A venerable name among the goblins, known internationally in the Fossegrim of Norway and the Swedish Kirkegrimm, who is the same as our church grim. The Grim's Dykes straggling over the country are evidence of the antiquity of the spirit. It was at one time a by-name for Odin and later for the Devil. Jabez Allies' list of the fairies cites many place-names that begin with 'Grim'.

The Church Grim usually took the form of a black dog, and the Fairy Grim in the Life of Robin Goodfellow sometimes assumed that form:

I walke with the owle, and make many to cry as loud as she doth hollow. Sometimes I doe affright many simple people, for which some have termed me the Blacke Dog of Newgate. At the meetings of young men and maydes I many times am, and when they are in the midst of all their good cheare, I come in, in some feareful shape and affright them, and then carry away their good cheare, and eat it with my fellow fayries. 'Tis I that do, like a skritch-owle, cry at sicke men's windowes, which make the hearers so fearefuU, that they say that the sick person cannot live. Many other wayes have I to fright the simple, but the understanding man I cannot moove to feare, because he knowes that I have no power to do hurt.

My nightly businese have I told,

To play these trickes I use of old;

When candles burn both blue and dim,

Old folkes will say, Here's fairy Grim.

[Motif: D1812.5.1.12.2]