I have lately heard, from a clerical friend, of a strange Northumbrian sprite, who has been entirely passed over in any accounts of Northern Folk-Lore to which I have had access. This sprite is called the Dunnie; he appears to be of the Brownie type, and is located at Haselrigg, in the parish of Chatton, in Northumberland. Like others of his race, he is much addicted to mischievous, troublesome tricks, such as the following, in which he frequently indulges.
When the midwife is wanted in a farmer’s family, and the master goes out to saddle his horse that he may fetch her, the Dunnie will take its form. The false creature carries him safely, receives the midwife also on his back behind the farmer; but on their return, in the muddiest part of the road, he will suddenly vanish, and leave the unhappy pair floundering in the mud. Or, again, when the ploughman has (as he believes) caught his horse in the field, brought him home, and harnessed him, he will, to his dismay, see the harness come “slap to the ground,” while the steed kicks up his heels and starts across the country like the wind.
Some years ago, the Dunnie was often seen wandering among the crags of the Cheviots, and heard repeating the following verse again and again, in a melancholy voice:—
Cocken heugh there’s gear enough,
Collier heugh there’s mair,
For I’ve lost the key o’ the Bounders,
An’ I’m ruined for evermair.
Hence it has been thought that the Dunnie is really the ghost of a “reiver,” who had hoarded his ill-gotten pelf in those crags, and therefore haunts them constantly. In Mr. James Hardy’s paper on Legends respecting Huge Stones, the third line runs, “I’ve lost the key of the Bowden-door,” which corresponds still better with this legend.
Mr. Hardy further informs me that last spring, when passing a quarry at Haselrigg, a friend pointed to the steepest part of the rocks, and said it was there that Dunnie used to hang over his legs when he sat on the crags at night.
