The Welsh brownie (but see also Bwbachod). A story collected by John Rhys (Celtic Folk-Lore, pp.593-596) shows how close the connection can be between the Brownie and Boggart, or the Bwca and Bugan.

Long ago a Monmouthshire farm was haunted by a spirit of whom everyone was afraid until a young maid came, merry and strong and reputed to be of the stock of the bendith y mamau, and she struck up a great friendship with the creature, who turned out to be a bwca, who washed, ironed and spun for her and did all manner of household work in return for a nightly bowl of sweet milk and wheat bread or flummery. This was left at the bottom of the stairs every night and was gone in the morning; but she never saw him, for all his work was done at night.

One evening for sheer wantonness she put some of the stale urine used for a mordant in his bowl instead of milk. She had reason to regret it, for when she got up next morning the bwca attacked her and kicked her all over the house, yelling:

The idea that the thick-buttocked lass

Should give barley-bread and piss

To the bogle!

After that she never saw him again, but after two years they heard of him at a farm near Hafod ys Ynys, where he soon made great friends with the servant girl, who fed him most delicately with constant snacks of bread and milk and played no unseemly pranks on him. She had one fault, however, and that was curiosity. She kept on asking to be allowed to see him and to be told his name — without success. One night, however, she made him believe that she was going out after the men, and shut the door, but stayed inside herself. Bwca was spinning industriously at the wheel, and as he span he sang:

How she would laugh, did she know

That Gwarwyn-a-Throt is my name.

'Aha!' cried the maid, at the bottom of the stairs, 'now I have your name, Gwarwyn-a-Throt!'

At which he left the wheel standing, and she never saw him again.

He went next to a neighbouring farm, where the farm-hand, Moses, became his great friend. All would have gone well with poor Gwarwyn-a-Throt but that his friend Moses was sent off to fight Richard Crookback and was killed at Bosworth Field. After the loss of this friend the poor bwca went completely to the bad and spent all his time in senseless pranks, drawing the ploughing oxen out of the straight and throwing everything in the house about at night-time. At length he became so destructive that the farmer called in a dyn cynnil (wise man) to lay him. He succeeded in getting the bwca to stick his long nose out of the hole where he was hiding, and at once transfixed it with an awl. Then he read an incantation sentencing the bwca to be transported to the Red Sea for fourteen generations. He raised a great whirlwind, and, as it began to blow, plucked out the awl so that the poor bwca was swept away and never was seen again.

It seemed that the bwca had changed his shape with his nature, for brownies were generally noseless, and he was nicknamed in this farm 'Bwca'r Trwyn', 'the Bwca with the Nose'.

[Type: ML7010. Motif: F482.5.5]