foot. She declares that she has often seen it—sometimes rolling along the ground before her, like a woolpack—sometimes vanishing suddenly through a hedge. My friend, the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, of Danby, speaks of the Padfoot as a precursor of death; as sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, but ever and anon padding lightly in the rear of people, then again before them or at their side, and uttering a roar totally unlike the voice of any known animal. Sometimes the trail of a chain would be heard, accompanying the light quick pad of the feet. In size it was somewhat larger than a sheep, with long smooth hair. It was certainly safer to leave the creature alone, for a word or a blow gave it power over you; and a story is told of a man, whose way being obstructed again and again by the Padfoot, kicked the thing, and was forthwith dragged along through hedge and ditch to his home, and left under his own window.[1]
These creations of Northern fancy have, together with some individualisms, a good many attributes in common. I imagine that the Padfoot is the same with the Barguest, Bahrgeist, or Boguest of Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, and the
- ↑ A man in Horbury has lately seen “the Padfooit.” He was going home by Jenkin, and he saw a white dog in the hedge. He struck at it, and the stick passed through it. Then the white dog looked at him, and it had “great saucer e’en;” and he was so “flayed” that he ran home trembling and went to bed, when he fell ill and died. The “Padfooit” in this neighbourhood is a white dog like a “flay-craw.” It goes sometimes on two legs, sometimes it runs on three. To see it is a prognostication of death. I have no doubt that “the Padfooit” is akin to the two white sows yoked together with a silver chain which ran down the church lane in Lew Trenchard, Devon. It was the custom in ancient times to bury a dog or a boar alive under the cornerstone of a church, that its ghost might haunt the churchyard, and drive off any who would profane it, i. e. witches or warlocks.
In Sweden the beast which haunts churchyards is called the Kyrkogrim. It is there said that the first founders of Christian churches used to bury a lamb under the altar. When anyone enters a church out of service-time he may chance to see a little lamb spring across the quire, and vanish. That is the church lamb. Its appearance in the graveyard, especially to the gravedigger, is held to betoken the death of a child. In Denmark the animal is called the Kirkegrim.
A grave-sow is often seen in the streets of Kroskjoberg. This is said to be the apparition of a sow once buried alive, and to forebode death. In building a new bridge at Halle, which was completed in 1843, the people wanted to have a child immured in the foundation to secure its stability. S. B. G.
