In Cheshire, the term ‘fairy’ is not found; preternatural beings which could not be unambiguously classified as ghosts or devils were generally called boggarts. They could appear in many forms—human, animal, skeletal, goblin-like—and might be either kindly or malicious. A twentieth-century farmer from Frandley told the Revd A. W. Boyd of his terror on encountering one:
When he was a boy, sixty years or more ago [i.e. in the 1880s], he was walking with a farm labourer from Frandley to Barnton, crossing the fields by a footpath on the south west side of Dog Kennel Wood. At a stile they met a little man about four feet high, and stood aside to let him pass. When he reached the top of the stile he stood still, and they watched him grow larger and larger and larger, but he made no sound. The boy and his companion took to their heels in utter terror… My informant was perfectly confident that it was a ‘boggart’ he had seen, and remained so all his life.