The Brownies

A woman in a Border household went unexpectedly into labour and a servant was told to ride to Jedburgh for the midwife. He did not move with quite the urgency the situation required.

The household Brownie noticed.

While the servant was still preparing himself, the Brownie put on the man's greatcoat, took the laird's best horse and went to Jedburgh himself. By the time he returned with the midwife riding behind him, the River Tweed had risen dangerously, but that did not stop him. He took the horse straight through the swollen water, delivered the terrified woman safely to the house and put the exhausted animal back in the stable.

Then he went looking for the servant and found him only just pulling on his boots and beat him with his own horsewhip.

Sir Walter Scott included the story in his writing on Border tradition, and I think it establishes the Brownie's working style rather well. He has fetched the midwife, crossed a flooded river, returned the horse and dealt with the performance issue before the original employee has managed to get dressed.

A very difficult colleague, but an excellent employee.

THE BROWNIE ALREADY HAD A LONG CAREER IN SCOTLAND

Brownies were household spirits rather than creatures of wild places. They became attached to houses, farms or families and helped with the work, particularly after everyone else had gone to bed.

The idea was old enough for James VI to discuss it in Daemonologie in 1597. He described the Brownie as a rough-looking spirit that haunted houses without doing harm and performed what he called the necessary jobs around them. James, being James, regarded this as demonic deception rather than useful domestic assistance, but his complaint tells us something interesting: people could consider a household fortunate because a Brownie had chosen to live there.

Later descriptions retain much the same arrangement. During the day the Brownie might remain hidden somewhere in the house, then come out at night to thresh grain, tend animals, clean or finish whatever work had been left undone. Nobody needed to assign him a shift or leave a list on the kitchen table. He had attached himself to the household and seemed perfectly capable of identifying what required attention.

In other words, the jobs were being done while everybody slept.

I can see why people were keen not to upset him.

HAIRY MAG WOULD ALSO REPORT YOU

Tullochgorm in Strathspey was said to have two Brownies, and neither sounds especially easy to manage.

One was Brownie-Clod, named for his habit of throwing clods of earth at people. The other was a female spirit called Maug Vuluchd, or Hairy Mag, who acted as an invisible housekeeper. William Grant Stewart recorded that she laid the table so efficiently that whatever was requested seemed to float through the air and land in its proper place. She was also extremely particular about standards and reported neglectful servants to their master or mistress.

So Hairy Mag is doing the work and grassing everybody up at the same time.

I am trying to imagine being a maid in that household. You have a supernatural colleague who does not need to sleep, can see what you have failed to do and has direct access to management.

Nightmare.

Brownie-Clod was less formidable but considerably more gullible. He agreed with two servants that he would do an entire winter's threshing in exchange for an old coat and a Kilmarnock hood. While he worked, the men lay comfortably on the straw and watched him perform labour that would normally have taken both of them. Eventually they felt sorry for him and put the promised clothes in the barn before winter was finished.

Brownie-Clod saw them and immediately stopped working. As far as he was concerned, the contract had been fulfilled. The men had accidentally discovered the supernatural version of paying an invoice early.

CLOTHES WERE OFTEN THE END OF THE ARRANGEMENT

The clothing problem turns up repeatedly in Brownie stories.

In Shetland, John Gregorson Campbell recorded a Brownie who worked in a barn and could grind one or two bags of grain during the night. Someone eventually left him a cloak and hood as a reward. The clothes disappeared by morning, and so did the Brownie. Campbell noted that the same pattern appeared in several Scottish traditions: once the spirit received his coat and cap, he did no more work.

The Border Brownie who fetched the midwife followed exactly the same pattern. After his spectacular intervention, the grateful laird heard that the spirit had expressed an interest in a green coat and had one made for him. The Brownie took it and was never seen again.

This is difficult behaviour to interpret. In some tellings the clothing seems to act as payment, ending a relationship that had only worked while the labour remained voluntary. In others the Brownie wanted the clothes and still left once he received them.

You may want the coat, accept the coat and resign because you have the coat.

Fine.

FOOD WAS MORE COMPLICATED THAN THE INTERNET MAKES IT

Modern summaries often give Brownies a very tidy rule: leave food for them but never give them clothes.

The older material is messier.

Martin Martin recorded in 1703 that people in the Western Isles had once poured cow's milk onto a stone associated with Brownie, while later Highland accounts describe household spirits being given warm milk or dairy offerings. In Orkney, earlier traditions even included portions of milk or brewing wort being left for Brownie's use.

Then Bodsbeck does the opposite.

The Brownie of Bodsbeck in Moffatdale was said to work so hard that the farm became one of the most prosperous in the area. During a particularly demanding period, the farmer decided that the spirit deserved something better than his usual modest fare and left out bread and milk for him.

The Brownie took offence, abandoned Bodsbeck and transferred his services, along with the farm's good fortune, to neighbouring Leithenhall.

Baffling.

Another version of the Bodsbeck tradition says that milk and money were deliberately left to “hire him away”, which only reinforces the fact that there was never one nationwide Brownie employment handbook. Different places had different rules, and giving a spirit something could mean hospitality in one story and payment in another.

I think the safest approach would have been to leave the cream and mind your business.

THEY DID NOT EVEN AGREE ON WHAT A BROWNIE LOOKED LIKE

The familiar image is a small, shabby man, but Scottish tradition never settled on one version.

James VI called him a rough man. Later Lowland descriptions made Brownies shaggy, thin and wild-looking, while John Gregorson Campbell noted that in some Highland usage Brùnaidh could mean a large, heavy, clumsy man rather than a tiny creature at all. Other accounts from the Western Isles describe a Brownie as tall.

There were female household spirits too, with Hairy Mag being one of the best recorded. Even the word itself travelled: the Dictionary of the Scots Language traces brownie or broonie as a Scots term back to around 1500, while Highland traditions could overlap with older Gaelic beings such as the gruagach.

Trying to reduce all of this to a tiny man in brown clothes rather misses the point. What mattered was his relationship with the household.

The Brownie belonged somewhere.

HELPFUL DID NOT MEAN DOCILE

It is tempting to turn Brownies into sweet little domestic fairies because they worked around the house and tended animals, but the stories do not really support that.

The Border Brownie was perfectly willing to horsewhip an inadequate servant. Hairy Mag disciplined maids and reported them. Brownie-Clod threw clods at people for amusement. Other traditions describe household spirits becoming troublesome when neglected, insulted or denied what custom said they were due.

Their help was never quite the same as obedience.

That may be why the old stories are full of people trying to maintain a strange balance with them. You benefited enormously from having one around, but the spirit was not your servant in the ordinary sense. It had attached itself to the household on its own terms and could leave just as easily.

It is perhaps worth remembering that when somebody decides to make him a uniform.

THE KITCHEN WAS ENOUGH

This is what I like most about Brownies. Nothing dramatic must happen.

The selkie needs the shore, the kelpie needs dangerous water, the Bean Nighe waits at the ford and the Redcap has moved into a ruined tower with murder in its walls. A Brownie can establish an entire body of folklore around the fact that somebody left the threshing unfinished.

He belongs beside the hearth, in the barn, around the dairy and among the jobs that need done every day. Even some of the oldest references are strikingly domestic. James VI was discussing spirits that moved through houses doing necessary tasks; Martin was recording milk left on Brownie's Stone; later storytellers remembered farms becoming prosperous because unseen work kept getting finished.

The kitchen was enough.

That makes the Brownie feel unusually close to ordinary life. You did not need to go searching for the supernatural because it might already know where you kept the broom.

I THINK I WOULD RISK IT

Out of everything on this shelf, the Brownie is still the first creature I might knowingly allow onto the property.

The terms would need handled carefully. I will not buy him clothes, attempt to formalise the arrangement or become overenthusiastic with rewards. I am willing to leave some cream somewhere discreet and develop an extremely relaxed attitude towards where it went.

In return, he can tackle the kitchen, perhaps deal with the laundry and take responsibility for anything requiring access to the loft.

There is only one firm boundary.

If Brownie starts grassing me up for not doing enough around the house, we are going to have a problem.

He started it.