The Simonside Hills, a range of sandstone fells above Rothbury, carry one of Northumberland's best-established fairy traditions, that of the Duergar, also called the Simonside Dwarfs, Brownmen or Bogles depending on which source is consulted. Unlike the more familiar friendly or simply mischievous fairies found in much southern English folklore, the Duergar were consistently described as actively malicious, small beings who used the cover of darkness deliberately to mislead travellers crossing the exposed hills after nightfall, often carrying lit torches that acted like a will-o'-the-wisp to lure people off safe paths and into treacherous boggy ground.
A leader figure named Heslop appears in some versions of the tradition, and a fuller description recorded by F. Grice in his 1944 collection Folk Tales of the North Country describes one of the Duergar as short and dressed in a lambskin coat, moleskin trousers, and a moss hat topped with a single feather, a surprisingly specific and almost comically rustic costume for such a genuinely feared figure.
The legend was already established enough to be reported in the Morpeth Gazette as early as 1889, and its roots are usually traced back to the Old Norse word dvergar, meaning dwarf, reflecting the strong Norse and Anglo-Saxon folklore influence found across this part of Northumberland. It remains one of the county's most distinctive pieces of fairy folklore, tied to a specific and still-walked stretch of open moorland rather than to any single building.
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