According to Ruth Tongue, Lazy Laurence was a guardian spirit of the orchard, both in Hampshire and in Somerset. Probably the name was once more widely spread, if the title of Maria Edgeworth's story Lazy Laurence (set in the village of Aston, near Bristol) is more than a coincidence. In Hampshire, he sometimes took the form of a colt and chased orchard thieves, like the colt-pixy. In Somerset, Lazy Laurence seems rather to afflict the thieves with what is described in one of the night spells (to be found in British Museum MS.36674), as 'Crampe and crookeing and fault in their footing'. The Somerset proverbial saying runs.

Lazy Laurence, let me goo,

Don't hold me Summer and Winter too.

From this we may deduce that Lazy Laurence is one of the cautionary fairies, like Melsh Dick and Awd Goggie.

[Motifs: F234.1.8; F403]