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Nanny Rutt
This tale is associated with Nanny Rutt’s Well, an artesian spring (not marked on OS maps) in Math Wood, near Bourne, in which a girl enters the wood to meet her lover and is murdered by an old woman whose face is covered by a shawl.
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The Parasitic Serpent
The tale of a woman from the parish of Wildmore (the biggest settlement within which is New York), who had a snake inside her, and eventually died as a result. Attempts were made to lure it out by having her lean over a bowl of milk, with a noose close to her mouth…
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The Lincoln Imp
The Lincoln Imp is a tiny thirteenth-century cross-legged grotesque above the Angel Choir and the tomb of St Hugh in Lincoln Cathedral, overlooking the altar. And, perhaps, the most famous bit of stonework in the county by some distance.
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Black Dog (also Black Shuck or Hairy Jack)
In most traditions, phantom dogs are usually sinister or malevolent, or even portents of impending death; in many Lincolnshire stories about them, however, they are harmless or even companionable…
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The Holbeach Gamesters
The tale of three men who were playing cards in the Chequers Inn, Holbeach (which closed a few years ago), and talking about a friend who had recently died, so they decided to dig him up and play cards with him in the church. This really happened…
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Fan o’ the Fens
A beautiful young woman from near Louth, called Fanny and known as Fan o’ the Fens, lives with her widowed mother, who complains that a magpie keeps following her and repeating what she says. She consults the wiseman of Louth, who says the mother has been bewitched…
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 