The Memories Ofseven Norfolk People

Hikey Sprites will be after you, if you are naughty’. I E didn't know what they were, I think a sort of fairy - thing, but I knew they would come after me. It can be Weknew the Hey prites Re The memories of seven Norfolk people Hikey or Hiker”. LE PE A A Val a Bob (89) = in Fakenham 12-5-2008 \ Met Met in the Forum Norwich 17-4-2009 P y — da “There were some council houses in Kirby Bedon, 1 had Ms “Mum talked about Hikey Sprites, they came out in on the way home from school. to pass them every day the dark, of course there was no electricity then.I spent one, she always used to | An old lady lived in the last my childhood in Griston. Older children used to dare say as we passed, “Hurry you home girl, before them me to walk past a gap in a hedge, where a hose from a know what they were, Highty Sprites get you’. didn’t traction engine passed through, they said the Hikey get home”. but I was glad to Sprites were there”. Bob,reliving his fear, demonstrated in the Forum how he gingerly crept Nigel (65) past that gap. 1-7-2009 Metat the Royal Norfolk Show | Nigel gave me information butalso said he would make enquiries of his ninety-two year old mother when he visited her. He later rang me with his Met in Southrepps 21-10-2008 findings. “We spent our childhood in Themelthorpe. When we “It was a night-time thing, everyone in Kerdistone were kids mum would say, if we were naughty, ‘The used to talk about them. They would say, “Get you Hikey Sprites will get you’. I shared a bedroom with home before dark, do the Hikey Sprites will get you’. It my sister Gill, if we were noisy mum would say, ‘Be was common between the Wars”. you quiet or the Hikey Sprites will get you’. I think mother was born during the First World War. Nigel’s they were a sort ofelf, ratherevil little things”. Daphne (i76) Metat a bus stop in Trowse 16-4-2009 “I grew up in Strumpshaw. Mum used to say, ‘The 33 32 Dadl Now for an encounter with fairies, maybe Hikey Sprites, most certainly From Marsham,letter published in E.D.P. 23-3-2009 Will-o’-the-Wisp. «1 remember these Hikey Sprites, or Hike Spikes as we called them. My granny would warn us that they Hilary > Story would, ‘Get us if we were bad’. But they neverdid! Perhaps we weren’t bad enough”. I MET HILARY, A RESIDENTofthe Great Hospital, in Bishopgate, Norwichin David who comes from a milling family (a water mill) gave me further August 2009. I asked myusualleading question and in reply Hilary told this information by telephone. wonderful evocative story. I give it in her own words: «Grandfather talked about Hydra sprites which lived «we lived in Postwick, my dad worked at Grange in water, the mill pool and the well. My brother, 1 Farm. Every sunday evening the family, my parents, think, coined the word Hi ke sprike”. my sisters and myself attended the 6.30 evensong service at Postwick church, it was expected of us. Howversatile the Hikey tradition is! when evensong ended, at about 7.30, mum went Roland home with the youngest children to put them to bed. Born and brought up in Docking in theearly 1930s Dad and 1 walked down the loke to the marsh. It was Information supplied by his friend Ann 14-9-2009 getting dark, the marsh was covered with a blanketof mist on the top which flickered and danced amazing “My old mum was always on about the Hi Rey Sprites. little flames, blue, tinged at the top with yellow. 1 held She told us they would come if we were behaving my dad's hand awe-struck,‘they are fairies/ he said. badly, we thought they would come when we were in we walked home in silence, my mind full of wonder - 1 bed and punish us or even take us away. I think they had seen fairies! Erom that day to this my belief in were a kind of very large goblin’. fairies was never in doubt”. This account from the north-west corner of the county is a harsh Hilary’s mumwas a Postwick girl but Jack came from Hertfordshire. Had portrayal of the Hikeys. It is not difficult to empathise with young Roland, he been a local lad he might have said, Look Hilary they are Hikey Sprites’. in bed, in the dark, alert and apprehensive, awaiting his night-time visitor.lt was a rather severe way of getting Roland to take heed”, however helpful the intention. 34 55 Ne Hikey prites hday come Final Hey Fhoughts nie this WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE of this Hikey Sprite tradition, TAM CONFIDENT MORE PEOPLE will now be aware of the Hikey than was the SO you hard”, nearly two years? So, hold has been my companion for case before I began my researches two years ago. My supportive contacts entity that a few ideas. have cast their nets far and wide and although as one said, “Most of my while I shuffle HIKEY SPRITE! Once heard what a great dialect name, enquiries have been met with a blank stare,’ much,that could have beenlost First of all though, with, a name to enjoy. Surely, forgotten, a name to juggle is now recorded. Thislittle enigmatical fey inhabitant of our county now has not easily a word. a future, let us hope more than just for a long time. It has even appeared on the internet of something pagan, a surviving Do we have here the tenuous remains unfortunately in a rather over-detailed, fanciful form. reduced now to a folk belief? of an alternative religious tradition, Is the word used though now in an everyday way? It certainly is in fragment woodland,of earth a spirit of the wild, of Somethingofthe spiritual realm, Horstead, in connection with a dog.If the little fellow goes missing Terry Wild Man (now largely maybe, of the woodwose, the will say to his wife, “Where's young Hikey Sprite?” Not his name mind, but perhaps. A relative, who has fonts) or the Green Man carvings on Norfolk church his character. Terry as we saw before uses the term to describe, “mild confined to great years. This certainly has of a comeback in recent naughtiness”. enjoyed something magic. Not sure and the practitioners of contemporary On a larger scale at the Ivy Farm Holiday Park in Overstrand, the appeal to neo-pagans proprietors, husband and wife, both though. recall their parents saying, when they of that deep, profound, primeval Do we have an echo, a folk memory were going somewhere, “Mind the Hyter Sprites don’t get you!” Theylike where might have lurked sinister places, forests in particular, to tell the children, staying with them, that the Hyter Sprites live on the fear of dark harboured animal and nameless horrors? Forests forces and entities, human, campingfields and, “If you are quiet, at night, you might see them,withlittle practices, provided and brigands, sheltered nefarious lanterns carried on their backs”. An interesting link to the Lantern Man and outlaws, fugitives the those on the run.It also sheltered for the kidnapped and an inducementnotto be too noisy, at night, among your fellow campers. hiding-places communities because of their sad souls driven out of their But everyday use in a family? Well in late September 2009, when the outcast, those odd gait or strange appearance, their unacceptable behaviour, their writing of this was nearly complete, I decided to spend an houror two in bizarre such people by the surrounding deep forest, In those villages, isolated Foxley Wood. Walking back through Foxley village I encountered Joan voice. if the genesis of communities. I wonder have broughtdread to their (inny), born in 1928, tidying her garden. It soon becameclear that Joan would feelings. All possible. , lay in such deeply rooted knew the Hikey Sprites well, knew them as, ‘ghosts’. She described her the Hikey man’, a way into the ubiquitous ‘bogey fears, eventually coalesced childhood at Keeling Hall, between Foulsham and Themelthorpe, later These adults, to originally perhaps to control recalcitrant youngsters, living in those villages, before moving to Foxley. Joan’s five girls wereall of controlling of dubious nature were away from areas of risk where enterprises warned, that if they were troublesome, “The Hikey keep them exclusively Sprites will be after man’ concept was transferred place. Gradually the “bogey you”. Joan has issued her grandchildren and great-grandchildren with the taking bogey, a number of their own version of the to children. Families created same warning.Here, in one family, we can see the Hikeytradition stretching unique name for this threat to revealed to me their own over a continuous period of more than one hundred and fifty years, people have her parents, was the favoured bogey of Janet told me,‘Ben Bolt’ conveyed entirely orally without the help of written sources. Who knows children. woman. Someof those who chose the her mum was not a Norfolk how long it will survive in that family, by the same means,into the future — although have been recorded in myresearch. anotherfifty years perhaps? Hikey Sprite 37 36 i We are getting close to the tradition, gathering together mere fragments i at this twilight stage ofthe belief, to try and makesenseofit. A century and i à . more ago the Hikey would have been a discrete concept, now it merges and í ANght-timE WoodlandEncounter flows with other folk beliefs, our hold on itis tentative.

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