Pucks

Pucks are spirits in the rural folklore remembered by Helen Barre, who says that on her family’s farm they turned milk sour and brought on thunderstorms. Their brief appearance sets her former world of local belief against the Christian instruction she is beginning to receive in London.

Identity and Folklore

Helen recalls Pucks as beings associated with two disruptions of everyday life: spoiled milk and sudden storms. The account gives no further description of their appearance or character; their identity rests on what they were believed to do and on the place they occupy in her memories of farm life.

Helen’s Changing Religious World

Helen describes her upbringing as one in which she knew Noah, the Three Kings, and Father Abraham, but had never heard of St Paul. In London, women she met took her to a night school in a cellar at Broadgate, where she is learning to read so she can read the gospel. She has been told that Pucks are not Christians. Her wistful remark that she wishes they had stayed farming conveys the distance between the familiar beliefs of home and the new religious language she is learning.

Narrative Significance

The reference to Pucks is brief, but it makes Helen’s religious education concrete: Christian teaching does not simply add new knowledge, but also recategorizes familiar features of her childhood as outside Christianity. The spirits belong to her remembered farm life, set against the crowded household and gospel schooling she has entered in London.