Britain’s folklore is crowded with creatures that were never quite human, from helpful household hobs to the stranger beings said to stalk the lanes after dark, and many of them were believed in far more recently than you might expect. My research follows these English and British folklore creatures back to the earliest accounts I can find, and asks what the people who reported them thought they had actually seen.
Hobthrush / Hobthrust: a good natured goblin, who assists servant maids in their early morning work, but in a state of …