Jenny Greenteeth
Lancashire 1800s
“Hey lads! Hey, lads, run for yo’re life. Owd Jinny Greenteeth’s comin’ with a knife”
Our Country’s veins must resemble the intricate system of canals running up and down the land. Essential for transporting goods before the revelation that was the automobile, canals are now used for walking the dog or jogging... With so many canals posing the potential threat of drowning for reckless and carefree children, how best to keep them away? Well, tell the story of Jenny Greenteeth and it’s almost guaranteed that your child will forever be too traumatised by canals to ever set foot near one ever again!
Jenny, otherwise noted as Jinny, Jeannie, Ginny or simply ‘Wicked Jenny’ in places as far as Cheshire, has been described in many different ways through different accounts of her presence. Often reported as a ‘frog-skinned water-witch’ with ‘long, sinewy arms and clawed hands’ and ‘razor-sharp teeth’ (all the better to eat you with!)
Similar to the Slavic Rusalka, Australia's Bunyip or the Jamaican River Mumma, Jenny supposedly lurks in Lancashire’s canals. It is interesting to note, however, that these stories seem to originate from canals or waters with a high concentration of duckweed - a common water plant in Lancashire that is very dense and can look like a solid block of green, hiding the mysteries of the water underneath. One could say this folklore story could have been conjured to warn children away from these duckweed covered waters, for if they fell in it would be rather hard to battle the plant and emerge unscathed.
But that’s boring! Let’s believe a haggard bog-witch resides in these waters, ready to grab any unsuspecting child to feast upon its flesh in the dead of night *cue evil laughter*.
In 1891, Burnley Express newspaper ran a story on the cotton famine, and for some reason (unsure how it’s related to the cotton industry) included the rhyme, ‘Hey lads! Hey, lads, run for yo’re life. Owd Jinny Greenteeth’s comin’ with a knife’. Interesting that she would even need the assistance of a metal weapon! Accounts of Jenny detail how she can produce fevers in people, lure victims into the water with her charm, crawl onto the land and climb the branches of nearby trees. It seems the Burnley Express weren’t the only newspaper to mention Jenny, the Manchester Guardian wrote how boys would tempt the river-witch for fun.
“When in company of other boys, it was thought a daring deed to take a flying leap over the stream, and dare Jenny to seize us, a piece of boldness often dearly repaid by wakeful nights or troubled dreams.”
It is not just in ye olden days that Jenny was sighted, in the 1980s a women from Merseyside recalled what she’d seen as a child, stating Jenny had ‘pale green skin, green teeth, very long green locks of hair, long green fingers with long nails, and she was very thin with a pointed chin and very big eyes’.
Whether Jenny Greenteeth is real seems an unnecessary detail, if the stories alone were enough to keep children safe then it has more than done it’s job!
Sources
https://manchestermill.co.uk/owd-jinny-greenteeths-comin-with/
https://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/blog/2016/08/11/the-legend-of-jenny-green-teeth
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100019644
https://darktales.blog/2019/04/22/jenny-greenteeth/
