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Tom Thumb
Tom Thumb is the famous hero of a comical fairytale, common in England since at least the early seventeenth century. It begins with a woman’s wish to have a son even if he is no bigger than her husband’s thumb, which is duly granted, and the story follows his subsequent escapades…
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Tattercoats
A rich, old lord, who lived in a palace by the sea, had no living wife or children, but he did have a granddaughter. However, as his favourite daughter had died during childbirth, he swore never to look after his granddaughter, and not even to look at her. The girl therefore grew up impoverished
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The Farmer and the Boggart
Tales abound in which the Devil, or a boggart, are duped in competitions involving the harvesting of crops. The farmer suggests one takes what grows above ground and the other what grows beneath. The boggart agrees…
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William Clarke & his Dog
William Clarke, aged 44, was hanged in Lincoln Castle in 1877 for fatally shooting a gamekeeper while poaching near Norton Disney. His dog was then taken in by the proprietors of the nearby Strugglers’ Inn, which Clarke had frequented…
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Crowland Abbey: Guthlac & the Demons
Saint Guthlac of Crowland was of noble Mercian blood. He became a soldier in his teens, then retired to a monastic life in his mid-twenties. On St Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 699, he headed…
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The Dorrington Demons (& Witches)
In A Dictionary of English Folklore, Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud note ‘a type of legend found throughout England’ in which the location of an ‘inconveniently sited’ church is said to be the result of malevolent forces…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 