Tales of the shag foal – a kind of gytrash or shape-changer in the form of a shaggy-coated foal, with glowing eyes – abound in central/northern England, especially Lincolnshire and the neighbouring areas. Susanna O’Neill, in Folklore of Lincolnshire (2013), writes about the Lackey Causey Calf, which tried to lure people into a stream between Wrawby and Brigg with the lights of its eyes. In some versions of the narrative, however, it does so while also being headless.

Another shag foal story is tied to an 1885 rendition of the story associated with the Slash Hollow Boulder, on the southern edge of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Reports of shag foal sightings, including sightings of the Lackey Causey Calf, have essentially ceased for at least a century. This legend has much in common with the also common will-o-the-wisps, known also as a will-o-the-wykes in Lincolnshire: ethereal lights above marshlands, said to be ghosts or malevolent sprites that often lure people to their deaths. Such legends are not at all confined to England, or to western cultures, and probably have a scientific explanation in the disgorging of gases from marshlands. That would also account for why they are rarely reported in modern times, compared to, for example, unidentified flying objects.

Dr Caitlin R. Green discusses shag-foals in this excellent blog post from November 2020.

Words by RORY WATERMAN