EDITORIAL

BOGGART HUNTING

This issue, under the expert guidance of our resident fairyist Simon Young, we focus on a half-forgotten figure that once occupied a central position in English folklore and forteana: the boggart.

What exactly is a boggart, you may ask – which proves a somewhat difficult question, ), Simon has now collected increasingly rare tales and vanishing memories of boggarts, some of which he outlines in his article (p30) and more of which are collected in his two forthcoming books on the subject. That the half-forgotten boggart still lurks somewhere at the edge of our modern consciousness is demonstrated by two modern accounts of boggart encounters, from Michael Haslam (p38) and Patrick Maloney (p40).