Cutty Dyer

The popular version goes like this: Cutty Dyer is a spirit or ghost associated with the River Ashburn at Ashburton, usually described as malevolent or at least troublesome to those who encountered the water. The name itself (cutty meaning short, dyer presumably a former occupation or descriptor) attaches to a figure now mostly forgotten, though the tale surfaces now and then in collections of Dartmoor lore.

As for where this actually comes from: the written trail is not long. Sarah Hewett's "Nummits and Crummits" (1900) records the tradition, which gives it at least a century of documented life. Whether it is older than that, or what people actually believed about Cutty Dyer in living memory, is harder to say. "Legendary Dartmoor" also mentions the figure, but I have not found earlier printed sources, and the oral tradition (if there ever was one) seems to have mostly faded. Like many water spirits attached to specific places, this one may have been more locally known than widely remembered, and the name itself tells us almost nothing certain about its origin or nature.

Ashburton's child-eating river ogre may have a real origin. Churchwardens' accounts from 1536-1538 record payments for an "image of St. Christopher" that stood near stepping stones on the River Yeo. One theory (Pilkington, 1978) holds that the Reformation's destruction of that statue is what turned a venerated saint into a folklore bogeyman.