The Brag is a shape-shifting bogie of Northumberland, kin to the Picktree Brag and the wider family of mischievous Border goblins. Its favourite trick was to appear as a fine white horse, saddled and inviting, standing by a lonely road; any traveller who climbed onto its back would be carried off at a wild gallop, plunged through a hedge or into a pond, and left soaked and shaken as the creature bolted away with a great neighing laugh.
The story
But the Brag was a true shape-changer and took many other forms — a calf with a white handkerchief about its neck, four men carrying a white sheet, a dog, or even a naked headless man — each meant to startle, mislead or terrify the benighted wayfarer rather than to do real harm. Like the Hedley Kow of the same county, it belonged to the impish rather than the malevolent end of the spirit world, a creature of the dark lane and the field gate whose pleasure was in the fright and the fall, and which a bold or pious traveller could sometimes drive off with a prayer.