Picktree, near Chester-le-Street, is famous for two reasons--first, because it was the home of the heroine of the popular song, "Ailsie Marley," and, secondly, because it was the haunt of one of those mischievous goblins known as the Picktree Brag. Sir Cuthbert Sharp gives an account of the apparition, as told by an old woman of respectable appearance, of about ninety years of age, living near the spot, probably at Pelton. The old woman said: "I never saw the Brag distinctly, but I frequently heard it. It sometimes appeared like a calf with a white handkerchief about its neck, and a bushy tail. It came also like a galloway, but more often like a coach-horse, and went trotting along the lonnin, afore folks, settin’ up a great nicker and a whinney every now and then; and it came frequently like a dickass, and it always stopped at the pond at the four lonnin ends, and nickered and whinnied. My brother saw it like four men holding up a white sheet. I saw then sure that some near relation was going to die, which was true. My husband once saw it in the image of a naked man without a head. I knew a man of the name of Bewick that was so frightened that he hanged himself for fear on’t. Whenever the midwife was sent for it always came up with her in the shape of a galloway. Dr. Harrison wouldn’t believe in it, but he met it one night as he was going home, and it ’maist killed him; but he never would tell what happened, and didn’t like to talk about it, and whenever the Brag was mentioned he sat tremblin’ and shakin’ by the fireside. My husband had a white suit of clothes, and the first time he ever put them on he met the Brag, and never had them on afterwards but he met with some misfortune; and once when he met the Brag, and he had his white suit on (being a bold man), and having been at a christening, he was determined to get on the Brag’s back, but when he came to the four lonnin ends the Brag joggled him so sore that he could hardly keep his seat, and at last it threw him off into the middle of the pond, and then ran away, setting up a great nicker and laugh, just for all the world like a Christian. But this I know to be true of my own knowledge, that when my father was dying the Brag was heard coming up the lonnin like a coach and six, and it stood before the house, and the room shaked, and it gave a terrible yell when my father died, and then it went chatterin’ and gallopin’ down the lonnin as if yeben and yerth was comin’ together." These northern ghosts or goblins have been very well described in the following verse attributed to Ben Jonson: "Sometimes I meete them like a man, Sometimes an ox, sometimes a hound, And to a horse I turn me can, To trip and trot about them round. But if to ride My backe they stride, More swift than wind away I go; O’er hedge and lands, Through pools and ponds, I whirrey laughing, ho, ho, ho!" NAME-PLACES IN THE DURHAM DALES