Bog Rats - Classic Sixth Edition

A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described the boggart as "a generic name for an apparition"; folklorist Simon Young defines it as "any ambivalent or evil solitary supernatural spirit." Halifax folklorist Kai Roberts states that boggart "might have been used to refer to anything from a hilltop hobgoblin to a household faerie, from a headless apparition to a proto-typical poltergeist." As these wide definitions suggest boggarts are to be found both in and out of doors, as a household spirit, or a malevolent spirit defined by local geography, a genius loci inhabiting topographical features. The 1867 book Lancashire Folklore by Harland and Wilkinson makes a distinction between "house boggarts" and other types. Typical descriptions show boggarts to be malevolent. 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. The household boggart may follow a family wherever they flee. One Lancashire source reports the belief that a boggart should never be named: if the boggart was given a name, it could neither be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive.