Bad Bungle
Tutti but not Frutti.
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2018
- Messages
- 4,132
- Location
- The Chilterns
We have a thread for modern Urban Legends but what are the legends and Folklore that were told to earlier Generations ? Were there Phantom Hitch-hikers before the widespread use of automobiles and aeroplanes ? Were there hiders-in-the House before telephones and computers, could you make people believe in ghostly encounters or UFO abductions before photography and wrist-watches ? I wanted to know the earliest Folklore story that could still have credibility amongst today's discerning Internet Generation.
My mother spoke very little about her childhood in pre-war Prussia (Baltic Germany), I think it was pleasant enough but the memories were swamped by later horrors. She was raised in a large village near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) that had a Viking (Norse) graveyard on a hill. The area was former marshland and had a very high water-table, hence the need for burials on raised land. Coffins weren't exactly interred with a splash but waterlogging could lead to soil movement and erosion, to the extent that earlier burials were sometimes exposed out of the hillside. In these cases the bones were gathered up and respectfully re-interred. This much I believe is true.
My mother recalled being told as a girl that the coffin of the local Blacksmith, buried on top of the hill some 30 years earlier, had become exposed further down the side. When the bones were collected it was noticed that the skull, now devoid of luxuriant hair, had a nail hammered into the back of it down to the scalp. The Magistrate was called and the Blacksmith's widow, still living in the area, was charged with murdering her (drunk) husband as he slept.
My mother was told the story around 1935 and I have since found a very similar account in a preparation of an anthology of Danish Folklore from 1887. Presumably the nail-in-the-head story, whether once a true story or not, comfortably predates that.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...v=onepage&q=nail in the head folklore&f=false
My mother spoke very little about her childhood in pre-war Prussia (Baltic Germany), I think it was pleasant enough but the memories were swamped by later horrors. She was raised in a large village near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) that had a Viking (Norse) graveyard on a hill. The area was former marshland and had a very high water-table, hence the need for burials on raised land. Coffins weren't exactly interred with a splash but waterlogging could lead to soil movement and erosion, to the extent that earlier burials were sometimes exposed out of the hillside. In these cases the bones were gathered up and respectfully re-interred. This much I believe is true.
My mother recalled being told as a girl that the coffin of the local Blacksmith, buried on top of the hill some 30 years earlier, had become exposed further down the side. When the bones were collected it was noticed that the skull, now devoid of luxuriant hair, had a nail hammered into the back of it down to the scalp. The Magistrate was called and the Blacksmith's widow, still living in the area, was charged with murdering her (drunk) husband as he slept.
My mother was told the story around 1935 and I have since found a very similar account in a preparation of an anthology of Danish Folklore from 1887. Presumably the nail-in-the-head story, whether once a true story or not, comfortably predates that.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...v=onepage&q=nail in the head folklore&f=false