Young, 'What is a Boggart Hole?'

An examination of the early sources (mainly 19C) for the Boggart Hole Clough legend, an area of English countryside in the Manchester conurbation.

This talk was given 27 Nov 1888 at Burnley for the Burnley Literary and Scientific Club. It was, then, published in the Club’s Transactions: the bibliographical reference is – James McKay, ‘The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts’, Transactions of the Burnley Literary & Scientific Club 6 (1888), 113-127. There are three good reasons for reprinting it here. First, though there are lots of scattered references to boggarts from nineteenth-century Lancashire this is the single longest sustained piece of writing on the subject. Second, McKay’s essay is not easy to get hold of. The pdf of the Transactions is floating around online, but for 95% of the population, perhaps 99% of these who would be interested, it will prove difficult to find. Third, the publishers of the Transactions cut McKay’s talk towards the end. However, at three points contemporary newspapers were more generous in reporting McKay’s words. It has been possible, then, in the footnotes, to restore some of the original text or at least the original content. Welcome, then, to ‘The Evolution of East Lancashire Boggarts’ a century and a quarter after it was first given.

The author maps the supernatural onto the landscape of eleven nineteenth-century, north-western communities: Bradford (WY), Burnley (La), Delph-Dobcross (WY), Droylsden (La), Gorton (La), Greenfield (WY), Hawkshead (La), Lees (La), Moston (La), Natland (We) and Worsthorne (La). Here locals feared boggarts, dobbies, fairies and phantom dogs and ‘public bogies’ (celebrated local spirits) were often associated with specific points in the landscape. These bogies, in fact, typically appeared radially around towns and villages, on human or natural boundaries and they, generally, were to be found on the edge of but not within urban centres. The almost total absence of public bogies from urban centres in the case studies is surprising and runs against the grain of contemporary scholarship. Does this represent a problem with the data, or a previously underappreciated aspect of the supernatural in the north-west and perhaps in Britain more generally? Time and Mind 13 (2020), 399-424

Hardwick, Charles ‘The north of England domestic or ‘flitting’ boggart: its Scandinavian origins’, Manchester Literary Club Papers 6 (1880), 278-283 This was Hardwick's second go at Roby's travesty of a boggart story (plagiarised by Croker). The first time he had been slavish in his praise...

A discussion of boggarts in dialect literature, particularly 19C Lancashire dialect. There is also a list of boggart works.

IW Natural History & Archaeological Society Bulletin, 2023

A short survey of sites with the name Black Barrow, mainly in southern England and especially on the Isle of Wight, in order to throw some light on the cultural context of their possible meanings.

This paper explores the folklore of Boggart Hole Clough, an inner-city park in Blackley, North Manchester. This park consists of 171 acres of dense forest and deep ravines, situated three miles north of Manchester’s city centre, and it possesses a wealth of local folktales and traditions. The majority of these tales centre on a supernatural character known as ‘the Boggart’. These folktales and traditions are recounted in the works of 19th-century folklorists and historians, and survived the 20th century through oral transmission amongst local residents. However, by the late 20th/early 21st centuries, a different form of dissemination became prominent: commercialisation. Drawing on ethnographic material gathered in the area of Blackley, this paper considers how local Manchester societies and merchandisers have utilised and, more importantly, adapted the figure of the Boggart for various purposes. These include an environmental group, a drama group, primary school art and nature schemes, and a local beer brewery, not to mention the park itself, which draws on the folktales in order to attract visitors. As a consequence of this relatively recent rise in the commercial utilisation of folklore, tales of the Boggart have become both more well-known and more varied amongst local residents. By ‘sponsoring the supernatural’ in such a way, these societies and merchandisers are not only contributing greatly to the continuing dissemination of local folklore; they are also shaping and colouring it to suit their purposes. They are changing and adapting the figure of the Boggart in order to appeal to 21st century ‘consumers’

There follows a taster for Higson, South Manchester Supernatural (978-1-8380969-0-8) This is southern Manchester as you have never seen it before. We have: shape-changing ghosts; cow-levitating Boggarts; child-murdering Jenny Greenteeth; the tree-haunting Nut Nan; Dicky, a railway-destroying skull; din-making Clap Cans; border-guarding Pad Feet; and, beware, above all, Raura Peena the last fairy of Saddleworth. All this in a hundred-and-three pages, in the Pwca Ghost, Witch and Fairy Pamphlet series. The author, John Higson (1825-1871) wrote, from the 1850s, a series of supernatural sketches of Gorton (where he was born and grew up), Droylsden (where he lived), Lees (where he died), Saddleworth (where he walked) and other areas he visited, including Preston and Derbyshire. Born to a poor family, raised without an education, Higson became, through hard-work and talent one of the most exciting Lancashire folklore writers of his generation, and got to be friends with some of the most influential county authors of his day. However, because Higson never brought his folklore work together in a single volume his supernatural prose (and two songs) have been lost in obscure and, in some cases, forgotten publications. For the first time now his folklore compositions, from fifteen different articles and books, are gathered together in the hope of giving Higson (and the supernatural world he inhabited) the attention they so richly deserve. Also included: a short biography and William E. A. Axon’s ‘Hartshead Boggart’ (a tribute to Higson from a friend).

Bog bodies, 2020

Mossbawn is the name of Seamus Heaney's family home: a farm in Co. Derry, located at the edge of bogland near Lough Beg (Heaney 1980). Though 'bawn' is the anglicised word for a cattle enclosure, the notion of his being 'moss-born' seems fitting. Of the bogs he once said, 'It is as if I am betrothed to them' , remembering an earthy 'initiation' of swimming in a moss hole, from which he emerged steeped in the peat, marked from then on by 'this hankering for the underground side of things' (Heaney 2002: 5-6). If the iconic work by Glob ([1969] 1971) brought the bog bodies into the public light, Heaney's poems magnified their meaning, giving them a contemporary resonance. Yet those poems also made people look again at the bog landscape. Heaney brought a dwelling eye to the place, making us see them again, not as a marginal landscape or cultural backwater, but as the place he was born and brought up: an omphalos, the navel of the world that surrounded it (Heaney 2002: 1). He did not shy away from their dangers but showed how such fear could be mobilised in the cultural imagination, while also bringing to light its riches and treasures. This chapter attempts to achieve the same re-envisioning of the bog, through palaeoenvironmental, archaeological and archival evidence. The bog, the moss, the mire and the moor Peat forms under waterlogged conditions where plant matter grows faster than it can decay, due to an oxygen-excluding environment that slows the normal breakdown of organic matter (van der Sanden 1996: 21). Highly humified peat contains well-decomposed plant matter that has created a dark-brown, blackish amorphous mass, but where plant remains are still identifiable it is described as poorly humified (van der Sanden 1996: 21). Peat can grow at variable rates: Godwin ([1981] 2009) records 6 cm per century at Scaleby Moss (Cumbria) compared with 3.3 cm Crossing the bog 4

MA Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2023

This thesis examines the boggart, a supernatural creature, in nineteenth-century North-West homes. It challenges the disenchantment thesis, suggesting industrial developments and changing ideas of home and parenthood contributed to the decline of boggarts. I also explore boggart disturbances in corridors, staircases, and cupboards, comparing them to domestic servants. The kitchen, where milk was heavily featured, was seen as a vulnerable space, allowing boggarts to represent a form of personalised uncanny. The bedroom, where boggarts often tormented children, can be seen as a manifestation of parental anxieties. I also explore the concept of the 'boggart house', comparing it to haunted houses, hinting at hidden disorder within the home. I conclude that the concepts of supernatural creatures causing disturbances have shifted, with contemporary folklore focusing on ghosts and poltergeists.