boggart

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 (see True name).

== Etymology == Boggart is written in many different forms: "boggard" (particularly in Yorkshire), "baggard", "bogerd", "boggat", "bogard", "boggerd", "boggert", "bugart", "buggard", and "buggart". Boggart is ultimately the typical Lancashire dialect form. These forms all point to an origin with the Middle English word bugge (a spirit or monster) with an aggrandizing suffix making boggart, a great big bugge. This also makes boggart a close linguistic cousin of "bogle" (or boggle, a Scots variant), 'bugaboo', "bugbear", "bug", "bogeyman" and "bogie", all of which also derive from bugge. Bugge may, in turn, be related to other British and Irish supernatural terms like "bucca", "pwca", "Puck" and "pooka", but this is uncertain.