The fairies frequented many parts of the bishopric of Durham. There is a hillock, or tumulus, near Bishopton, and a large hill near Billingham, both which used, in former time, to be “haunted by fairies.” Even Ferry–hill, a well–known stage between Darlington and Durham, is evidently a corruption of Fairy–hill. When seen, by accident or favour, they are described as of the smallest size, and uniformly habited in green. They could, however, occasionally assume a different size and appearance; as a woman, who had been admitted into their society, challenged one of the guests, whom she espied in the market, selling fairy–butter. This freedom was deeply resented, and cost her the eye she first saw him with. Mr. Brand mentions his having met with a man, who said he had seen one who had seen the fairies. Truth, he adds, is to be come at in most cases. None, he believes, ever came nearer to it in this than he has done. However that may be, the present editor cannot pretend to have been more fortunate. His informant related that an acquaintance in Westmoreland, having a great desire, and praying earnestly, to see a fairy, was told by a friend, if not a fairy in disguise, that on the side of such a hill, at such a time of day, he should have a sight of one, and accordingly, at the time and place appointed, “the hobgoblin,” in his own words, “stood before him in the likeness of a green–coat lad,” but in the same instant, the spectator’s eye glancing, vanished into the hill. This, he said, the man told him. “The streets of Newcastle,” says Mr. Brand, “were formerly (so vulgar tradition has it) haunted by a nightly _guest_, which appeared in the shape of a mastiff dog, etc., and terrified such as were afraid of shadows. I have heard,” he adds, “when a boy, many stories concerning it.” The no less famous _barguest_ of Durham, and the Picktree–_brag_, have been already alluded to. The former, beside its many other pranks, would sometimes, at the dead of night, in passing through the different streets, set up the most horrid and continuous shrieks to scare the poor girls who might happen to be out of bed. The compiler of the present sheets remembers, when very young, to have heard a respectable old woman, then a midwife at Stockton, relate that when, in her youthful days, she was a servant at Durham, being up late one Saturday night cleaning the irons in the kitchen, she heard these _skrikes_, first at a great and then at a less distance, till at length the loudest and most horrible that can be conceived, just at the kitchen window, sent her upstairs, she did not know how, where she fell into the arms of a fellow–servant, who could scarcely prevent her fainting away.