Fetch (folklore)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A fetch is a supernatural double or apparition of a living person in Irish folklore. It is largely akin to the doppelgänger. Francis Grose associated the term with Northern England in his 1787 Provincial Glossary, but otherwise it seems to have been in popular use only in Ireland. A sighting of a fetch is generally taken as a portent of its exemplar's looming death, though John Banim reports that if the double appears in the morning rather than the evening, it is instead a sign of a long life in store.
The etymology is obscure. It may derive from the verb "fetch"; the compound "fetch-life", evidently referring to a psychopomp who "fetches" the souls of the dying, is attested in Richard Stanyhurst's 1583 translation of the Aeneid. Alternately, the word may derive from fæcce, found in two Old English glossaries. In both texts, fæcce is glossed for mære, a spirit associated with death and nightmares. The word may be Old English in origin, though it would have been atypical for the author to gloss one English word with another. He seems to have regarded it as a Latin word, though it is unattested in Latin. Instead, it may be Irish, which could be the origin of the Hiberno-English fetch.
