legendary creature
A legendary creature is a type of extraordinary or supernatural being that is described in folklore (including myths and legends), and may be featured in historical accounts before modernity, but has not been scientifically shown to exist.
In t ...
from
Cornish folklore
Cornish mythology is the folk tradition and mythology of the Cornish people. It consists partly of folk traditions developed in Cornwall and partly of traditions developed by Britons elsewhere before the end of the first millennium, often ...
. Spriggans are particularly associated with West Penwith in
Cornwall
Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
.
Etymology
''Spriggan'' is a dialect word, pronounced with the grapheme as /d͡ʒ/, sprid-jan, and not sprigg-an, borrowed from the Cornish
plural
In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...
Spriggans have often been depicted as grotesquely ugly, wizened old men with large childlike heads. They were said to be found at old ruins,
cairn
A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...
s, and barrows guarding buried treasure. Although small in stature, they have often been considered to be the ghosts of giants and retained gigantic strength, and in one story collected by Robert Hunt, they showed the ability to swell to enormous size. Hunt associated these spirits with the hillfort known as
Trencrom Hill
Trencrom Hill (or Trecrobben) is a prominent hill fort, owned by the National Trust, near Lelant, Cornwall. It is crowned by an univallate Neolithic tor enclosure and was re-used as a hillfort in the Iron Age. Cairns or hut circles can be s ...
in Cornwall.
Spriggans were notorious for their unpleasant dispositions, and delighted in working mischief against those who offended them. They raised sudden whirlwinds to terrify travellers, sent storms to blight crops, and sometimes stole away mortal children, leaving their ugly
changeling
A changeling, also historically referred to as an auf or oaf, is a human-like creature found throughout much of European folklore. According to folklore, a changeling was a substitute left by a supernatural being when kidnapping a human being. ...
s in their place. They were blamed if a house was robbed or a building collapsed, or if cattle were stolen. In one story, an old woman got the better of a band of spriggans by turning her clothing inside-out (turning clothing supposedly being as effective as holy water or iron in repelling fairies) to gain their loot.
On Christmas Eve, spriggans met for a midnight Mass at the bottom of deep mines, and passersby could hear them singing. However, it was not spriggans but the buccas or knockers who were associated with
tin mining
Tin mining began early in the Bronze Age, as bronze is a copper-tin alloy. Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with approximately 2 ppm (parts per million), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm.
History
Tin extraction and use ca ...
, and who played a protective role towards the miners.
Based on the collections of Robert Hunt and William Bottrell, Katharine Briggs characterized the spriggans as
fairy
A fairy (also called fay, fae, fae folk, fey, fair folk, or faerie) is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, generally described as anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic, found in the folklore of multiple European cultures (including Cel ...
bodyguards. ''
The English Dialect Dictionary
''The English Dialect Dictionary'' (''EDD'') is the most comprehensive dictionary of English dialects ever published, compiled by the Yorkshire dialectologist Joseph Wright (1855–1930), with strong support by a team and his wife Elizabeth Mary ...
'' (1905) compared them to the
troll
A troll is a being in Nordic folklore, including Norse mythology. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated areas of rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human bei ...
Crouch End
Crouch End is an area of North London, England, from the City of London in the western half of the borough of Haringey. It is within the Hornsey postal district (N8). It has been described as one of "a new breed of urban villages" in London ...
,
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, in some arches lining a section of the Parkland Walk (a disused railway line). The sculpture was installed in 1993. If walking along the Parkland Walk from
Finsbury Park
Finsbury Park is a public park in Harringay, north London, England. The park lies on the southern-most edge of the London Borough of Haringey. It is in the area formerly covered by the historic parish of Hornsey, succeeded by the Municipal ...
to Highgate station, the ''Spriggan'' is to the right just before the disused railway platforms of the former Crouch End station. To the left, on the southside of the Parkland Walk is Crouch Hill Park where Ashmount School has been located since January 2013. The sculpture is sometimes mistaken for the Green Man or Pan.
In popular culture
Spriggans have been featured as fey creatures in the ''
Dungeons & Dragons
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) originally created and designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by TSR (company)#Tactical ...
'' roleplaying game since the 1980s.
Additionally, in the roleplaying game Changeling: The Dreaming by
White Wolf Publishing
White Wolf Entertainment AB, formerly White Wolf Publishing, was an American roleplaying game and book publisher. The company was founded in 1991 as a merger between Lion Rampant (game publisher), Lion RampantPiskies.
Spriggansin the style of the Parkland Walk sculpturecan be found in ''
The Elder Scrolls
''The Elder Scrolls'' is a series of action role-playing games, action role-playing video games primarily developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. The series focuses on Nonlinear gameplay, free-form gameplay in an ...
'' series of video games, where they are portrayed as exclusively female.
In the video game ''
World of Warcraft
''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a 2004 massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG) video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows and Mac OS X. Set in the '' Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of War ...
'', the Spriggan are a race of fae loyal to the Drust, a dark and twisted version of the fae.
In the Japanese roleplaying video game '' Trails Through Daybreak'', Spriggan is a title taken on by the game’s main protagonist, Van Arkride. The title represents a person who solves morally gray problems— an underground fixer.