In English folklore, a boggart is a household fairy which causes things to disappear, milk to sour, and dogs to go lame.
The name boggart may have its origin in the Welsh bwg (= bug) meaning a ghost, bugbear, hobgoblin.
Boggarts are mischievous spirits responsible for mishaps and poltergeist activity within the home and in the countryside.
Always evil, the boggart will follow its family wherever they flee.
In Northern England, at least, there was the belief that the boggart should never be named, for when the boggart was given a name, it would not be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive...
It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces.
Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them. Sometimes a boggart will also pull on a person's ears.
Hanging a horseshoe on the door of a house is said to keep a boggart away.
Boggart can also be a malevolent genius loci inhabiting fields, marshes or other topographical features...
In the folklore of North-West England, boggarts live under bridges on dangerous sharp bends on roads, and it is considered bad luck for drivers not to offer their polite greetings as they cross...
John and Caitlin Matthews give a good example of this in their The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures:
A Yorkshire farmer called George Gilbertson got on the wrong side of a boggart which attached itself to his household. The boggart spread mischief all over the house, snatching food from the children’s mouths, throwing porridge into cupboards – all invisibly.
One day, one of the children discovered an elf-bore or knothole in the wood of a cupboard. He started to play with it, thrusting the point of a shoe-horn into the hole.
Immediately, the shoe-horn popped out and struck him on the forehead.
The boy had discovered the boggart’s hiding place.
Daily the children played this game with their new friend, but the adults found the disorder and upset that the boggart caused about the place too much to bear, so they decided to move.
As they were loading up a neighbor came along to ask why they were moving. ‘I’m forced to because of that damned boggart. It’s worried my good wife nearly to death and that’s why we’re flitting.’
From the depths of a churn upon the cart came an echoing voice, ‘And that’s why we’re flitting!’ It was the boggart. George started to unload the cart saying to his wife, ‘If I’d known, we needn’t have gone to all this trouble.
Still, better to be tormented in the old house as be tormented in a house we don’t know.’ And so they returned...
Boggarts live in the darkness in cupboards, the closet, and under the bed. Some legends say they are brownies that have gone bad. Either because they are mischievous in nature, or because they were wronged through some interaction with humans.
More:
See hobgoblin:
See Brownie:
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