Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project

Tatterfoal

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‘Eliza Gutch and Mabel Peacock (1908) mention this ghostly and troublesome horse, and refer to a passage in Pishey Thompson’s History & Antiquities of Boston (1856) where he assigns one such boggard to Spittal Hill in Frieston, and another to Barton-upon-Humber. Mabel Peacock tells an entertaining story of ‘Tatterfoal’ in Lincolnshire Tales (1897), in which the apparition is defrocked as a very human prankster.’

A Morris dancing side from Scunthorpe take their name after the creature.

Words by TIM DAVIES

One response to “Tatterfoal”

  1. Th’ Lad ‘at Wantid to Larn to Shuther an’ Shak – Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project avatar
    Th’ Lad ‘at Wantid to Larn to Shuther an’ Shak – Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project

    […] the apparitions  and boggards he encounters have a local air about them (a Black Dog and a Tatterfoal-like horse). Most interestingly, the tale is one of the few where MP sets the scene with named real places, […]

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● About the project

‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’ is a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (grant number AH/Y003225/1), and is led by Dr Rory Waterman and the Research Fellow Dr Anna Milon in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University. The project explores the origins, legacies, intertextual and social connections and futures of Lincolnshire folk tales (LFTs), and is intended to facilitate wider engagement with this heritage from writers, the general public, and scholars.

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