fetch
A spirit of fifteenth and sixteenth century British folklore, a kind of fairy doppelgänger. It was said to cause the death of all those who saw it by night, but no harm would come to those who saw it by day; in fact, seeing it in early morning would assure a long life.
In the eighteenth century it came to mean an apparition of a living creature.
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Old Irish feccan.
References
Sources
- MacKillop, James. (2004). Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
- Wright, J. (1900). The English dialect dictionary. Vol. 2. London: H. Frowde.