Folklore of Lincolnshire by Susanna O'Neill Read Free Book Online Page B

with the influx of the Dutch and the draining work they were doing, local people were scared that bad times were ahead.
    Then drainers began to disappear and word was that the Tiddy Mun had drowned them. More workers were brought in and they too were drowned, but after a while it wasn’t just the Dutch drainers that were vanishing, the Tiddy Mun was angry with everyone for destroying his home. Children and animals succumbed to illness, crops failed and life started to go wrong for everyone. After much discussion the people agreed some water must be returned if the Tiddy Mun was to be appeased and so the locals took pans of water out on the night of the new moon and offered them to him, asking for a truce. They waited in silence for a long time until eventually they heard his screeching laugh and they knew they had forged a pact. For many years after this night, the local people offered the Tiddy Mun water at every new moon and peace was maintained.
    Adrian Gray says that the Tiddy People were a race of strange creatures that lived in the wet and marshy areas. He agrees that they were very small, like children, or even babies, but with long thin arms and large feet. They reputedly had long noses and wide mouths with long tongues. Instead of grey, he believed they wore green coats, hence the nickname ‘greencoaties’, often with a yellow bonnet. The Tiddy Mun was similar to a tribal chief and Adrian Gray recounts a rhyme people apparently chanted in the Fen areas:
    Tiddy Mun wi’out a name
    White he’ad, walking la’ame
    While the watter te’ems the Fen
    Tiddy Mun’ll harm nane. 9
    The Tiddy People were very useful for everyday life. It was they who would pinch the buds on the trees in spring to make them open and would paint the colours on the flowers every year. Farmers would leave small gifts for them so their crops would not be harmed and people thought it an honour if the Tiddy People came into their houses to warm themselves by the fire. They have hardly ever been seen though, since the draining of the Fens and all the trouble with the Dutch workers, so where they have found a suitable home is a mystery.
    Will-o-the-Wisps, or Will-o-the-Wykes in Lincolnshire, also known as Jack-o-Lanterns, corpse candles or ignis fatuus in Latin, translating as ‘foolish fire’, are mysterious, ghostly wisps or lanterns of light, seen hovering over marshy lands, usually at twilight. Myth tells of strange fairies or ghosts of the dead creating these torches, although some scientific theories explain them as gases, produced by the organic decay in the wetlands, causing a glowing light. Of course, with such an eerie phenomenon, stories of these peculiar lights abound throughout folk lore, usually including legends of people being lured off the main path, following the lights, and never being seen again. The Lincolnshire Fens were one such place where these ethereal lights were seen, and warnings to stay away from them were whispered throughout communities.
    These stories make similar appearances in many cultures around the globe. It has been said that in some Australian Aboriginal tribes, these eerie sightings were believed to be the spirits of lost or stillborn children. They called them the ‘min-mim’ and they were feared as dangerous creatures. Variations of the Tiddy Mun story in Lincolnshire say that when the people called to the Tiddy Mun appealing for mercy, they heard the wailings and whimpering of babies in the air and some even felt the cold embraces of their dead children, whom the Tiddy Mun had taken.

    A stream found between Brigg and Wrawby, possibly where the Shag Foal was seen.
    The Shag Foal is another beast that haunts Lincolnshire, leading travellers off the beaten path and into the marshes and bogs with its eyes blazing like beacons.Some say it is one and the same as the Will-o-the-Wisps, others say it is a creature akin to a rough-coated donkey or foal. The unsuspecting travellers follow the lights of its