Folklore Tales:

Folklores are stories that originate from traditional beliefs, cultural customs and stories that
come from communities and are typically passed down through generations. These stories tend
to revolve around myths, fables, legends and beliefs in the supernatural world. These can often
be referred to as old wives tales.
5) The dandy devil dogs of Devon
The tale:
• Dando was a parson, but he cared more about hunting than his parishioners’ souls. One Sunday he
was out hunting with his friends when they ran out of drink in their hip flasks. The estate upon
which they were hunting was called ‘Earth’, and so Dando joked, “Go to hell for it if you can’t find
any on ‘Earth’!”
• At that moment a dark stranger appeared and offered Dando a swig from his flask – and very tasty
it was. “Do the gods drink this excellent stuff?”, Dando asked. “Devils do,” said the stranger. He
then began to help himself to some of Dando’s game and made to ride off with it. “I’ll go to hell if I
have to, but I’ll get them back!” shouted the drunken priest, and he ran at the stranger. The fiend
scooped him up onto his big black horse and galloped away; fiery sparks leapt up from the horse’s
heels and all the hounds followed him.
• Dando was never seen on Earth again, but his dogs are often heard – and seen. And if you’re down
in Devon, and surrounded by a pack of black dogs with red eyes, howling unspeakably, your best
hope is to pray.
The history:
• Robert Hunt collected this story in Popular Romances of Western England, published in 1881
(online via www.sacred-texts.com). In his introduction Hunt tells how he had been collecting odd
tales from his Cornish childhood – and he remarks that now the railways are making mass tourism
in the West Country popular, his guide to its folklore will allow visitors to ‘repopulate’ the
countryside with the vanished legendary figures of the past

History Extra (2016) Supernatural stories: 9 amazing British folktales. At:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/supernatural-stories-9-amazing-british-folktales/ (Accessed:
28/01/2021)
6) The fairies of Wales – the Tylwyth Teg
The tale:
• Welsh fairies, like their counterparts elsewhere in Britain, often feature in stories in which they steal
people away. Supposedly having difficulty in reproducing themselves, fairies often steal human children
and leave ugly changelings in their place; they frequently summon human midwives to help with the birth.
• One such tale centres on a skilled Welsh midwife who had a servant named Eilian, whose mind was never
on her work. “Away with the fairies,” some folk would say, and indeed, one day she vanished.
• Shortly after Eilian’s disappearance, a late-night knock at the door summoned the midwife to assist a
woman in labour. She helped the mother deliver the child in a richly furnished room with carpets,
tapestries, and handsomely carved furniture. The mother asked her to rub some ointment on the
newborn’s eyes, and so the midwife tried a little of it on her own eyes.
• Immediately she saw that the splendid room was only a cave with straw on the floor and moss on the
walls, and that the mother lying on the bare bedframe was the missing Eilian. Eilian begged her to say
nothing and to go; there was no helping her, and so the midwife accepted her reward – a bag of fairy gold
– and made her way home.
The history:
• The tale of Eilian is recorded by scholar John Rhys (1840–1915), who in the 1870s began to research Celtic
tales from Wales and the Isle of Man. Rhys particularly highlights the problems of translating the tales he
heard out of their original Welsh into an English that did not properly reflect “their subtle non-Aryan
syntax”. Rhys had been inspired by another great collector, John Gregorson Campbell (1836–91), minister
on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides.
• You can find Rhys’s Celtic Folklore online via www.sacred-texts.com. To learn more about the cruel ways of
fairies, read Susanna Clarke’s 2004 novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – its footnotes are crammed
with all kinds of fairy lore.

History Extra (2016) Supernatural stories: 9 amazing British folktales. At:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/supernatural-stories-9-amazing-british-folktales/ (Accessed:
28/01/2021)
8) The mermaid of Galloway, Scotland
The tale:
• We are today familiar with tales of mermaids singing at sea, combing their golden hair and trying to
attract sailors to be their lovers down below the waves. But fresh water has its mermaids too.
• In one such folklore tale, the mermaid of Galloway lived in a beautiful burn, or watercourse, and every
evening she would perch on a seat-shaped rock and give medical advice to the people who gathered to
ask for her help. But a highly religious woman thought that this was the devil’s work, and, clutching her
bible for protection, pushed the mermaid’s seat into the pond. The next evening when the mermaid
appeared, she was distressed by the loss of her seat, and cried out, “You may look to your toom (empty)
cradle/And I’ll look to my stane. And meikle [a lot] we’ll think, and meikle we’ll look/But words we’ll
ne’er hae nane!” The next morning the religious woman’s baby was found dead in its cradle. In
retaliation the local folk filled in the Dalbeattie Burn with stones and dirt, and the mermaid was never
seen again.
• Fresh water is perceived to be life-giving and healing; the many sacred wells associated with saints speak
to older traditions of kindly female spirits dwelling in watery places.
The history:
• This story was first told in 1810; later in the 19th century it was shared in Knockdolian in Ayrshire to
explain why no male heirs to the Knockdolian estate ever survived.
• The story was still being retold in 1962; the teller reported he’d heard it as a child, around 45 years
previously, from the skipper of a ship who was then aged more than 80. “And in his lifetime, and mine,”
said the teller, “there was never a male heir. Never”.
• Sophia Kingshill and the late Jennifer Westwood trace the history of this tale in The Fabled Coast (2014),
which recounts legends from Britain’s seas and shores.

History Extra (2016) Supernatural stories: 9 amazing British folktales. At:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/supernatural-stories-9-amazing-british-folktales/ (Accessed:
28/01/2021)
9) The Kelpie and the nine children from the Highlands
The tale:
• A group of children was roaming around one Sunday near Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands when
they saw a very large and friendly horse. There was room enough for all of them on its back, so
they climbed up. When the horse took off at a gallop the frightened children tried to jump off, but
they were all stuck fast. Only one, who happened to have a bible in his pocket, survived to tell the
tale, and only because he was smart enough to cut off one of his fingers, glued to the horse’s
mane, with his pocket-knife.
• This boy supposedly saw the horse dive into a loch with his shrieking cargo. None of the children
were ever seen again, but the next day searchers found some pieces of liver and guts floating on
the surface of the pond.
• It transpires in the tale that the horse had been a water-horse or a kelpie: a creature that likes to
fool humans into thinking it is an ordinary horse – or an ordinary man (often with tell-tale sand
and weed in his hair) – who will drag you underwater to your doom.
The history:
• The Reverend John Gregorson Campbell of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides who recounts this story in
his Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1900), suspects that it served as a
cautionary tale, made up to stop children from molesting other people’s horses when they are
unsupervised on the Sabbath.
• Campbell recounted many other kelpie or water-horse stories. A good number of them end with
entrails floating on the water surface, or else with the protagonist’s realisation in the nick of time
that it’s a kelpie they’re dealing with.

History Extra (2016) Supernatural stories: 9 amazing British folktales. At:

https://www.historyextra.com/period/norman/supernatural-stories-9-amazing-british-folktales/ (Accessed:
28/01/2021)