One of the fairy types most easily described and most recognizable. His territory extends over the Lowlands of Scotland and up into the Highlands and Islands, all over the north and east of England and into the Midlands. With a natural linguistic variation he becomes the Bwca of Wales, the Highland Bodach and the Manx Fenodoree. In the West Country, Pixies or Pisgies occasionally perform the offices of a brownie and show some of the same characteristics, though they are essentially different. In various parts of the country, friendly Lobs and Hobs behave much like brownies.

The Border brownies are the most characteristic. They are generally described as small men, about three feet in height, very raggedly dressed in brown clothes, with brown faces and shaggy heads, who come out at night and do the work that has been left undone by the servants. They make themselves responsible for the farm or house in which they live; reap, mow, thresh, herd the sheep, prevent the hens from laying away, run errands and give good counsel at need. A brownie will often become personally attached to one member of the family. In return he has a right to a bowl of cream or best milk and to a specially good bannock or cake. William Henderson in Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties (p.248) describes a brownie's portion:

He is allowed his little treats, however, and the chief of these are knuckled cakes made of meal warm from the mill, toasted over the embers and spread with honey. The housewife will prepare these, and lay them carefully where he may find them by chance. When a titbit is given to a child, parents will still say to him, 'There's a piece wad please a Brownie.'

A point to notice in this little extract is that the housewife was careful not to offer the titbit to the brownie, only to leave it in its reach. Any offer of reward for its services drove the brownie away; it seemed to be an absolute taboo. This was accounted for in various ways. In Berwickshire it was said that the brownie was the appointed servant of mankind to ease the weight of Adam's curse and was bound to serve without payment; another suggestion was that he was of too free a spirit to accept the bondage of human clothes or wages; sometimes again that he was bound to serve until he was considered worthy of payment; or again, it might be the quality of the goods offered that offended him, as in the story of the Lincolnshire brownie, who, most unusually, was annually given a linen shirt, until a miserly farmer, succeeding to the farm, left him out one of coarse sacking, on which he sang:

Harden, harden, harden hamp!

I will neither grind nor stamp.

Had you given me linen gear,

I had served you many a year,

Thrift may go, bad luck may stay,

I shall travel far away.

With which he left the farm never to return. The traditional brownie's song:

What have we here, Hempen, Hampen!

Here will I never more tread nor stampen.

which was quoted by Reginald Scot in the 16th century, suggests that other brownies may have had the same grievance. Whatever the reason, it is not to be doubted that the gift of clothes to brownies or any hobgoblins doing brownie work will infallibly drive them away.

It was indeed very easy to offend a brownie, and either drive him away or turn him from a brownie to a Boggart, in which case the mischievous side of the Hobgoblin nature was shown. The Brownie of Cranshaws is a typical example of a brownie offended. An industrious brownie once lived in Cranshaws in Berwickshire, where he saved the corn and thrashed it until people began to take his services for granted and someone remarked that the corn this year was not well mowed or piled up. The brownie heard him, of course, and that night he was heard tramping in and out of the barn muttering:

It’s no weel mowed! It’s no weel mowed!

Then it’s ne’er be mowed by me again:

I’ll scatter it ower the Raven stane,

And the’ll hae some wark e’er it’s mowed again.

Sure enough, the whole harvest was thrown over Raven Crag, about two miles away, and the Brownie of Cranshaws never worked there again.

Where he was well treated, however, and his whims respected, a brownie would be wholly committed to the interests of his master. He would sometimes, indeed, make himself rather unpopular with the servants by exposing their misdeeds, or punishing them; as when two maids who had a stingy mistress had stolen a junket and sat down to eat it between them when the brownie squeezed himself into the middle of the bench and invisibly consumed most of the dish.

There are several stories of a brownie fetching the midwife to his mistress when she was suddenly taken in labour, of which the best-known is the story of the Brownie of Dalswinton.

There was a brownie who once haunted the old pool on the Nith, and worked for Maxwell, the Laird of Dalswinton. Of all human creatures he loved best the laird's daughter, and she had a great friendship for him and told him all her secrets. When she fell in love it was the brownie who helped her and presided over the details of her wedding. He was the better pleased with it because the bridegroom came to live in his bride's home. When the pains of motherhood first came to her, it was he who fetched the cannie wife. The stableboy had been ordered to ride at once, but the Nith was in spate and the straightest path went through the Auld Pool, so he delayed. The brownie flung on his mistress's fur cloak, mounted the best horse, and rode across the roaring water. As they rode back, the cannie wife hesitated at the road they came.

'Dinna ride by the Auld Pool,' she said, 'we mecht meet the brownie.'

'Hae nae fear, gudwife,' said he, 'ye've met a' the brownies ye're like to meet.'

With that he plunged into the water and carried her safely over to the other side. Then he turned the horse into the stable, found the boy still pulling on his second boot and gave him a sound drubbing.

The story ended sadly, for Maxwell of Dalswinton told the minister, and he persuaded him that so helpful a servant deserved to be baptized. So he hid in the stable with a stoup of holy water, and when the brownie crept in to begin his labours, he poured it over him and began the office of baptism. He never finished, for as the first drop touched him the brownie gave a yell and vanished. He never came back to Nithsdale again.

From these stories we can make out a general picture of the Brownie. It was a common thing for a brownie to be attached to a stream or pool, and outside his own home he was often feared. However benevolent he might be, he was afraid of Christian symbols. He fits in well with Mac Ritchie's suggested theory of fairy origins as a shaggy aboriginal hanging round the farm, attached to its service by food and kindness but distrustful of anything that could bind him. Some touches are added in local descriptions to the appearances of brownies. It is sometimes said that they have no noses, only holes for nostrils, unlike Killmoulis, who had an enormous nose but no mouth. In Aberdeenshire it was sometimes believed that they had no separate fingers, a thumb and the other four fingers joined in one. They would commonly be described as solitary fairies and all male, but in the Highlands they occasionally seem to gather together in small bands. They are sometimes larger than the Lowland brownies, and there is an occasional female among them. Aubrey mentions one in his Miscellanies (pp.191-192), Meg Moulach, that is, Hairy Meg, attached to the Grants of Tullochgorm. She mourned the deaths in the family like a banshee, performed brownie labours and helped the chief in games of chess. She was acute, but her son Brown Ieclodd was stupid, a Dobie, and the servants played tricks on him. In the present century, the mill at Fincastle in Perthshire was haunted by brownies: a small band of them according to one story; a single brownie, with his mother, Maggy Moloch, close at hand, according to another. This story, told by Andrew Stewart and preserved in the archives of the School of Scottish Studies, is interesting as showing the ambivalent character of the brownies. It is one of the Ainsel stories, and a similar tale is told about a brollachan.

Fincastle Mill was never worked at night, for it had the name of being haunted. One night a girl was making a cake for her wedding and she found she had run out of meal, so she asked her father to go up to the mill and grind some for her, but he didn't care to go, so she had to go up herself. She asked the miller to grind it up for her, but he wouldn't, so she just had to go herself. She lit a big fire in the mill and put a pot on to boil and began to grind the meal. At twelve o'clock the door opened and a wee hairy man came in. It was the Brownie of the Mill.

'Who are you ?' said the girl, 'and what are you doing here?'

'What are you doing yourself? And what's your name ?' said the brownie.

'Oh, I'm Mise mi fein' (me myself), said the girl.

She kept sitting by the fire, and the brownie kept edging up to her grinning and grinning till she got frightened, and poured a dipperful of water from the pot over him. He went for her then, and she drenched him with the boiling water. He ran screaming out of the door, and in the wood beyond she heard old Maggy Moloch crying,

'Who's done this to you?'

'Me myself! Me myself!' he cried, dying.

'If it had been any mortal man,' said Maggy Moloch, 'I would have been revenged, but if it was you yourself I can do nothing.'

So the girl finished grinding her meal and made her cake and was married, and moved to Strathspey, and the mill was left empty, for Maggy Moloch moved off too. But the girl did not escape for ever, for one night at a ceilidh the young bride was asked for a story and she told how she had tricked the brownie at Fincastle Mill. But Maggy Moloch was near, for a voice from outside called:

'Aye, was it you killed my man? Ye'll no kill another!' and a three-legged stool shot in at the door and killed the girl on the spot.

Then Maggy Moloch moved again and found a home near a farm, where the servants hired her well with bread and cream and she did good service about the farm so long as they all stayed. When the farmer decided to dismiss them and rely on her help, she went on strike and became a boggart instead of a brownie, nor would she stop tormenting him until he re-engaged the whole of his former staff. It was better not to take liberties with old Maggy Moloch, and the same holds good with even the gentlest brownies.

[Types: ML6035; ML7010; ML7015. Motifs: F332.0.1; F346; F381.3; F382; F403; F403.2; F475; F482; F482.5.4; F482.5.4.1; F482.5.5]