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My Boggart Companion

boggart j b monge 2 (2)
by Jean Baptiste Monge

Many times, since I was very young, people would ask me about my ‘strange little pet‘…

Cutting a very long story short, I didn’t have any pets let alone a ‘strange little one‘! Yet people would insist they’d seen one close to me, or within my home.

boggart brian froud (2)
by Brian Froud

They weren’t ever big as such, not like horse size or anything,  but mostly the size of a medium sized dog.

And even though the description was never the same  –  it varied from a big hedgehog running on its back legs  –  to a cat-like-monkey-thing asleep on my stairs.

I’d even seen a sort of monkey thing myself- very briefly – swinging from my kitchen ceiling.

The only things they seemed to have in common, was they all had shaggy brown coats,  and that they very soon disappeared!

I told John* all about that, and he was aware of some of the other (unconnected?)  things that quite often happened to me, and he said, quite matter-of-factly,

“It seems to me like you’ve got a Boggart caught up in your aura!”

Well, I certainly didn’t expect anything like that!  But what John didn’t know was that for the first 10 years of  my life, we’d lived in a big clough** in Manchester  –  Boggart Hole Clough.

boggart brian froud 3 (2)
by Brian Froud

I’d spent many hours in that clough, among the trees etc, hiding away from my family!

And in fact that clough always felt more like home to me  –  I felt like I was among friends whilst in there…

Adrienne, United Kingdom.

* John Hall. You can read John’s own incredible Faerie encounters, and amazing accompanying photos, on the Isle of Man on my website here: Part Three and here: Part Two and here: Part One

** Clough = a steep valley or ravine.

 

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Lights at Trundle Hill Fort

I remember going to the Trundle (Hill Fort) in Sussex one Lammas eve just before sunset only to find it unusually quiet (I had the place to myself).

Trundle hill fort sussex (2)

southdowns.gov.uk

Got the odd feeling the whole hill was being somehow set outside of the stream of time for a while, or somehow time was flowing round it (this won’t make much sense to anyone who hasn’t felt something similar themselves).

At the top I happened to look down at the grass and was amazed to see what we call “glow-worms”. The insects with the lit up bodies. They hadn’t been there/glowing before that. Not one or two mind you, but hundreds and hundreds. The whole damn hill was covered in them like stars! It was a really beautiful sight at sunset I can tell you.

Now I grew up on a farm not so very far away from this hill in Surrey, and never saw a “glow-worm” in all my life before that (I was 18-ish), and I have only ever seen one since (I’m 50).

I definitely got the feeling the “fair folk” were putting on a show somehow, manipulating the natural world, though I dare say the less impressionable souls will see nothing to wonder at. But there it is.

Guthfrith Karlsson – England.

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Boudicea and the Wee Folk

I want to share a story that when he told it in 1960, nearly ruined my Granda. I guarantee you’ve never heard a faerie tale like this one.

I never knew my Granda, he died young, but my father says he was regarded as a man of strong, sound mind until he went around town telling ‘that feckin story‘. Then he lost a lot of friends, and never really recovered from that. It’s pretty sad really, but I guess it was a different time.

So, one day in 1960, my Granda was travelling on one of those double buses from Malahide into Dublin when he bumped into an old friend from school. No one remembers his real name, they just called him Dinny.

So Granda’s sitting there on the bus and Dinny gets on and they have a rare old reunion. They hadn’t seen each other years you see, since they were around 14.

Granda was 20 years old in 1960 and so Dinny should have been, but he hadn’t aged a day and Granda said so. Then Dinny spun him a tale. He said he had ‘been away’ for years with ‘the good folk’.

He claimed to have seen some incredible things, and I’m only telling you the story as was told me.

So Dinny told Granda he had lived with the others in their place, eating and drinking and dancing with them but also working hard. He said he worked on their firepits, and that they’re all over Ireland. He travelled with a bunch of them on a wagon, fixing and lighting pits all over for their cooking and nightime revelries.

Well Granda listened to Dinny and took his words and manner for sincere. Repeating that part of Dinny’s story isn’t what got Granda in strife, I guess in the 60’s the idea of travelling around in a wagon with Faerie was considered believable enough. It was what came next that caused the trouble.

Dinny went on to tell Granda that he had, on several occasions, met Boudicea, (yes, the Celtic Warrior Queen who battled the invading Romans) and that she had been living among the good folk since her defeat in England in the year 60AD.

boudicea

Dinny told Granda that she had only recently crossed the waters to the other side. Which we suppose to mean, died. Granda was enthralled, hanging off Dinny’s every word.

Dinny told him Boudicea was ‘not the kind of woman you meet every day’, but a lovely lady nevertheless.

Granda believed every word and wanted to hear more but Dinny cut him off and said he shouldn’t say anymore for fear of strife from the good folk. He said he had gotten in a ‘dot of bother with them you see’, and had to come away for a while, to mix among his own folk while things cool off.

And that was it. They arrived in Dublin and parted ways. Granda never saw Dinny again but believed his story with his whole heart. He told everyone he could about it and even wrote a piece about it for a local paper, which they did not print.

Everyone thought Granda had lost his mind. Not for believing Dinny, but for talking about it so openly. Things were hard for him after that and he died only 5 years later.

Maura – Dublin.