THE ELEMENT ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAIRIES: An A-Z of Fairies, Pixies, and other Fantastical Creatures

Barguest

A hellish black hound of the northern English moors, eyes afire, on the hunt for its next victim. Only those doomed to die can hear the howl of the barguest and their only escape is to cross running water, for the hound cannot follow.

Bariaua

Benevolent nature spirits in the folklore of the Tubetube and Wangawga people of Melanesia. These intensely shy beings dwell in trees and dread being seen by humans. However, they have been known to borrow canoes belonging to mortals, for it is said they are not able to build their own seagoing craft.

In one account, two bariaua borrowed a canoe one night to go fishing. Returning to shore in the early hours of dawn, they were surprised by an early-riser, a man named Burea. They disappeared immediately, leaving their catch of fish and their net in the canoe.

Burea shared the fish with the other villagers and hung the net up in the potama, or clubhouse.

The next morning the net had gone, claimed back by the bariaua, but the kindly spirits did not inflict any punishment upon Burea for eating their haul of fish.

Baron Samedi

Depicted as a top-hatted, formally dressed corpselike figure in the Haitian Voodoo tradition, Baron Samedi has great powers over life and death, and represents both the hedonism and enjoyment of life and the inevitability of death.

Basile, Giambattista (c.1575–1632)

Born in Naples, Giambattista Basile was an Italian soldier, poet, writer, and collector of fairy tales. He is best known for his collection of Neapolitan tales, La Cunto de la Cunti (The Story of Stories) (1634, 1636), also known as Il Pentamerone, a collection of 50 stories based on traditional Italian folk tales. It was published posthumously by his sister under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. It includes the earliest recorded versions of many tales that are still familiar to readers today, including “Puss in Boots,” “Rapunzel,” “Snow White,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Cinderella.”

Basile’s collection influenced later fairytale writers and collectors, including Charles Perrault in France and the brothers Grimm in Germany.

Bathing Fairies

The curious phenomenon of a troop of fairies discovered bathing in the health-giving waters of Ilkley Wells in the north of England is recounted in the 1878 edition of the Folk-Lore Record. A local resident asks the villagers what kind of things these fairies were, and they usually maintain that they are active little beings and resemble the human form, that they are “lill folk, and always dressed in green, but so agile that no-one [can] ever come up to them.” The bathman, William Butterfield, who looks after the Wells, further describes how he came to open up the baths one morning and had great trouble with the door, until:

… with one supreme effort, he forced it perfectly open, and back it flew with a great bang! Then whirr, whirr, whirr, such a noise and sight! all over the water and dipping into it was a lot of little creatures, all dressed in green from head to foot, none of them more than eighteen inches high, and making a chatter and jabber thoroughly unintelligible. They seemed to be taking a bath, only they bathed with all their clothes on. He shouts, ‘Hallo there!’ then away the whole tribe went helter skelter, toppling and tumbling, heads over heels, heels over heads, and all the while making a noise not unlike a disturbed nest of young partridges.

The water is left “still and clear” and William Butterfield never sees them again.

Bauchan

(Or Bogan.) In Scottish folklore a type of hobgoblin. One example is described in J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands (1860–1862) as the protector of a family on the Island of Skye, but otherwise as a violently hostile spirit. He appeared only in the hours of darkness, “and any stray man who passed was sure to become a victim, the bodies being always found dead, and in the majority of instances mutilated also … He was seldom, if ever, seen by women, and did no harm to either them or to children.” He was eventually caught and tucked under the arm of his captor, who wanted to see him in daylight. The bauchan had never been heard to speak, but began begging to be set free, swearing “on the book, on the candle, and on the black stocking” to be gone. He was liberated after this promise and flew off singing a mournful refrain.

Baumesel

Literally, “Ass of the Trees,” the Baumesel is a tree-dwelling goblin in the folklore of Germany.

Baykok

(Or Bakaak.) In the Ojibwe nation’s traditional beliefs, the baykok manifests as a malevolent skeletal presence who eats the liver of its victims. In Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha it represents death.

Bean Nighe

Another guise of the banshee in Scottish and Irish folklore is as the bean nighe, or washer woman, who is to be found beside lonely streams washing blood from the clothes of those soon to die.

On the Island of Skye the bean nighe is said to be “squat in figure and not unlike a small pitiful child,” according to J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900).

Bean-Sidhe

See Banshee; also Bean Nighe.

Bediarhari

Malaysian term for fairies, or the “good folk.”

Bela

A tree spirit in the folk beliefs of the Kolarian people of India. When the Kolarian people made a clearing in the jungle it was customary to leave a solitary tree standing for the spirits to take refuge in. These trees became shrines to the nature spirits of the jungle.

According to an account in the Annals of Rural Bengal (1868), a jungle shrine in Bengal consisted of a bela tree, where the spirit resided, along with a kachmula tree, and a saura tree. The Kolarian left earth, rice, and money at the foot of the bela tree as offerings to the tree spirit.

Belliegha

A Maltese water monster inhabiting, and controlling, wells and water sources; belliegha translates as “whirlpool.”

Bendith y Mamau

“The Mother’s Blessing,” the local name for fairies in Glamorgan, Wales, where, according to Sir John Rhys’ Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901):

… the parish was then crammed full of Bendith y Mamau, and when the moon was bright and full they were wont to keep people awake with their music till the break of day. The fairies of Llanfabon were remarkable on account of their ugliness, and they were equally remarkable on account of the tricks they played. Stealing children from their cradles during the absence of their mothers and luring men by means of their music into some pestilential and desolate bog were things that seemed to afford them considerable amusement.

Further accounts of their tricks include details of the underground secret passages leading to their dwelling and to caverns of stored gold where:

They have, they say, a gold ladder of one or two and twenty rungs, and it is along this that they pass up and down. They have a little word; and it suffices if the foremost on the ladder merely utters that word, for the stone to rise of itself; while there is another word, which it suffices the hindmost in going down to utter so that the stone shuts behind him.

A farmhand accidentally gains access to the passage but is discovered by the fairies who take him to live with them and “… at the end of the seven years he escaped with his hat full of guineas.” However, he passes on the secret to a farmer, who accumulates great wealth:

… thrice the fill of a salt-chest of guineas, half-guineas, and seven-and-sixpenny pieces in one day. But he got too greedy, and like many a greedy one before him his crime proved his death; for he went down the fourth time in the dusk of the evening, when the fairies came upon him, and he was never seen any more.

Bendigeidfran

See Bran the Blessed.

Ben Varrey

“Woman of the Sea,” or mermaid, in Manx folklore, which has many tales of the half-fish, half-woman’s beauty enchanting young men and luring them into the sea. Mermaids from the Isle of Man are also portrayed as benevolent toward deserving mortals, warning fishermen of impending storms and thereby averting disaster.

One account of a mermaid who is captured by shore-dwellers and attended for three days with the utmost care tells of her eventual liberty and reunion with her own kind, whereupon she expresses her puzzlement as to why mortals should throw away the water in which they have boiled eggs.

Berkhyas

In ancient Persian folklore as retold in Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology (1828), Berkhyas is described as a div (or demon) of enormous stature with eyes like pools of blood, a hairy body, and boar’s tusks for teeth. Pigeons nest in the serpentine tendrils of his hair.

Bertha, Frau

In Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (1866), William Henderson writes:

German Folk-lore connects unbaptised infants with the Furious Host or wild hunt … the mysterious lady Frau Bertha is ever attended by troops of unbaptised children, and she takes them with her when she joins the wild hunstman, and sweeps with him and his wild pack across the wintry sky.

Bhoot

An unsettled, wandering spirit caused by a violent death, taking on the appearance of an animal or human in Indian mythology. Clothed in white and with backward-facing feet, it casts no shadow.

Biasd Beulach

In Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1902), J. G. Campbell relates a tale from the Island of Skye describing the malignant spirit of the Pass of Odail, which was “more awful that its character was not distinctly known.” It appeared in the dead of night sometimes in the shape of a deformed man and sometimes as a roaming beast, uttering unearthly howls and shrieks. It ceased to appear after the body of a man was found, with two wounds piercing his side and his leg, each bearing the imprint of a hand. It was considered impossible that these wounds could have been inflicted by a human.

Billy Winkler

A Lancashire nursery spirit similar to Wee Willie Winkie, who sprinkles magic dust or sand into the eyes of children to get them to sleep. In the 1908 novel The Blue Lagoon: A Romance by H. de Vere Stacpoole, Billy Winker is invoked as a similar figure to the Sandman: “‘Shut your eyes tight … or Billy Winker will be dridgin’ sand in them.’”

However, in a traditional folk song from Lancashire in John Trafford Clegg’s Sketches and Rhymes in the Rochdale Dialect (1895), Billy Winker is a drayman a little too fond of drinking the contents of the barrels of ale he delivers.

Biloko

(Also eloko.) Malevolent dwarves in the folklore of the Nkundo people of central Zaire. Bilokos used bells to bewitch humans, placing spells upon them that could result in death. These malignant creatures dwelled in hollow trees and subsisted on a diet of human flesh. They are described as having beards of grass and wearing garments of leaves.

In one tale a wife stays behind at the hut while her husband goes hunting. As he leaves, he warns her that if she hears the ringing of a bell she must pay no attention to it, for it portends death. However, later that day, when the woman is alone in the silence of the forest, she is charmed to hear the ringing of a little bell and invites the owner of the bell to join her at the hut.

A biloko dwarf emerges from the forest and joins the woman. She offers him some food cooked over her fire, but he tells her he eats only human flesh. By now the woman is under his spell and she offers him the flesh of her arm.

The next day, the bell rings again and this time the bewitched woman offers the biloko the flesh of her buttocks.

On the third day, suspecting some evil is afoot, the husband does not go hunting, but instead hides behind the hut. When the dwarf appears and holds a knife to the woman’s side, proclaiming he wants to eat her liver, the man fires an arrow at him.

Struck by the blow, the biloko falls down, driving his knife into the woman’s side, and killing her.

The husband drives his spear into him and beheads him, then invites the people from the village to see the vanquished dwarf.

Biriir ina Baroqo

A Somalian folk tale recounts the battle of two giants who each ruled half of the country. Habbad was cruel and wicked, but the benevolent giant Biriir ina Barqo came to hear of his despotic ways and defeated the oppressor in a battle, thus uniting the country under his peaceful rule.

Bisimbi

Nature spirits associated with waterfalls, pools, and also rocky outcrops, who are described in traditional Central African folk legends. They take on diverse names and attributes in other areas of the continent. Generally benevolent toward humans, they can be troublesome if generous offerings are not forthcoming and downright malevolent in their attempts to penetrate the brains of children. Mothers have devised a simple foil to this endeavor by placing a wooden sliver across the fontanelle on their babies’ heads.

Black Annis

A poem by Leicestershire poet John Heyrick, who lived in the eighteenth century, describes Black Annis thus:

Tis said the soul of mortal man recoil’d,

To view Black Annis’ eye, so fierce and wild;

Vast talons, foul with human flesh, there grew

In place of hands, and features livid blue

Glar’d in her visage; while the obscene waist

Warm skins of human victims close embraced.

This flesh-eating, blue-faced hag lived in a cave in the Dane Hills near Leicester. She was supposed to have excavated it with her bare hands, using only her long, clawlike iron nails. She was partial to a diet of children and lambs, and when she had devoured them, their skins were spread over the branches of the giant oak tree at the mouth of the cave.

Black Dogs

See Barguest, Capelthwaite, Cù Sith, Cwn Annwn, Yeth Hound.

Blodeuedd

Literally, “Flower Face,” taking her name from the Welsh blodeu, “flower” or “blossom,” and gwedd, “face” or “appearance,” Blodeuedd is one of the main female figures in the fourth branch of the Mabinogion, a collection of ancient epic Welsh stories, which relates how she was made from oak, broom, and meadowsweet as a magical bride for Lleu Llaw Gyffes, “Lleu the Fair of the Steady Hand,” son of Arianhod.

Bloody Bones

See Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

Blud

A malevolent fairy in Slavic mythology who causes confusion and disorientation.

Blue Burches

A folk tale from Somerset describes the pranks of Blue Burches (breeches), a hobgoblin of a mischievous but harmless disposition whose tricks were endured with forbearance by the cobbler in whose house he lived. In time, the local clergymen heard of the hobgoblin and came to the conclusion he was an incarnation of the Devil, whereupon they set out to exorcise him. The cobbler’s son unwittingly betrayed Blue Burches in the guise of an old white horse grazing nearby and the parsons cried out, “Depart from me, you wicked—!” The hobgoblin dived into the duck pond and was gone.

Blue-Cap

A spirit of the mines in the north of England, manifesting as a small, flickering blue flame. The diligent blue-caps expected and received their modest wages in a far-flung corner of the mine and were helpful to respectful miners, warning them of prospective dangers.

See also Coblynau, Knockers, Kobold.

Blue Men of the Minch

“The Blue Men of the Minch,” a tale relating particularly to that stretch of water in the Hebrides between Lewis and the Shiant Islands, is related in J. G. Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900), in which an eyewitness “who was very positive he had himself seen a one” describes his encounter: “A blue-coloured man with a long grey face and floating from the waist out of the water, followed the boat he was in for a long time, and was occasionally so near that the observer might have put his hand upon him.”

The Blue Men were held responsible for the stormy waters of the Minch, leaving their undersea cave-dwellings to swim toward passing ships to wreck them and only being thwarted in their intent by canny captains who could outwit them with rhyme and a sharp tongue. They are variously described as fallen angels or, as in D. A. Mackenzie’s Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Life (1935), as being based on historical accounts of captured Moors in Ireland, called “Blue Men,” who were abandoned in the ninth century by Norse seafarers.

Bodach

Literally, “old man” or “specter,” this name is found in numerous place names in Scotland. Tigh nam Bodach or “House of the Specter,” is an example of an ancient pagan site in a remote glen, where a “family” of curiously shaped stones bears the names of the Bodach, his wife Cailleach, and their children. These supernatural beings, as folk tales relate, were responsible for the fertility of the area and, being treated kindly by the local population, left the stones to be moved out of the shelter each year during the summer to ensure continuing abundance.

However, a different creature altogether, the Bodach Glas, or Dark Gray Man, is described in Waverley by Sir Walter Scott as being a gray specter warning of impending death or catastrophe.

Bodachan Sabhaill

A helpful barn brownie, the Little Old Man of the Barn “will thresh with no light in the mouth of the night” while the old farmer sleeps, according to a verse in D. A. Mackenzie’s Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Life (1935).

Bogan

See Bauchan.

Bogeyman

Tales of the Bag-man, or Man with the Sack, are told in many cultures to frighten children into good behavior. They generally portray him as a nebulous, threatening spirit carrying a bag or sack on his back in which he puts children who misbehave.

Boggart

There are many local tales of this mischievous, sometimes malevolent, brownie, either in the guise of a household spirit who steals the food from the table and torments the family or as a tricksy field-dweller.

In an old Lincolnshire story the boggart is described as “a squat hairy man, strong as a six-year-old horse, and with arms almost as long as tackle poles” who declares he is the rightful owner of the land a farmer has purchased; however, the farmer is cunning and agrees that they should share the disputed field, asking the boggart to choose whether he will take what lies above or below the earth. The boggart chooses to take what grows above ground, and the farmer promptly sets potatoes. Whichever choice the boggart makes, the farmer thwarts him, until the boggart leaves in disgust, telling the farmer he wants nothing more to do with his land. “And off he goes and nivver comes back no more …”

Bogies

A name encompassing a variety of troublesome spirits such as bug-a-boos, bugbears, boggarts, and bogles, whose aim is to sow discord and mischief among humans, although as in the tale of the boggart (see here), they can sometimes be outwitted by a quick mind and clever tongue.

See Awd Goggie, Churnmilk Peg, Gooseberry Wife, Jack in Irons, Jenny Greenteeth, Melsh Dick, Mumpoker, Nursery Bogies, Padfoot, Shellycoat, Rawhead and Bloody Bones.