Peg Powler: The Green-Haired Hag of the River Tees
Some spirits haunt a castle, some a crossroads, some a single crooked tree. Peg Powler haunts a river — the whole of it, from the peat hags of its moorland birth to the mudflats where it meets the North Sea — and not just any river, but the Tees, the old boundary water between Yorkshire and County Durham, and one of the most treacherous streams in England. She is a hag of the classic northern pattern: green-skinned in some tellings, green-haired in all of them, with long arms, an insatiable grudge, and one fixed occupation. Peg Powler pulls people in. Children especially, children who play too near the bank — and above all, the grandmothers insisted, children who profane the Sabbath by playing at the water's edge on a Sunday. She waits below the brown swirl of the current, patient as an eel, and when the small feet come within reach of the small hands, the Tees gains another soul. She never had a ballad, never a shrine, never a carved likeness. What she had was better: a river th...