MIKE HALLOWELL: Imps from Geordieland

The ongoing thread about the Lincoln Imp has provoked a lot of interest. Now Mike Hallowell, doyen of Geordie phenomenology, has got in on the act...


Northumbria is well blessed when it comes to imps. And sprites. And Boggles. And faeries. And elves. And gnomes. And brownies. And dunnies. And so on. And even so forth. Geordieland is, I reckon, the quintessential integrated community, ethereally speaking. Mind you, I have it on good authority that the elves of Northumbria and their cousins in the elvin kingdom of Durham don't get on very well, although I'm not sure why. It could be a football thing, as we northerners are vociferously tribal when it comes to the beautiful game.

The problem we have up in this neck of the woods is that colloquial names for different elemental entities are exchanged and interchanged with cavalier abandon. One Geordie's elf is another one's sprite, and whilst those in the south of the village may refer to their resident divil as a boggle, those on the other side of the turnip patch may insist with equal enthusiasm that it is a hob. Or a bogie. Or a boggart.

Imps and sprites are particularly hard to separate within the annals of Geordie Forteana. Hence, there once used to be considerable debate over the little divil at Haselrigg, which sitteth within the Parish of Chatton, Northumberland. He has been called the Haselrigg Sprite, the Haselrigg Brownie and the Haselrigg Imp, the latter of which is, I reckon, correct.

Imps – at least those within the province of the Geordie kingdom – are mischievous little buggers, and the Haselrigg Imp was certainly no exception. In some respects, the Haselrigg Imp behaved like a Brag, and could allegedly shape-shift into animal form. There the similarity ends, however, for whereas the Brag (about which John Triplow and I are penning a book at the moment) is a vicious entity with a predisposition for sadism and violence, the Haselrigg Imp simply enjoyed carrying out Candid Camera-type pranks on its victims who rarely seem to have come to any harm.

One of the favourite tricks of the Haselrigg Imp was to impersonate the horse of a father-to-be. When the time arrived for the new bairn to exit the womb, the hubby would saddle up his horse and pop off to fetch the midwife. Or at least, he thought he was saddling up his horse. In fact, he was saddling up the Haselrigg Imp which was impersonating the horse, if you get my drift.

Now the father-to-be would suspect nothing. He would trot off to the midwife's cottage and howk her on to the back of his horse. The two would then make the return journey back to the chap's home where, hopefully, the "middie" would bring into the world yet another Shane, Wayne, Clarissa or Chantelle. Back then it was probably Isaac, Joseph, Ethel or Bertha, of course.

Anyway, the Haselrigg Imp would wait until the husband and the midwife were almost back at the dwelling, and then – quelle horreur – it would suddenly evaporate into the ether, thus allowing the midwife and the dad-to-be to fall into a patch of mud. Apparently the Haselrigg Imp was spot-on when it came to the mud thing, and had an uncanny knack of being able to deposit his charges into the biggest, wettest, deepest, smelliest mud patch in the village.

It is interesting that the Haselrigg Imp always seemed to pull off his coup de gras near to the home of the labouring woman, thus ensuring that the midwife could still get to her patient in time. As I've said, the Imp doesn't seem to have wanted to cause any real harm; just to have a bit of a laugh. From now on, the Geordie Monsters blog will be new and improved, "Now with 20% Extra Added Imp!"

If you want to know more about Geordie Imps, watch this space. Alternatively, you could always make your missus "with child" (I can e-mail you the instructions if you're not sure how to go about this. It’s a complicated, laborious process but not that unpleasant) and go rent a flat near Haselrigg….