Post by QuirkyBestiary on Jul 1, 2018 19:47:04 GMT
The ferocious Freybug is allegedly a monstrous black dog-like creature that comes from the folklore of Medieval England, specifically Norfolk. Like most monsters of its ilk, it was roughly the size a calf and would wander lonely roads to terrify travellers. This would all be well and good, especially as Final Fantasy and the Dracopedia Bestiary used it as a hellhound creature, the latter probably just because they needed a unique critter to fit under 'F'. However, the oldest source for the creature is the bibliography of Carol Rose - including such gems as Spirits, Fairies, Gnomes, and Goblins, and Giants, Monsters, and Dragons. These books state no sources for the monster outside of each-other and an 'English manuscript from 1555', which is never specified or directly identified - leading some researchers to question whether or not this monster was actually ever mentioned in English folklore.
Pictured above is Dracopedia's take on the Freybug.
Digging deeper (into the Wikipedia page from which I'm getting this information), we can see that... ah. The page has evidently changed since I was last there, because someone else has done the digging that I would have otherwise endeavoured to do, and discovered that the Freybug is sort of a real mythical creature.
A Protestant martyr whose life is detailed in Foxe's Book of Martyrs wrote a letter to his wife in 1555, name-dropping things called 'Fray-bugs'. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word Fray-bug as being 'an object of fear; a bogy, spectre'. According to Wikipedia, there is a similar word in the form of Fray-boggart, which refers to a scarecrow. An English antiquarian by the name of John Brand (19 August 1744 – 11 September 1806) referenced the martyr's letters and suggested that the Fray-bug was a sort of black dog similar to the Barghest. This is likely where Carol Rose got her information on the Freybug, and the 1555 letter matches perfectly with the reference to a manuscript.
So there we have it! The Freybug is still a questionable choice for official allocation of a black dog identity, but it certainly seems to have actually referred to something in 1555 England. What that something is, we may never know.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freybug
Pictured above is Dracopedia's take on the Freybug.
Digging deeper (into the Wikipedia page from which I'm getting this information), we can see that... ah. The page has evidently changed since I was last there, because someone else has done the digging that I would have otherwise endeavoured to do, and discovered that the Freybug is sort of a real mythical creature.
A Protestant martyr whose life is detailed in Foxe's Book of Martyrs wrote a letter to his wife in 1555, name-dropping things called 'Fray-bugs'. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word Fray-bug as being 'an object of fear; a bogy, spectre'. According to Wikipedia, there is a similar word in the form of Fray-boggart, which refers to a scarecrow. An English antiquarian by the name of John Brand (19 August 1744 – 11 September 1806) referenced the martyr's letters and suggested that the Fray-bug was a sort of black dog similar to the Barghest. This is likely where Carol Rose got her information on the Freybug, and the 1555 letter matches perfectly with the reference to a manuscript.
So there we have it! The Freybug is still a questionable choice for official allocation of a black dog identity, but it certainly seems to have actually referred to something in 1555 England. What that something is, we may never know.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freybug