An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures

Katharine M. Briggs was a British folklorist, and this Pantheon Books volume is her standard reference encyclopedia of British and Irish folklore beings, covering hobgoblins, brownies, bogies and a wide range of other supernatural creatures drawn from oral tradition and earlier folklore collections. Its strength is genuine breadth and long standing as a reference work in the field, compiled by a scholar with a career of folklore research behind her. Its limit is the one that applies to any single-author encyclopedia compiled from earlier collected sources rather than original fieldwork, individual entries can only be as reliable as the older collections Briggs drew them from, so a claim needing the earliest attestation of a specific creature is better traced to that original source where possible.