The Missing Fairies of Norfolk Part Two
Pharisees, Ferishers & Hyter Sprites
Annoyingly I had written this post in nearly its entirety a day or so ago and upon opening my laptop to complete it I discovered it had vanished. I am wont to lay the blame upon the subject of my investigations…I venture to speculate that they were not fond of the possessive determiner ‘our’ I used when referring to them in my previous post! I shall endeavour to be more respectful going forwards.
As mentioned at the end of the first instalment, in this and the next part of my investigations, it is my intention to review some of the scant mentions (in comparison to other parts of the country) in written sources of the Norfolk ‘fair folk’ to re-discover some of our lost fairylore.
A 20th century North Norfolk writer had this to say on the subject of fairies in a publication of personal recollections & collected tales of the area (A Family of No Importance - Jane Hales, 1984) :
“Perhaps in these parts fairies lingered less long. The fact is that the Puritans so strong in East Anglia, detested the very notion of them and sought to trample hobgoblins and brownies underground.”
She goes on to say:
“However, we did have our homely fairies, or “Pharisees.”
Ah ha! A thread to pull, Pharisees; the entry in Katherine Brigg’s ‘An Encyclopaedia of Fairies’ (1976) states:
“Farisees, or Pharisees. KEIGHTLEY in The Fairy Mythology (p.305) quotes Brand in confirmation of ‘farisees’ as the Suffolk name for fairies.”
So Pharisees, it would seem, hail from the neighbouring county of Suffolk, however I surmise that arbitrary human boundaries are meaningless to ‘the good people’. Jane Hale goes on to recount a sighting of the ‘Pharisees’ within Norfolk:
“Near Diss, an old parish sexton told the parson he had known several houses where the fairies visited. The occupants used to hide to catch a glimpse. As soon as the fairies knew they were being watched, however, they vanished, and sparks of fire - like stars - would appear under the feet of the person who had seen them.”
This sighting is uncannily similar to that of one quoted in Brigg’s Encyclopaedia under the listing for Ferishers (another Suffolk term for fairies):
“Feriers, or Ferishers. A Suffolk name for the FAIRIES. They are called FARISEES or FRAIRIES. Camilla Gurdon in County Folk-Lore (vol I, p. 36) quotes an extract from Hollingworth’s History of Suffolk about these little Feriers.
Stowmarket Fairies. Fairies (Feriers) frequented several houses in Tavern Street about 80 to 100 years since. They never appeared as long as anyone was about. People used to lie hid to see them, and some have seen them. Once in particular by a wood-stack up near the brick-yard together. They were very small people, quite little creatures and very merry. But as soon as they saw anybody they all vanished away. In the houses after they had fled, on going upstairs sparks of fire as stars used to appear under the feet of the person who disturbed them.”
Perhaps both Hale and Briggs are relating the same tale, though one is placed in Norfolk & one in Suffolk the towns of Diss & Stowmarket are a mere 18 miles apart. I am not convinced that Jane Hale’s tales of Pharisee’s in Norfolk are reliable enough to claim them as native to this county, the term ‘good neighbour’ may fit them best (I fancy they are occasional visitors). The sighting Brigg’s quotes is from ‘County Folk-Lore volume one’ published in 1892 (Hale does not give a source) the teller stated that the recollection was from around a century before. A sighting from the late 1700’s assists in the quest of rediscovering forgotten fairies but what would aid us even further in reclaiming our fairylore is evidence of more recent stories and encounters.
Enter stage right: The Hyter Sprites also known as The Hikey Sprites.
Here is their entry in Brigg’s Encyclopaedia:
“Hyter Sprites. Lincolnshire and East Anglian fairies. They are small and sandy-coloured with green eyes, like the FERRIERS of Suffolk. They assume the bird form of sand martins. They are grateful for human kindnesses, and stern critics of ill-behaviour. Ruth Tongue has permitted an otherwise unpublished story about Hyter Sprites to appear in Part B of a Dictionary of British Folk-Tales. It is a tale traditional in her family.”
And here is part of Ruth Tongue’s story:
“One of my mother’s aunts away back (this could easily mean 200 years) married an Essex man they called Hyter John, and He were a packman…There were one dryish bit, as was only walked by daylight - sand and gravel ‘twas, with highish banks full of burries of they liddle brown sand swallows. They’d fly out from under foot as ‘ee passed and someat else would fly too. All sandy-coloured they was, with green eyes, but nobody bided to see ‘em close tew.
Hyter Sprites was the name they went by, but nobody talked about ‘en at all-twadn’t considered lucky, anymore than us West Somerset do talk too free about the pixies. Reckon they was some Kind of Kin. They could appear man-size to play their tricks, but most times they was about Knee-high.”
Brigg’s assigns the Hyter Sprites to Lincolnshire and East Anglia and Ruth Tongue’s family story places them in Essex. However it must be mentioned that the tale recounted by Tongue in ‘Forgotten Folk Tales of the English Counties’ is not received well by later researchers including Daniel Allen Rabuzzi in his 1984 article ‘In Pursuit of Norfolk’s Hyter Sprites’ and Ray Loveday author of ‘Hikey Sprites -The Twilight of a Norfolk Tradition’. It is clear from both Rubuzzi & Loveday’s research as well as earlier mentions in print that the Hikey’s are a purely Norfolk tradition. Our very own native fae!
“The hyter sprite of Norfolk is among the least known of the many supernatural creatures found in English folklore.” - Rabuzzi
“Never widespread, the Hyter Sprite, that elusive member of our Norfolk folklore canon, is now in danger of extinction.” - Loveday
So if Tongue’s encounter cannot be relied upon then what are the Hyter Sprites?
“Keep you away from that there pond boy or the Hyte Sprites will get you”.
The above statement, given as an example by one of Loveday’s respondent’s is in the general vein of how Hikey Sprite’s were recounted by those in the know. Loveday himself categorised them thus: “Fairies? It would seem so - of the bogey-type”. Rabuzzi is of a much more sceptical bent, and thinks the hyter’s merely: “an element of folk-speech, a proverbial expression activated by a specific oft-repeated situation…The situation which triggered use of the hyter sprite in speech was the need to coerce or chasten children, especially at the onset of night.” - I don’t think the hikey’s would agree with him! Or the person who encountered one only 16 years ago in Horsford (as recounted by Loveday):
“A couple of weeks ago we were camping in Horsford Wood. I got out of my tent at about 2 a.m. to answer a call of nature. I was surprised to see, out of the corner of my eye, a little figure (he used his hands to indicate a height of 10cm or so) running by. I didn’t know what it was ‘til I saw the picture on your stall - it looked just like that!”
And herein, I believe, lies the crux of the problem as to (one of the reasons) why the Norfolk fairylore has been ‘lost’. Even if a person is lucky enough (or unlucky enough depending on their predisposition) to see ‘The Hidden People’ the stories have not been passed down which would inform the see-er what it is that they have seen! Loveday expands on this:
“There was a cultural turning away from things Norfolk in the fifties and sixties, people were moving more, newcomers were arriving in the county, new ideas were around, the old ways were undervalued.”
Rabuzzi, although clear in his non-belief, states:
“From the earliest recorded mention of them to their personal portrayal today, the hyters have simply been a turn of phrase summoned up to meet a particular exigency, or to express a certain feeling of concern. Today, in fact, they aren’t even that anymore. The last generation that was threatened with the hyter sprite is now the oldest generation, and they are no longer active bearers of Norfolk lore.”
This sad fact is evident even within my own family. My mother in-law and father in-law both hail from Norfolk, their lines going back many generations (indeed we still live in the same town that my mother in-laws family can be traced back in at least 6 generations). And although they have both passed down the fearsome tale of Black Shuck and the tradition of Old Father Valentine when I asked them if they had heard of the Hikey Sprites it did not ring a bell (Jack O’Lantern’s/Will O’the Wisp yes, but more on them in Part 3). I have an inkling that perhaps their parents, natives of Holt, Weybourne & Hindringham would have been warned of the Hikey Sprites when they went out to play in the 1920’s & 1930’s but by the time they were raising my in-laws in the 1950’s & 1960’s the warning was not passed on (and unfortunately they are no longer here to ask).
I have uncovered two other sightings of the fae variety in Norfolk from a couple of sources. There’s no way to be certain but perhaps they are of the Hikey variety too! The first is recounted in Val Thomas’ ‘Of Chalk and Flint’:
[The observer - driving through Seething] “caught in his headlights, a being about the size of a ten-or twelve-year-old with a face “like a grown up child”, wearing a cloak and hood completely covered in white, grey and black scales.”
Fairy Census Volume 2 - complied by Simon Young:
“I was seven. I was lying in bed. It was morning, daylight. I was the only one awake. My bedroom door was open, and I could see into the living room. I was just lying there staring, when I saw something walk past the gap in the door. It was about two feet tall, had dark leathery looking skin, pointy features. It looked like it had [a] fur shawl type thing on. I think that was all it was wearing. No other clothes or shoes. I remember it looked worn out, kind of sad. It never looked my way.”
If the fairylore is not common knowledge as it is in some parts of the world (Ireland, Iceland) then what is seen is not comprehended. I wonder how many people have caught a glimpse of something unexplained out of the corner of their eye and simply brushed it off as a trick of the light or their imagination. Not everything is as it seems!
I will leave you with the words of Ray Loveday from his conclusion of ‘Hikey Sprites - The Twlight of a Norfolk Tradition’:
“I cannot advise you on how to identify them, not much about their habits, their food, their habitations. Yet for me, at the end of this project, they do feel ‘real’. So, at a personal level, I can say there are places in the Norfolk landscape, on heaths where the sun intensifies the scent of the gorse bloom, where one gets a glimpse of a shy deer, where lithe birch trees sway in the wind, there I have felt the Hikeys are hiding in the bracken, among the heather. So too, in Autumn woodland when my feet shuffle the dry leaves, the wind swishes in the tree tops and ‘plop’ marks the fall of an acorn or conker - there they are almost within reach, almost.”
Though I have uncovered some tales and a little evidence of the elusive Norfolk fae knowledge of ‘the strangers’ in these parts is still uncommon. In part 3 of this investigation I will be discussing some theories to root out the reasons for our benightedness and the slightly more well known Will o’The Wisps’.
All this researching and writing takes me quite a while. If you’d like to support my work but don’t want to commit to a monthly subscription please consider ‘buying me a coffee’ through my Ko-fi page so I can continue to share my findings.
I’m hooked! I’m loving the diving into multiple older sources. Where did you find these volumes?