Black Annis

Black Annis, also known as Black Agnes, is a bogeyman figure in English folklore. She is imagined as a blue-faced crone or witch with iron claws and a taste for humans (especially children). She is said to haunt the countryside of Leicestershire, living in a cave in the Dane Hills, with an oak tree at its entrance.

She supposedly goes out onto the glens at night looking for unsuspecting children and lambs to eat, then tanning their skins by hanging them on a tree, before wearing them around her waist. She would reach inside houses to snatch people. Legend has it that she used her iron claws to dig into the side of a sandstone cliff, making herself a home there which is known as Black Annis's Bower. The legend led to parents warning their children that Black Annis would catch them if they did not behave.

It is thought that the earliest written reference to Black Annis was from the eighteenth century, from which a title deed referred to a parcel of land as "Black Anny's Bower Close".

The Black Annis figure has several possible origins. Some have claimed, as Lethbridge did, that the origin can be found in Celtic mythology, based on Danu (or Anu), or it may derive from Germanic mythology (see Hel). Donald A. McKenzie in his 1917 book Myths of Crete and Pre-Hellenic Europe suggested the origin of the legend may go back to the mother-goddess of ancient Europe, which he contends was thought of as a devourer of children. and he identified Black Annis as being similar to the Indic Kali, Gaelic Muilearteach and Cailleach Bheare, the Greek Demeter, the Mesopotamian Labartu, the Egyptian Isis-Hathor and Neith. It has been suggested that the legend may derive from a popular memory of sacrifice to an ancient goddess. It is thought that offerings of children may have been made to the goddess that inspired the legend in the archaeological Hunting Period, the oak tree at the cave's entrance also a common site of local meetings.

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