Black Annis

Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: English Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A blue-faced cannibal hag with iron claws who clawed her own cave out of solid rock and hunted children and lambs through the night.
Role in Mythos: She was Leicestershire’s nursery bogey, the household threat invoked to keep children indoors and obedient once the light failed.
Relation to Humans: Black Annis preyed directly on people, reaching through cottage windows to snatch children and devouring any caught outside after dark. Families defended themselves with windows built too narrow for her arm and with protective herbs above the frame, so she lived always at the edge of the homes she menaced.

On winter nights the cottagers of the Dane Hills barred their doors early and listened. When the wind dropped they could sometimes catch it under the quiet, a slow grinding far out in the dark, iron dragging against stone, the sound of something digging itself deeper into the earth. That was how they knew Black Annis was awake.

Her home was a hollow she had scraped for herself out of the sandstone cliff, a cave the locals called Black Annis’s Bower. She had cut it with her own claws, working the rock the way a lesser thing might work soft clay. A single great oak stood at the mouth of it, and the tree mattered as much as the cave. She climbed into its branches and waited there, folded into the bark and the shadow, watching the fields below for anything small enough to carry.

The poet John Heyrick fixed her shape for good in the 1790s, and the picture has barely shifted since. He gave her a face livid and blue, eyes glaring out of it, and in place of hands a pair of vast talons fouled with human flesh. She was tall past any natural height. Her teeth were long and yellow, her hair a matted tangle, and across her shoulders and round her waist she wore the cured hides of the children she had taken. She tanned them herself. She would flay a body, hang the skin on her oak to dry in the wind, and then wear it.

The hunting was simple and patient. A lamb strayed too far from the fold at dusk and she dropped on it from the tree, and that was that. A child wandered the Dane Hills after the light had gone and never came home. She did not always need to leave the bower at all. The old cottages of the area were built with windows less than a single brick wide, and people said this was no accident: a narrow enough window kept her iron arm from reaching through to the cradle inside. Over the frame they hung herbs to turn her back. She lived close enough to ordinary life that ordinary life was shaped around her.

Where she came from depends on who is asked. The oldest answer reaches back behind the witch entirely. Her name is held by many to be a worn-down form of Anu, the Celtic mother goddess also called Dana or Danu, and Black Annis the crone face of that goddess after Christianity had finished with her, the cave once a womb-shrine where she was honoured rather than feared. A plainer story sets her in the late Middle Ages. A Dominican anchoress named Agnes Scott is said to have lived a life of prayer in a cave in the Dane Hills and to lie buried at Swithland, and her memory, soured by Reformation distaste for hermits and sharpened into a tale for frightening children, hardened over the generations into the blue hag. Nobody can prove which root is the true one, or whether both fed the same growth.

The town kept her alive in its calendar. Every Easter Monday, a day Leicester called Black Monday, the mayor and his dignitaries rode out at noon for a hunt that began at her bower. The quarry was not a hare but a dead cat soaked in aniseed, tied to a horse’s tail and dragged from the cave through the streets all the way to the mayor’s door. The custom faded out at the end of the eighteenth century. By the close of the next one she had drifted into the city itself, renamed Cat Anna, a witch said to keep to the cellars beneath Leicester Castle.

Her gifts all follow from what she is. The claws that could open sandstone could open a child’s window or a child, and her reach was long and her grip past resisting. She saw in the dark and moved through it without sound until the last moment. The oak gave her height and ambush. She was strong enough to carry off grown lambs and to drag a body back to her cave to be skinned.

Her limits follow just as plainly. She belonged to the Dane Hills and the bower and could be kept out by a window too small to admit her arm and a sprig of the right herb. She hunted by night and at night could be hidden from, behind a barred door, indoors, awake. And the same digging that made her home announced her. The grinding of her claws on rock carried across the fields, so that the thing meant to take you unawares was forever telling you, hours ahead, exactly where she was and that she was coming.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Black Annis?

Black Annis is a cannibal hag from the folklore of Leicestershire, England, imagined as a tall blue-faced witch with iron claws who hunted children and lambs by night. She lived in a cave she had clawed from the sandstone of the Dane Hills, and parents used her as a bogeywoman to keep children indoors after dark.

Where did Black Annis live?

Black Annis lived in a cave in the Dane Hills outside Leicester, known locally as Black Annis’s Bower, which legend says she dug out of solid rock with her own iron claws. A great oak grew at the cave’s mouth, and she would hide in its branches to drop on passing prey. The cave was filled in by the Victorians and the land was built over after the First World War.

What did Black Annis do to children?

Black Annis was said to seize children and lambs, eat them, and then flay the bodies, hanging the skins on her oak tree to dry before wearing them around her waist. She could reach through cottage windows to snatch infants, which is why local homes were built with windows less than one brick wide and hung with herbs to keep her out.

Is Black Annis based on a real goddess?

Many scholars trace Black Annis to Anu, a Celtic mother goddess also called Danu or Dana, and read the hag as the crone aspect of that goddess after Christian retelling demonised her. A competing theory identifies her with Agnes Scott, a medieval anchoress who lived in a Dane Hills cave, whose memory was distorted into the monster. Neither origin can be proven over the other.

What was the Black Annis Easter Monday hunt?

Every Easter Monday, called Black Monday in Leicester, the mayor and town dignitaries staged a drag hunt that started at Black Annis’s Bower. The quarry was a dead cat soaked in aniseed and dragged by horse from the cave through the streets to the mayor’s house. The custom died out at the end of the eighteenth century.