Research source

I am still near, Watching the smiles I prized on earth, Your converse mild, your blameless mirth.[64

Date of account: Late nineteenth-century compilation
Source: The Ghost World
Reference: The Ghost World · selected passage 126
Rights: public_domain
Language: English
Record updated: 2026-08-24

Record summary

William Nuttall, in a ballad entitled 'Sir Roland and Clegg Hall Boggart,' makes Sir Roland murder the children in bed with a dagger

Published source text

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Source passage

Source text · mention only

Mr. William Nuttall, in a ballad entitled 'Sir Roland and Clegg Hall Boggart,' makes Sir Roland murder the children in bed with a dagger. Remorse eventually drove him mad, and he died raving during a violent storm. The hall was ever after haunted by the children's ghosts, and also by demons, till St. Anthony, with a relic from the Virgin's shrine, exorcised and laid the evil spirits. According to Mr. Nuttall there were two boggarts of Clegg Hall, and it is related how the country people 'importuned a pious monk to exorcise or lay the ghost.' Having provided himself with a variety of charms and spells, he quickly brought the ghosts to a parley. They demanded as a condition of future quiet the sacrifice of a body and a soul. Thereupon the cunning monk said, 'Bring me the body of a cock and the sole of a shoe.' This being done, the spirits were forbidden to appear till the whole of the sacrifice was consumed, and so ended the laying of the Clegg Hall boggarts.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

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