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supernatural creatures according to M.A. Denham

An open list of 198 words by ry.

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Turned this up on etymonline.com (link). It's amazing.


Hobbit (n.)
1937, coined in the fantasy tales of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973).
On a blank leaf I scrawled: 'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.' I did not and do not know why. [Tolkien, letter to W.H. Auden, dated 1955]

The word also turns up in a very long list of folkloric supernatural creatures in the writings of Michael Aislabie Denham (d.1859), printed in volume 2 of "The Denham Tracts" [ed. James Hardy, London: Folklore Society, 1895], a compilation of Denham's scattered publications. Denham was an early folklorist who concentrated on Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland.

What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with... (the list follows, including the term hobbit) …and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!

...It is curious that the name occurs nowhere else in folklore, and there is no evidence that Tolkien ever saw this. The word also was recorded from 1835 as "a term generally used in Wales to express a quantity made up of four Welsh pecks." Hobbitry attested from 1947.

Comments

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  • ry thankee kindly yarb, it is indeed a marvellous piece of research...tho none of it mine |-D Jan 17, 2013

  • yarb Marvellous list! Jan 9, 2013

  • bilby I think I found the same Denham passage and mined it. At the time I probably only added the ones that weren't already in the Wordie database. I have no particular interest in boggartry but some of these words are great fun and also have interesting pedigree. Jan 9, 2013

  • bilby Lemon Meringue Kupkakes! Jan 9, 2013

  • ry Note that in the citation (Denham's listing), the terms are given in the plural, so I back-formed singulars to make this list. I may not have done so correctly for each term. Will attempt to correct as needed. LMK of any you notice.

    Also found this helpful article. Jan 9, 2013

  • ry Why are so many of these on bilby's I Can't Believe It's Not Listed list? Jan 9, 2013