North Yorkshire Folk Tales by Ingrid Barton

live in, they nearly all work in nearby farms, for they enjoy being useful and like the company of humans, with whom they have a pleasantly symbiotic relationship. Hobs excel in farm and domestic work, requiring human payment in the form of a dish of cream or some other food. Money means nothing to them, although they often make the farmer for whom they work rich. Though they themselves are seldom seen and many jobs are done, seemingly at night, any farm where they live is a lucky one where everything always goes well.
    It appears that hobs are immortal; though there have not been any reliable studies on this, possibly because they outlive those who study them. They are a sub-branch of the Fair Folk by whom they are regarded as very primitive, principally because of their nakedness (‘So Palaeolithic!’). A hob’s greatest ambition is to acquire clothes, lovely colourful clothes. Only when he – and hobs all seem to be ‘he’ unless, like dwarves, the sexes are indistinguishable, which seems unlikely when one considers their nakedness – only when he has got such clothes will he be regarded as having made it to the big time. Then he will no longer have to hear the scornful fairy cry of ‘Here comes the grubby old hob with never a stitch to cover his ****’. He will instead become a hob aristocrat and never have to work again but spend eternity propping up the bar in fairy hills or footing it featly at fairy balls with his mates.
    It was this desire to acquire bright clothes that, far back in the mists of antiquity, must have inspired the first hob to venture on a relationship with humans. No doubt there were hobs working on Greek and Roman farms, hoping perhaps, to gain a tiny chiton or embroidered tunic. As both nations made slaves do all their work it would have been slaves who benefitted most from hob assistance. No doubt it was they who began to make offerings of food to these useful little household gods. The desired clothes, however, were not so quickly forthcoming and so other strategies had to be developed over the centuries.
    Humans are pretty stupid, according to hobs, but if you wait long enough they will eventually get the message. Hobs themselves are extremely patient and quite willing to wait hundreds of years for a result. One of them told me that the secret of success is for the hob to wait until there is a particularly sympathetic human, often a child, living on the farm and then to show himself ‘accidentally on purpose’. The person is so shocked at the wretched nakedness of the hob that he or she goes away and makes some clothes for him. When the hob finds them the next night, he pulls them on with a merry whoop and disappears never to be seen (by the donor) again. I pointed out that the kind giver was rather badly repaid for his or her kindness, but I was told, hey, they had got all that work for centuries for the price of an evening bowl of cream, so what was their problem?
    Very occasionally, the human gift of clothes will fail to meet hob standards. They are particularly insulted if given tiny copies of peasant smocks made of hemp. That will lose you your hob very quickly. At Sturfitt Hall near Reeth and Close House in Skipton-in-Craven the hobs left in a huff to find less class-ridden employment, crying:

    Gin hob mun ha’e nowt but a hardin hamp
    (If a hob has no more than a hempen smock)
    He’ll come nae more to berry or stamp!
    He’ll come no more to mow or thresh

    The day of the hob seems, alas, to be almost over. The advent of machinery on farms has rendered most hobs jobless. Has it put an end to their hope of ever getting clothes? Although they have always been country dwellers, it seems possible that they, like foxes, will have no choice but to move into towns. I can foresee the day when some harassed cleaner will arrive early at the office block she (or he) cleans to find the hoovering done, the computer keys dusted, and the sinks and urinals in the lavatories polished. Let us