Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/292

 270 clad in rustling silks, and so was a shady avenue near North Shields, This last Silky was thought to be the ghost of a lady who was mistress to the profligate Duke of Argyle in the reign of William III., and died suddenly, not without suspicion of murder, at Chirton, near Shields, one of his residences. The Banshee of Loch Nigdal, too, was arrayed in a silk dress, green in colour. All these traditions date from a period when silk was not in common use, and therefore attracted notice in country places.

Sir Cuthbert Sharpe, in his Bishoprick Garland, tells us of the Picktree Brag, a spirit as mischievous and uncannie us the Dunnie, who appeared in widely different shapes on different occasions. Sometimes it was like a calf, with a white handkerchief round its neck, and a bushy tail; sometimes, in form of a coachhorse, it trotted “along the lonin afore folk, settin’ up a great nicker and a whinny now and then.” Again it appeared as a “dick-ass,” as four men holding up a white sheet, or as a naked man without a head. Sir Cuthbert’s informant, an ancient dame, told him how her uncle had a white suit of clothes, and the first time he ever put them on he met the Brag, and never did he put them on again but some misfortune befel him. Once, in that very suit, returning from a christening, he encountered the Brag, and being a bold man, he leapt upon its back; “but, when he came to the four lonin ends, the Brag joggled him so sore, that he could hardly keep his seat; and at last it threw him into the middle o’ the pond, and ran away, setting up a great nicker and laugh, just for all the world like a Christian.”

The Hedley Kow was a bogie, mischievous rather than malignant, which haunted the village of Hedley, near Ebchester. His appearance was never very alarming, and he used to end his frolics with a horse-laugh at the expense of his victims. He would present himself to some old dame gathering sticks, in the form of a truss of straw, which she would be sure to take up and carry away. Then it would become so heavy she would have to lay her burden down, on which the straw would become “quick,” rise upright, and shuffle away before her, till at last it vanished from her sight with a laugh and shout. Again, in the shape of