Chapter VII: Fairies and Boggarts

Puck or Robin Goodfellow. Peris, Pixies, and Ginns. Queen Mab.
Lancashire boggarts and fairies. The bargaist. The fairy of Mellor
Moor, Lancashire. Lumb Farm boggart, near Blackburn. "Boggart Ho'
Clough," near Manchester. George Cheetham's boggart. The devil made
a monk. The headless dog or woman at Preston. Raising the devil.
"Raw head and bloody bones." Edwin Waugh's account of the
Grislehurst boggart. The laying of boggarts. Driving a stake
through the body of a cock buried with the boggart. Sacred or
lightning birds. Superstitions about cocks and hens. Killing a
Lancashire wizard. Cruel sacrifice of chanticleer. Divining by
means of a cock. Boggarts scared by a cock crowing. The cock an
emblem of AEsculapius. The black cock crows in the Niflheim, or
"land of gloom." The lion afraid of a white cock. Father Morolla's
account of the revivification of a dead cock. The cockatrice. A
cruelly slaughtered cock and red cow's milk a sovereign remedy for
consumption. The Scandinavian golden coloured cock's crowing the
signal for the dawn of the Ragnarock, "the great day of arousing."
The Hindoos "cast out devils" by the aid of a cock slaughtered as a
sacrifice. Modern Jewish custom. Game cock feathers in the bed
cause a dying person to linger in pain. Hothersall Hall boggart,
Lancashire, laid beneath a laurel tree, watered with milk. Rowan,
ash, and red thread potential against boggarts, witches, and devils.
Scandinavian and German boggarts. The Hindoo pitris or fathers.
Zwergs, dwarfs, "ancients" or ancestors. Good fairies, elves, etc.
Lord Duffin transported by fairies from Scotland to Paris.
Classical ghost story. Singular superstition, of Eastern character,
at Darwen, Lancashire. A somewhat similar one in Australia. Fairy
rings, their imaginary and real origin. Page 124

CHAPTER VIII.

FERN-SEED AND ST. JOHN'S-WORT SUPERSTITIONS.

Human invisibility. The helmet of Hades or Pluto, and the Teutonic
"invisible cap." Modern references to this singular superstition.
Ferns, luck-bringing plants. Said to have sprung from the
lightning. St. John's-wort. German story of accidental
invisibility. St John's eve. Fern seed, a love charm. Samuel
Bamford's Lancashire story in "Boggart Ho' Clough," near
Manchester. St. John superseded the Scandinavian Baldr. The
_Osmunda regalis_. _Osmunda_, one of the appellations of Thor.
The vervain, a plant of spells and enchantments. The Sanscrit
parna and the modern fern. Origin of the name "Boggart
Ho' Clough." Page 143