Lubber Fiend

The corn was threshed by morning, all of it, more than ten men could have beaten out in a full day. No one had heard the flail. Whoever swung it had worked in the dark of the barn while the household slept, and by the time the first cock crowed he had eaten his fill and gone. On the hearthstone stood an empty bowl where the cream had been. Along the length of the chimney, in the warm ash-smelling dark, the boards were still faintly pressed where something heavy had lain stretched out at its ease.

This is the lubber fiend, and the English farms that kept one asked very little of the arrangement beyond discretion. He is close kin to the brownie of the Scottish Lowlands, the hob of the northern dales, the Scandinavian tomte and the Slavic domovoi, one of that scattered family of household spirits who trade a night of unseen labour for a saucer of milk and a place at the fire. What sets the lubber apart is his size and his sloth. Where the brownie is small and stooped, the lubber is large, and where the hob is quick, the lubber is famously slow to rouse, a great hairy sluggard who does prodigious work and then wants nothing so much as to lie down and bask.

He goes by many names, and they all lean toward the same idea. Lob, lubberkin, lurdane, Lob Lie-by-the-Fire: the words carry the old sense of a clumsy, heavy, idle fellow, one who eats well and moves little. The tail that some stories grant him and the coarse pelt of hair mark him as something not quite human, but his habits are entirely domestic. He threshes and reaps, hauls and sweeps, and then he claims his wage of cream and lies down along the chimney’s whole length with the fire warming his hairy strength, crop-full and content, and lets himself out of doors before dawn.

That last picture belongs to John Milton, who fixed the lubber fiend in English memory more firmly than any village tale. In L’Allegro, written in the poet’s brighter mood, country folk swap stories by the fire, and one of them is of the drudging goblin whose shadowy flail threshes the corn that ten day-labourers could not finish, who then lies him down the full length of the chimney to bask his hairy strength at the embers before flinging himself crop-full out of doors at cockcrow. It is one of the warmest images of a household spirit in the whole of English verse, and it is where most readers still meet him.

The folklore behind the poem is older and rougher. In Beaumont and Fletcher’s play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, staged a generation before Milton wrote, a being called Lob-lie-by-the-fire is named as a giant, the son of a witch and the Devil, which is a considerable fall from a helpful farm spirit. The folklorist Katharine Briggs, who spent a lifetime cataloguing the fairies of Britain, treated the two as the same creature seen from different sides, the hearth-servant and the monstrous foundling folded into one. It is a useful reminder that these helpers were never wholly safe. The thing dozing in your chimney corner did your threshing, and it might also have come out of somewhere very dark.

There is a sourer cousin of him too. The abbey lubber was a minor demon who haunted the cellars and kitchens of rich monasteries, not to work but to corrupt, tempting fat and idle monks into drunkenness, gluttony, and worse. The best known of these is Friar Rush, who took service in a lax abbey and quietly fed its appetites until the whole house rotted from the inside. The lubber’s warmth and hunger, harmless in a farm kitchen, curdle here into something moralized and mean, a fiend who rewards sloth instead of lifting it.

He was, at bottom, a servant who wanted feeding. Leave the cream, keep the fire banked, ask no questions and speak no thanks, and the lubber fiend would do the labour of a whole household through the night for years on end. His strength was real and enormous, his industry once roused went beyond anything a team of men could match, and he needed no wages but food and heat. He worked unseen and left no sound a sleeper would catch. Where he settled, the grain came in and the byre stayed sound.

His weaknesses were cut to the same measure as his strengths. He was slow, greedy, and easily offended, and an unfed lubber was a useless one who would lie by the fire and stir for nothing. Payment in clothes, the old undoing of every brownie, released him from service and sent him off for good. And the line between the good lubber and the bad was thin enough that the same appetite which made him a tireless helper could make him, in the wrong house, a demon of pure indolence. He asked to be fed and left alone. Feed him and leave him alone, and the corn was threshed by morning. Forget, and the flail hung silent on its nail.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the lubber fiend?

The lubber fiend is a large, hairy household spirit of English folklore who does farm and household chores by night in exchange for food and a warm place at the fire. He belongs to the same family as the brownie, the hob, the Scandinavian tomte, and the Slavic domovoi, but is set apart by his great size and his reputation for laziness. He is best known from a passage in John Milton’s poem L’Allegro.

What does the lubber fiend do in Milton’s L’Allegro?

In Milton’s L’Allegro, the lubber fiend threshes with a “shadowy flail” more corn than ten day-labourers could finish, then lies down along the full length of the chimney and basks his hairy strength at the fire. Having eaten his fill, he flings himself out of doors before the first cock crows at dawn. The image is told as one of the fireside stories of country people.

Is the lubber fiend good or evil?

The lubber fiend is mostly a helpful spirit, doing enormous amounts of work for only a bowl of cream and a place by the hearth, but he has darker sides. One tradition, recorded in the play The Knight of the Burning Pestle, makes Lob-lie-by-the-fire a giant born of a witch and the Devil. A related demon called the abbey lubber haunted monastery kitchens to tempt monks into gluttony and drink.

What is the difference between a lubber fiend and a brownie?

The lubber fiend and the brownie are closely related household spirits, but the lubber is larger, hairier, and much lazier than the small, stooped brownie. Both labour unseen at night for offerings of cream or milk, and both can be driven away by a gift of clothes. The lubber’s defining traits are his size and his fondness for sprawling at the fire once his work is done.

Where does the name “lubber fiend” come from?

The name comes from “lubber,” an old English word for a big, clumsy, idle person, combined with “fiend” in its older sense of a supernatural being. He is also called Lob, lubberkin, lurdane, and Lob Lie-by-the-Fire, all of which point to the same idea of a heavy, slow, hearth-loving creature. The names emphasize his bulk and his laziness rather than any menace.

Related Entries

Hob, Hobgoblin, Brownie, Killmoulis, Puck, Pixie, Fenodyree, Heinzelmännchen, Kobold, Nisse, Tomte, Domovoi