Hedley Kow

Also Known As: also the Hedley Cow; the tale is sometimes printed as The Bogey Beast
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: English Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings
Mythical Attributes: It takes any shape it likes, borrows any voice it likes, and spends both on practical jokes.
Role in Mythos: The resident bogie of Hedley on the Hill in south Northumberland, mischievous rather than malignant, who ends every prank with a horse-laugh at his victim’s expense.
Relation to Humans: It tormented farm servants, milkmaids, courting couples and women in labour, but the damage never went past wet feet, a spilled pail and a bruised temper. Nobody in the record is killed by it, and nobody who kept their good humour was beaten by it.

Forster went out into his field one morning and caught his own grey horse, or thought he did. He led it in, buckled the harness, backed it into the limmers of the cart, and had the reins in his hand when the animal slipped out of the shafts like a knotless thread, flung up its heels and scoured away across the grass, setting up a great nicker of laughter as it went. The harness lay in the mud. Somewhere behind the hedge, presumably, the real grey horse went on cropping.

That was the Hedley Kow, and that was its whole method.

The village of Hedley on the Hill stands above the Derwent valley in south Northumberland, near Ebchester, in a country of small stone farms, wet lanes and long walks home after dark. William Henderson, gathering the folklore of the northern counties in the middle of the nineteenth century, set the creature down plainly: a bogie, mischievous rather than malignant, whose appearance was never very alarming and who liked to finish his frolics with a horse-laugh. It is a modest job description for something that could be anything at all.

The name points at a cow, and a cow is one of the things it liked to be. A milkmaid would find her favourite beast waiting in the field, except that the beast would not stand. It led her a long chase round the grass, let itself be caught at last, then kicked and roared through the milking, upset the pail into the mud, slipped clean out of the tie and went off across the field laughing. The smell of spilled milk on trampled grass is the smell of the Hedley Kow having a good evening.

Indoors it was worse, because indoors it did not need a body. It imitated the voices of the servant girl’s sweethearts at the door and left her standing in the cold yard while it worked. It overturned the kail-pot into the fire. It gave the cream to the cats. It unravelled the knitting and put the spinning wheel out of order, and it did all this with the ordinary domestic malice of a bored child, choosing every time the small ruin that would take longest to put right.

Its worst hour was a birth. When a man rode out for the howdie, the midwife, the Kow would be on the road ahead of him, terrifying the horse until it threw the pair of them into the dirt and left them there. Then it would come back to the house and mock the labouring woman through the window, and when her husband ran out with a stick to beat it off, the stick was twitched out of his hand and laid smartly across his own shoulders. It never troubled the recently bereaved. That line is the strangest thing about it: a creature with almost no morals at all, which nonetheless kept off the grieving.

Two young men of Newlands, near Ebchester, walked out one evening to meet their sweethearts and saw them ahead on the path, just far enough off to be worth hurrying for. The girls kept that distance for two or three miles. The lads followed, always closing and never arriving, until they were knee-deep in a bog and the girls were gone with a loud Ha! ha! The men floundered out and ran for home with the thing hooting at their heels, and in crossing the Derwent in the dark they fell into the water, took each other for the bogie, and arrived home separately, each with a story of being hunted half the night and nearly drowned.

The most famous encounter is the one where it loses. A poor old woman going home along the road found a big black pot lying at the verge, and looking in, found it full of gold. She fastened her shawl to it and dragged it, and it grew heavier, and when she stopped to rest the gold had become a lump of silver. Better, she thought, less likely to be stolen. Then the silver was iron, which was easier to sell in penny pieces. Then the iron was a plain stone, and she was delighted, because she had been wanting something to hold her door open. She was untying her shawl at her own gate when the stone gave a jump and a squeal, grew to the size of a great horse, threw down four lanky legs, shook out two long ears, flourished a tail and went kicking off down the lane, laughing like a naughty mocking boy. She stared after it until it was out of sight and then went in to sit by her fire, feeling herself the luckiest woman in the county, because she had seen the Hedley Kow with her own eyes and made free with it too. Joseph Jacobs printed that story in 1894 and it has outlived every other thing the creature did.

There is no origin. Nothing says where it came from, who made it, or how long it had been at Hedley, and no source describes what it truly looks like when it is not being a truss of straw, a cow, a grey horse, a girl’s sweetheart or a cooking pot. The shapes are the description. Its cousins are the same kind of vagueness given local names: the Picktree Brag over in Durham, which showed itself as a calf with a white handkerchief round its neck, as a coach-horse, as a donkey, as four men holding up a white sheet, and once as a naked man with no head; the Kludde of Brabant and Flanders, a Proteus of a spirit that frightened the Flemish peasantry out of whole roads and fields. Henderson thought the Kow’s shout of laughter was the same laugh that Robin Goodfellow gives at the end of his tricks.

Set out its powers and they come to shapeshifting, mimicry, an appetite for chaos in other people’s kitchens, and an ability to be exactly where a tired person is going. Set out its weaknesses and they come to one thing. It has no teeth. Every account ends with laughter, never with a corpse, and the worst it ever inflicted was a soaking, a spoiled milking and a good deal of wasted work. It seems tied to its own parish, the fields around Hedley and Newlands and the fords of the Derwent, and it can be spoiled entirely by a victim who declines to be dismayed. The old woman with the pot ruined it. It changed and changed and changed for her, and she was pleased every time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Hedley Kow?

The Hedley Kow is a shapeshifting bogie from the village of Hedley on the Hill in Northumberland, England. It is mischievous rather than dangerous, and it exists to play practical jokes on farmers, milkmaids and travellers, always finishing with a loud mocking laugh.

What shapes does the Hedley Kow take?

The Hedley Kow appears as a truss of straw, a favourite milk cow, a farmer’s grey horse, a young man’s sweetheart, and a black pot full of gold. It can also imitate the voices of people the victim knows. When it finally revealed itself to one old woman it was the size of a great horse, with lanky legs, long ears and a tail.

Is the Hedley Kow dangerous?

No. In every recorded story the Hedley Kow’s victims escape with nothing worse than wet feet, a spilled milk pail, a beating with their own stick or a night of wasted walking. It never kills anyone, and it was said to leave the recently bereaved alone.

What is the story of the Hedley Kow and the old woman?

An old woman found a pot of gold by the roadside and dragged it home, and it turned to silver, then to iron, then to a plain stone, and she was delighted by each change because each seemed more useful than the last. At her gate the stone leapt up as the Hedley Kow and ran off laughing. She was not upset in the slightest; she counted herself lucky to have seen it.

Where does the Hedley Kow live?

The Hedley Kow haunted Hedley on the Hill and the surrounding country near Ebchester and Newlands, in the Derwent valley of south Northumberland. Its pranks are set on the local farms, lanes and river crossings, and it does not seem to have travelled beyond that district.