Hobberdy Dick

It is mid-seventeenth-century England. Hobberdy Dick, a hobgoblin whose charge it is to guard Widford Manor in the Cotswolds, watches unhappily as new tenants, a city merchant and his family, move in. What makes it even worse is the fact that they are Puritans. Hobberdy Dick knows that now the happy days of mumming and Maying, of Christmas dancing and fireside games are things of the past.It seems a bleak outlook, until Dick sees hope for the future in Anne Seckar, the penniless cousin of the Culvers, and Joel, the merchant's eldest son, who loves the country and the old ways.An eminent authority on folk lore, K. M. Briggs is a loving guide to the ancient ways, the secret folk life of the English countryside. Against the background of a terrain in which she is magnificently at home, she tells the fascinating story of unforgettable Hobberdy Dick and the people whose lives he both guards and governs.