The Brontë children’s nursemaid, Tabitha Ackroyd, had an intimate knowledge of the lore of the land and its spirits. She knew folk who had seen the fairies that frequented the beck on moonlit nights. But by the time she was nursemaid to the Brontë family, she would tell the children that all the fairies had long since gone. “It wur the factories as had driven ’em away,” she would tell… Read More »Fairies, Ghosts and UFOs
Haworth has, as far as I am aware, four carved stone heads adorning several of its buildings. The heads are all different ages and we know little of their purpose. The oldest is the one above the main entrance to The Haworth Old Hall (once the Emmott Old Hall). This is part of the original building, which would place it in the early 1600s. The most recent is a modern… Read More »The Mysterious Stone Heads of Haworth
What is the Gytrash? The soil of the islands of Britain can be said to be soaked in the folklore of the spectral black dog. Mark Norman’s “Black Dog Folklore” lists sightings from Aberdeenshire to Yorkshire and beyond. Wherever they are said to roam, they are known by local names… the Whisht Hounds of Dartmoor, Black Shuck (Old Shuck, Old Shock or simply Shuck) in East Anglia, the Barghest in… Read More »The Gytrash: Ghostly Black Dog of The Brontës