as I was talking on the subject with Master Simon the other evening in the dark avenue, he hinted that he had himself once or twice heard odd sounds at night, very like a pack of hounds in cry; and that once, as he was returning rather late from a hunting dinner, he had seen a strange figure galloping along this same moor; but as he was riding rather fast at the time, and in a hurry to get home, he did not stop to ascertain what it was.

Popular superstitions are fast fading away in England, owing to the general diffusion of knowledge, and the bustling intercourse kept up throughout the country; still they have their strong-holds and lingering places, and a retired neighbourhood like this is apt to be one of them.  The parson tells me that he meets with many traditional beliefs and notions among the common people, which he has been able to draw from them in the course of familiar conversation, though they are rather shy of avowing them to strangers, and particularly to “the gentry,” who are apt to laugh at them.  He says there are several of his old parishioners who remember when the village had its bar-guest, or bar-ghost—­a spirit supposed to belong to a town or village, and to predict any impending misfortune by midnight shrieks and wailings.  The last time it was heard was just before the death of Mr. Bracebridge’s father, who was much beloved throughout the neighbourhood; though there are not wanting some obstinate unbelievers, who insisted that it was nothing but the howling of a watch-dog.  I have been greatly delighted, however, at meeting with some traces of my old favourite, Robin Goodfellow, though under a different appellation from any of those by which I have heretofore heard him called.  The parson assures me that many of the peasantry believe in household goblins, called Dubbies, which live about particular farms and houses, in the same way that Robin Goodfellow did of old.  Sometimes they haunt the barns and outhouses, and now and then will assist the farmer wonderfully, by getting in all his hay or corn in a single night.  In general, however, they prefer to live within doors, and are fond of keeping about the great hearths, and basking, at night, after the family have gone to bed, by the glowing embers.  When put in particular good-humour by the warmth of their lodgings, and the tidiness of the house-maids, they will overcome their natural laziness, and do a vast deal of household work before morning; churning the cream, brewing the beer, or spinning all the good dame’s flax.  All this is precisely the conduct of Robin Goodfellow, described so charmingly by Milton: 

  “Tells how the drudging goblin sweat
  To earn his cream-bowl duly get,
  When in one night, ere glimpse of morn,
  His shadowy flail had thresh’d the corn
  That ten day-labourers could not end;
  Then lays him down the lubber-fiend,
  And, stretch’d out all the chimney’s length,
  Basks at the fire his hairy strength,
  And crop-full, out of door he flings
  Ere the first cock his matin rings.”