Brownie

The Brownie is the beloved household spirit of Scotland and the north of England — a small, rough, brown-clad and shaggy figure who attaches himself to a farm or house and, by night while the family sleeps, labours at the work left undone: threshing, reaping, churning, cleaning and tending the beasts. He asks no wage, only a bowl of cream or a fresh bannock left quietly by the hearth, and he is fiercely loyal to a household that treats him with respect.

But the Brownie was easily offended. To leave him formal payment — and above all a gift of clothes — was the surest way to drive him off for good, and many a tale ends with the spirit vanishing in a huff at the offer of a coat. Mistreated or mocked, he could turn troublesome, souring into a destructive boggart. Recorded across the Borders and Highlands, and remembered in tales such as the Brownie of Bodsbeck, he is the gentlest and most domestic of British fairies — the very spirit of the well-kept home.