Generally evil-natured Goblins although they are more disposed to do harm to liars and murderers. On the whole, these are evil Goblins, but according to William Henderson in FOLK LORE OF THE NORTHERN COUNTIES, who quotes from Hoog’s WOOLGATHERER, the bogles on the Scottish Borders, though formidable, are virtuous creatures: ‘Then the Bogles, they are a better kind o’ spirits; they meddle wi’ nane but the guilty; the murderer, an’ the mansworn, an’ the cheaters o’ the widow an’ fatherless, they do for them.’ Henderson tells a corroborative story of a poor widow at the village of Hurst, near Reeth, who had had some candles stolen by a neighbour. The neighbour saw one night a dark figure in his garden and took out his gun and fired at it. The next night while he was working in an outhouse the figure appeared in the doorway and said, ‘I’m neither bone nor flesh nor blood, thou canst not harm me. Give back the candles, but I must take something from thee.’ With that he came up to the man and plucked out an eyelash, and vanished. But the man’s eye ‘twinkled’ ever after. A bogle, bogill is the Scots term for a legendary creature with a fierce temper. They are reputed to live for the simple purpose of torturing young children who disobey their mothers, or of punishing those who are lazy, incontinent (lacking self-restraint), or guilty of crimes. One of the most famous usages of the term was by Gavin Douglas, who was in turn quoted by Robert Burns at the beginning of Tam O’ Shanter “Of Brownyis and of Bogillis full is this Buke.” The bogle is also a creature that loves to vex humans until they go insane. They may cause a human to hear a voice around a corner, only to find that nothing is there, and then repeat the same antics around another corner. This will go on and on until the human decides to give up in utter frustration. Another way they might annoy humans is to enter a person’s house and create a mess, make weird noises, or do other small things that for some reason, always happens at very unopportune times. A bogle is often confused with its many closely-related Scottish legendary creatures, such as the better known Boggart. It is also considered to be involved in a family called the “ballybogs”. A modern rendition of the Bogle is the Bogeyman. There is also a cognate term in Scottish Gaelic, bòcan, usually meaning a hobgoblin, and the bodach also bears some similarities. There is a popular story of one such bogle known as Tatty Bogle, who would hide himself in potato fields (hence his name) and either attack unwary humans or cause blight within the patch. Also the name of a popularly marketed line of rubberized hand puppets from Canada during the late 1980s and early 1990s representing the upper torso, hands & head of “Bogle” monsters.