Black Annis

No single origin story is preserved in the collected folk accounts; the figure appears in local popular tradition as a monstrous crone attached to named landscape features. Modern commentators have proposed competing hypotheses: some 20th-century writers suggested speculative links to ancient mother-goddess figures (comparative suggestions connecting names such as Anu/Danu), while other scholars (notably Ronald Hutton in summary sources) argue the legend may derive from folk memory or distortion of an historical person (proposals include an anchoress or a figure named Agnes Scott). These interpretive proposals are scholarly reconstructions and not presented in the folk corpus as canonical origin narratives.

Described in the tradition as a blue-faced hag or witch wearing tanned skins around her waist, equipped with iron claws she used to dig her cave and to seize victims, and possessing pointed teeth. In some local variants she is represented in a monstrous-cat form (referred to in sources as 'Cat Anna' in alternative traditions).

According to tradition she ventures out at night hunting children and lambs to eat; she would reach inside houses to snatch people and hide in the branches of her oak tree waiting to leap upon unsuspecting prey. After killing victims she is said to tan their skins by hanging them on a tree and to wear those skins. Her teeth-grinding or howling was said to be audible and to warn villagers to secure their dwellings. Local tradition attributes to her the ability to excavate a cave in sandstone with iron claws; some variants describe an underground passage between Leicester Castle cellars and Dane Hills associated with her movements.