A petition was presented to the Council from potato dealers, greengrocers, fruiterers, and others... 'We request the removal of the country people.'

They were littler for a start. Not dwarf or misshapen, but uncomfortably midget in size, and all much of a height. So that the old-farrant guiser among them might have been the grand-dad or the father, and the simple quean who always liked to rock something in her arms and croon a lullaby might have been his grand-daughter or his wife. They never said who they were or talked about themselves. Only "they were from the country."

There again, their stall. All they set out was strange miniature figures wrought of twig. Folk would have laughed, only they weren't particularly funny stick-works. A forked bit made the legs, arms were a straight bit spliced through a slit in the 'trunk', and the head was nothing more than knobly bit of growth. "Gipsies they maun be." "Then wheer's the claes-pegs and the lavender and the ling?"

Yet a customer was always assured the little symbols were lucky. "Good fer elven, dobbies and chancey fairy-folk," they claimed; or, "We spelled 'em worsells!" True, the making of the little twig fetishes (done on site) was always accompanied by a deal of muttering and humming, so there was no deception there. "What're we to dee wi' them?" asked one. "Why man, thoo hing 'em fornenst thee do-or, an nane o' them ithers 'll gan nigh thee happy hyem," was the standard reply. "Very rustic," commented the parson, and wondered if it might be worth a try (he was compiling a book on folklore, you see).

Others wondered how they could possibly make a profit. Each little mannikin was charged at threppence, and they would only accept a silver threepence at that. ("Country folk!" laughed one wife, as she searched her purse.) Perhaps they selled one or two a day, for superstition is reasonably rife where there is always the risk of pit accident or storm at sea, or of a bairn getting the smit. "How can they afford the stall?" other merchants asked each other. "They paid me properly," said the Market Inspector; "there - a siller shillin', lookstha!" It did not seem likely they would last long, but in the end it was the other market folk drave them out, not the lack of business.

They were too unnerving. For a start, where did they gan te at night? No one ever saw them leave. The fear was, they hung about and thieved. Folk made sure to search under their stall (and every stall and all) at closing time. And behind the pillars that held up the ornate roof. And behind the boxes stowed at the gates. There was never a trace of them. Yet somehow things did disappear: a bottle of apple-juice, perhaps, or a turnip or two. Once an irate stall-holder confronted them about this. "What're thir bites out of ma bread?" he demanded to know. "Have ye little hoits been at ma stock?" The eldest (apparently) - and incidentally the only one of them that ever talked, it was noted - took the loaf from him, examined the marks, held them up to his own jaw (to show the difference in size), and commented "Meece." "Nae guid," he added, and hoyed the loaf over his shoulder. The little wifie beside him scuttled after it, picked it up, wrapped it in her shawl and thereafter cradled it, day in day out, as her own little babby. She even jabbed in some currents for its eyes. "And wheese stall did they com fra, A'd like ti knaa," commented one, as if two currents mattered.

Where did they live? Another mystery. If asked, the old guizer would simply respond, "Up t'dale" and that was that. They obviously didn't belong in the city. They had no lodgings that anyone knew of. Once, when the old 'un was out the way for a minute, the lady from the dried flower stall went and asked the girl with the loaf-baby. She looked around, as though surprised that anyone would speak to her, or checking maybe, to see if her gaffor was looking - then whispered, very secretively, "We used to live up t'dale; but the dobbies have getten awful fierce; so we live here now." Which could mean owt.

It was not an easy thing to count them even, let alone supply names. There always seemed to be about five, sometimes six; but neither always five or six. Apart from the two who got the nicknames 'Gaffor' and 'Missy', the others looked very alike and non-descript. "There could be twenty on 'em, aal cowpin' places as they likes," commented one. No one could deny this. One of them at least must have come and gone, for occasionally a new supply of twigs turned up, to be worked into further figurelets. Where did the wood come from? "Up t'dale..." "Is it witch-hazel?" asked the parson, on his second visit, almost convinced to buy one. "Aha," replied the gaffor, but more in the manner of a query than an affirmation. From all of which you will see they never spoke unless asked a direct question, and even then left the answering strictly to the Gaffor. Between themselves, looks and signs were noted to pass, but not words. Words were precious it seemed, and generally saved for the strange incantations they made as they worked on the models. The Parson strained his ear once to catch the phrasing, but would only say afterwards, "It's not Latin."

But what irritated beyond endurance was their sense of humour. If their was a mischance on another stall, an accident, an embarrassment, or a dispute, they were certain to turn their attention that way - all of them, all together - and then smile, or if it was dire enough, laugh outright. When Meg from the sausage counter slipped on the grease that would accumulate beside her workings, they jeered and clapped. When the Market Inspector found he'd lost his spectacles and couldn't tally the rents in his pocket-book, they respectfully smiled and offered impromptu twig-goggles. When butcher Frank found mawks crawling in a joint, they blared a tongue at him in satisfaction. Word got round that they were causing ill-luck. Anyone whose takings seemed inexplicably low, or broke a pot or a glass, or felt a tweak of sciatica below was sure to send them a baleful look, to be met with ten (or twelve) innocent eyes, returning the gaze.

Relationships moved from the curious to the hostile, and it was only weeks before a petition was sent in to have them removed. It didn't succeed. "A petition is aal vary democratick," explained the Inspector, "and Aa knaa the Committee gav it a serious reading-to, but ye cannot hoy folk oot fer bein' li'le and bobbersome, noo can ye?" "Bobbersome, my fiut," sez Meg; "them's boggarts, and hev nae pliace i' wor christian market!" Frank went over to them. "Are ye boggarts?" he asked outright. The gaffor looked shifty for once, and did not answer. One of the others pushed to the front, and shouted (diminutively)(and rudely) "Wot ovit?" Frank seized one of their little twig-charms, and turned it on them. "Boggarts begone!" he chanted. But the little folk just gav a peel of laughter. "That'll nut wark," sed the Gaffor. "Nut on us!" chimed in his marra. That was the day Frank chopped the tip off his forefinger, by the way.

There didn't seem much they could do. Only Meg had a plan, and she wisely kept it to herself.

Waiting till Gaffor did one of his disappearances, she approached Missy, who was making a mannikin, and asked to see what she was doing. Missy held up the twiggy conundrum. And Meg quickly took it from her. "Oh wait," cried Missy; "I havena..." "Put the words on that keep the dobbies away?" suggested Meg. Missy was silent. "Or do you mean the words that promote boggarts?" Missy went a little pale at that, and Meg knew she had guessed right. Far from giving protection, the weany charms made everyone – stall-holder and mannikin-buyer alike – under the spell of this insidious crew. Missy ganned sobby and shaky. Taking advantage of the other's dismay, Meg leant over and helped herself to the two currants that made the baby's eyes. "It wud be wrang to ax permission, wouldn't it?" said Meg, and went away with her prize. “Aa reckon Aa cud sell mare o' thir than them ever did o' their awn toys!”

She incorporated the two currants in the doll by fixing them on prickly bits of the head, said some words her own ganny had learn'd her, then had her young assistant clamber aloft and hang it up with thread from the rafters of the market, half way between heaven and earth. The tribe of country marketeers gathered round in horror. Even if the one of them stood on the shoulders of the other till they were five or six high, they couldn't reach it.tumble and clamber as thei might. And the spell clearly worked on them, this time. One by one they hunched up and stole out, as though shunning some powerful force, the mental equivalent of a hurricane perhaps, or a forest fire.

And never returned. But there is a small postscript to all this. When I sent out a dialect survey recently, I tried including a few rustic words in case: bogle, dobbie, boggart - things of that sort. No one in the urban areas had ever heard of them. Someone slightly remote remembered a 'tatie boggle' from long ago. And over in Cumbria they still acknowledge them all. But not here.