little more interesting, or, at least, amusing, by a few of these pleasant tales.
The no less famous barguest[1] of Durham, and the Picktree-brag, have been already alluded to. The former, beside its many other pranks, would, sometimes, at the dead of night, in passing through the different streets set up the most horrid and continuous shrieks in order to scare the poor girls who might happen to be out of bed. The compiler of the present sheets remembers, when very young, to have heard a respectable old woman, then a midwife at Stockton, relate, that, when, in her youthful days, she was a servant at Durham, being up late one Saturday-night, cleaning the irons in the kitchen, she heard these skrikes, first at a great, and then at a less, distance, till, at length, the loudest, and most horrible, that can be conceived, just at the kitchen-window, sent her up-stairs, she did not know how, where she fell into the arms of a fellow-servant, who could scarcely prevent her fainting away.
"Pioners or diggers for metal," according to Lavater, "do affirme, that, in many mines, there ap-
- ↑ The etymology of this word is, most probably, from the Saxon bung, a city, and zart, a spirit: or, possibly, from a bar, or gate, in York, which was, likewise, once haunted by a goblin of this name.
