Hobberdy Dick

An excellent story of the life of a hob (or brownie, to those more familiar with Dungeons & Dragons) in a 17th century English manor house who adopts a new family and protects them from various exotic and mundane threats. Briggs does a superb job of illustrating a wide range of English folklore and faerie legends without being didactic and presents all the human protagonists in a very real and engaging fashion. The book is peppered with clever poems, old sayings and other cultural tidbits and provides a fun adventure to boot. Briggs was one of the top scholars in her field (English folklore) and managed to carve this gem of a book after writing the definitive encyclopedia of her specialty. Should be read by all enthusiasts of faerie-dom.

I decided to buy this book after reading the previous reviewer praise for it. And I have to say I agree with him. Hobberdy Dick is a delicious story, set in 17th century England, just after the Civil War. Although, as a narration, it has a plot, this is of secondary importance for the book, and the central elements are the setting and folk mythology elements ordinarily attached to English country life. The main character is a hobgoblin, a friendly haunting spirit, who has been in charge of guarding an old Manor house for centuries. We see not only the story from his point of view, but also the hard times post-war England is living through, and facts and characters that belong to country folk-lore and magic, such as grims, ghosts, witches and the remnants of pagan cults and celebrations. This folk-lore is not presented to us in dry-facts descriptions, but as an important part of life for peasants and country gentry that are presented as belonging to a world in the process of disappearing. With all the social, political, even religious, changes brought about by the period of unrest that culminated in the Civil War, the knowledge of the good and evil spirits or magical beings that inhabit the nature has been relegated to the common, "ignorant" peasantry, the only ones who, even though it can be dangerous under the watchful control of a Puritan government, continue to honour the cycles and spirits of the land. The higher spheres of society, on the other hand, are beginning to be populated by the bourgeois and middle classes, and by an aristocracy who are rapidly becoming city-dwellers, detached from the country life and its ancestral ways. A delightful little book, initially written for children, fascinating for anyone interested in ancient country magic and folklore.

It's a surprise and a shame that this charming little book is apparently out of print in the U.S. I first encountered "Hobberdy Dick" in a library copy of the original, British, Eyre and Spottiswoode edition of 1955, having noticed it in the card catalogue (remember them?) while looking up Katharine M. Briggs' several academic works on English folklore in Tudor and Stuart literature ("The Anatomy of Puck," 1959; "Pale Hecate's Team," 1962; now out of print, although there were expensive "Selected Works" reprintings in 2002). I remembered it with pleasure, and wished that it were still available. Some years later I was fortunate enough to see and buy a copy of the 1972 Puffin edition (the Penguin Books children's imprint), complete with Scoular Anderson's evocative illustrations, when it was reprinted in 1976 -- coinciding with the publication Brigg's excellent "An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures." (This does seem to be in print, and is both easy to read and authoritative; in British editions, it is "A Dictionary of Fairies." Brigg's "The Fairies in Tradition and Literature" (1967) carries the story into the twentieth century, and likewise currently is in print.) The Puffin paperback seems to have had a limited distribution (including unofficial imports) in the U.S., but there was a Harper (now HarperCollins) Greenwillow edition in the U.S. the following year, when the "Encyclopedia" was clearly a success. This edition often can be found in (or through) libraries. So far as the United States is concerned, that seems to be it. (I would be glad to learn otherwise.) "Hobberdy Dick" has, so far as I know, always been marketed as for children, but in my experience adult readers of fantasy find it at least enjoyable, and certainly worth the time it takes to read it. The main complaint I heard from those to whom I recommended it in the 1970s was "too short." Briggs (1898-1980) was a distinguished as a folklorist and a literary historian; her learning gives the book a solid foundation, but the abundant detail enriches an engaging story without smothering it. The main plot could have been a fairly conventional Romeo-and-Juliet re-tread, set in the aftermath of the English Civil War; *She* is from a dispossessed Cavalier family, *He* is the heir of a Parliament Man. But the story is seen largely through the eyes of the title character, a household spirit, or "hob." Hobberdy Dick is one of class of spirits who protect a place and its inhabitants, giving aid to the diligent and tormenting the slothful and slovenly until they mend their ways. (They are also known, among other names, as "lobs," and, more widely, at least until the term was trivialized, "brownies.") The more energetic hobs may intervene to aid the humans of whom they approve in larger ways; and Hobberdy Dick favors happy endings. In 1652, Dick's home -- complete with its ghost, as well as the hob -- is taken over by disbelieving