What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with alholdes, banshees, barguests,··hags,
hell-hounds, hell-wains, hob-and-lanthorns, hobbits, hobby-lanthorns, hobgoblins, hobgoblins, hob-headlesses, hobhoulards, hob-thrushes, hob-thrusts, hodge-pochers, hudskins,··waffs, waiths, warlocks, whitewomen, wirrikows, witches, wizards, wraiths, and yeth-hounds.
Yes, he mentioned hobgoblins twice. Must have been important.
> ··kelpies, kidnappers, kit-a-can-sticks, kitty-witches, knockers, kobolds, korigans, korreds, kors, kows, larrs, leprechauns, lian-hanshees, lubberkins··
> pad-foots, pans, patches, Peg-powlers, pictrees, pigmies, pixies, portunes, puckles, pucks, rawheads, redcaps, redmen, robinets, Robin-Goodfellows,
> satyrs, scar-bugs, scarecrows, scrags, scrats, shadows, shag-foals, shellycoats, sibyls, silkies, sirens, snapdragons, spectres, spirits, spoorns, sprets, sprites, spunks, spurns, succubuses, swaithes, swarths, sylphs, sylvans,
No shortage of Toms. . . .
> tantarrabobs, thrummy-caps, thurses, tints, tod-lowries, Tom-pokers, Tom-thumbs, Tom-tumblers, tritons, trolls, trows, tutgots, urchins,
I want know what a thurse is.
> . . . and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost.
> Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its spectre, or its knocker.
> The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!
> banshees, barguests, black-bugs, black dogs, blackmen, Bloody Bones, boggarts, boggleboes, boggles, boggy-boes, bogies, boguests, bolls, bomen, bonelesses, brags, breaknecks, brownies, brown-men, buckies, bugaboos, bugbears, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns,
> caddies, calcars, cauld-lads, centaurs, changelings, chittifaces, clabbernappers, cluricauns, colt-pixies, conjurers, corpse lights or candles, cowies, cutties, death-hearses, demons, Dick-a-Tuesdays, dobbies, dopple-gangers, doubles, dudmen, dunnies, dwarfs,
> Elf-fires, elves, fairies, fantasms, fates, fauns, fays, fetches, fiends, fiends, fire-drakes, flay-boggarts, follets, freiths, freits, friars' lanthorns, Gabriel-hounds, gallybeggars, gallytrots, ghosts, ghouls, giants, gnomes, goblins, grants, gringes, guests, gy-carlins, Gyl-burnt-tales, gytrashes
The Denham Tracts constitute a publication of a series of pamphlets and jottings on folklore, fifty-four in all, collected between 1846 and 1859 by Michael Aislabie Denham, a Yorkshire tradesman. Most of the original tracts were published with fifty copies (although some of them with twenty-five or even thirteen copies). The tracts were later re-edited by James Hardy for the Folklore Society and imprinted in two volumes in 1892 and 1895. It is possible that J.R.R. Tolkien took the word hobbit from the list of fairies in the Denham Tracts.
List of the original tracts
I.
* «A collection ...
> madcaps, mahounds, mannikins, mares, mawkins, Meg-with-the-wads, melch-dicks, men-in-the-oak, miffies, mock-beggars, mormos, mum-pokers, nacks, nickers, nickies, nicknevins, night-bats, nisses, nixies, nymphs, old-shocks, ouphs,