Jacobs. The Cauld Lad of Hilton

SOURCE: English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs.

This story is not included in the TMI, but the brownie's little song is a nice cumulative tale; he wants someone who will "lay [the ghost to rest]", but that person has not yet been born. That little song, "The Ghaist's Song," is Roud 23026.

The Cauld Lad of Hilton

AT Hilton Hall, long years ago, there lived a Brownie that was the contrariest Brownie you ever knew. At night, after the servants had gone to bed, it would turn everything topsyturvy, put sugar in the salt cellars, pepper into the beer, and was up to all kinds of pranks. It would throw the chairs down, put tables on their backs, rake out fires, and do as much mischief as could be. But sometimes it would be in a good temper, and then!--'What's a Brownie?' you say. Oh, it's a kind of a sort of Bogle, but it isn't so cruel as a Redcap! What! you don't know what's a Bogle or a Redcap! Ah, me! what's the world a-coming to? Of course, a Brownie is a funny little thing, half man, half goblin, with pointed ears and hairy hide. When you bury a treasure, you scatter over it blood drops of a newly slain kid or lamb, or, better still, bury the animal with the treasure, and a Brownie will watch it for you, and frighten everybody else away.

Where was I? Well, as I was a-saying, the Brownie at Hilton Hall would play at mischief, but if the servants laid out for it a bowl of cream, or a knuckle cake spread with honey, it would clear away things for them, and make everything tidy in the kitchen. One night, however, when the servants had stopped up late, they heard a noise in the kitchen, and, peeping in, saw the Brownie swinging to and fro on the Jack chain, and saying:

'Woe's me! woe's me!
The acorn's not yet
Fallen from the tree,
That's to grow the wood,
That's to make the cradle
That's to rock the bairn,
That's to grow to the man,
That's to lay me.
Woe's me! Woe's me!'

So they took pity on the poor Brownie, and asked the nearest hen-wife what they should do to send it away. 'That's easy enough,' said the hen-wife, and told them that a Brownie that's paid for its service, in aught that's not perishable, goes away at once. So they made a cloak of Lincoln green, with a hood to it, and put it by the hearth and watched. They saw the Brownie come up, and seeing the hood and cloak, put them on and frisk about, dancing on one leg and saying:

'I've taken your cloak, I've taken your hood;
The Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good.'

And with that it vanished, and was never seen or heard of afterwards.


NOTES

SOURCE Henderson's Folk-Lore of Northern Counties, 2nd edition, published by the Folk-Lore Society, pp. 266-7. I have written the introductory paragraph so as to convey some information about Brownies, Bogies, and Redcaps, for which Henderson, l.c., 246-53, is my authority. Mr Batten's portrait renders this somewhat superfluous.


PARALLELS The Grimms' Elves (No. 39) behave in like manner on being rewarded for their services. Milton's 'lub-bar-fiend' in L'Allegro has all the characteristics of a Brownie.

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from Henderson's Folk-Lore of Northern Counties

The counties of Northumberland and Durham are certainly peculiarly rich in tricksy spirits. There is the Cauld Lad of Hilton who haunted Hilton Castle in the Valley of the Wear. Seldom seen, he was heard night after night by the servants. If they left the kitchen in order he would amuse himself by hurling everything wildly about; if they left it in confusion he would arrange everything with the greatest care. Harmless as he seemed, the servants got tired of him so they laid a green cloak and hood before the kitchen fire and set themselves to watch the result. At midnight the Cauld Lad glided in, surveyed the garments, put them on, frisked about and, when the cock crew, disappeared saying, "Here's a cloak and there's a hood; the Cauld Lad of Hilton will do no more good." All this bespeaks him a sprite of the Brownie type; still he is in the neighbourhood deemed the ghost of a servant boy slain by an old baron of Hilton in a moment of passion. The baron it is said ordered his horse to be ready at a particular time, waited for it in vain, went to the stable, found the lad asleep and struck him a blow with a hayfork which killed him The baron it is added covered the victim with straw till night and then threw him into a pond where indeed the skeleton of a boy was discovered years afterwards Some verses said to be sung by the Cauld Lad at dead of night certainly accord well with the notion of his being a ghost.