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Conflicting sources
editI don't have access to the sources, but the (unsourced) claim that the creature first appeared in a 2001 book contradicts the later discussion of 1810 and 1905 sources. Looks like a case of OR/SYN to me. –dlthewave ☎ 16:42, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
Something is amiss here, perhaps an attempt to shoehorn this entity into Black Dog lore. I have gone through all three volumes of the John Brand book being cited and cannot find anything relating to a black dog / freybug link. DarkenMaine (talk) 12:05, 3 October 2021 (UTC)
OK, I know what's happening here. There was a blog post a while back pointing out issues with Carol Rose's 2001 description of the freybug, for which they could not find sources. At some point, that blog post was cited on this page. However, there was indeed a source for Rose's freybug. The problem is that she misspelled it - the original is a 16th-century letter about a "fray-bug". The black dog connection does indeed come from John Brand: "This dog-spirit may be the malignant influence referred to under the name of Fray-bug, in a curious extract from a letter of Master Saunders to his wife, 1555." See this link, page 28, which I have added to the references on the page. I have no idea why Brand made this connection save for the bug/bog/bar root found in boggart/boggle. I believe the Flay-Boggart in the Denham Tracts is etymologically related. This is all very researchy though so I'm not sure of the best approach for this page. Sgallison (talk) 21:33, 3 May 2022 (UTC)
- This is just to say: Fray-bug is the original and it's unclear what kind of monster it was supposed to be. Centuries later, John Brand suggested that it was a Black Dog. Carol Rose repeated the Black Dog definition and misspelled it as Freybug. Sgallison (talk) 15:00, 4 May 2022 (UTC)