Background
The name boggart may have its origin in the Welsh bwg (= bug) meaning a ghost, bugbear, hobgoblin.
Always malevolent, the household boggart will follow its family wherever they flee. It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces. Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them. Sometimes a boggart will also pull on a person's ears. Hanging a horseshoe on the door of a house and leaving a pile of salt outside your bedroom are said to keep a boggart away.
In some areas, Northumberland for example, it was believed that helpful household sprites, "silkies" or "brownies", could turn into malevolent boggarts if offended or ill-treated.
In Northern England, at least, there was the belief that the boggart should never be named, for when the boggart was given a name, it would not be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive. Within the folklore of North-West England, boggarts can cause mischief in homes but tend to live outdoors, in marshland, holes in the ground, under bridges and on dangerous sharp bends on roads. In Lancashire a skittish or runaway horse was said to have "took boggarts" - that is been frightened by a, usually invisible, boggart. When a person got lost in a marsh and was never seen again, the people were sure that a boggart had caught the poor unfortunate and devoured him. The name of at least one Lancashire boggart was recorded, "Nut-Nan", who flitted with a shrill scream among hazel bushes in Moston near Manchester. In Yorkshire boggarts also inhabit outdoor locations, one is said to haunt Cave Ha, a limestone cavern at Giggleswick near Settle.
The Scottish variant is the bogle (or boggle).
Read more about this topic: Boggart
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