universe: the fantasy boggart had been created. What this means is that there are a number of people walking around today, born between 1915 and say 1960, who grew up with boggarts: not JK Rowling’s comic turn, but the terrifying original.

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t, at first, recognise how important these last boggarted folk were. But I’ve now had two striking instances where informants alive today have been able to fill gaps in my records: in one case, someone explained why boggart roads are bent; in another, why you should avoid boggart fields. I am now looking to gather together a few dozen witnesses from this last generation of boggart believers and ask them some modest questions. For me it is already incredibly valuable to know that the word ‘boggart’ was used by neighbours in a given year in a given town or city. If the informant can only tell me that, I’d be very grateful. If he or she has experiences or stories or other insights, all the better. I can conduct the interview by email, by phone, by letter... I can do so through an intermediary if necessary and anonymity is, I hope it goes without saying, assured. I’ve deliberately kept details sparse about boggarts in this column so as not to create bias in the results. But my colleague Lucy Evans turned up in her studies, a genuinely creepy 19th-century boggart picture, a copy of which I’ll be very glad to pass on as a thank you. Please make contact at: sycourses@yahoo.com.

SOME KIDS WERE STILL SENT PETRIFIED TO BED WITH THE THREAT THAT “THE BOGGART WILL GET YOU!”