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Ghost Evolution

We shouldn't apply our modern principles here. It's all about courtly love.

The point isn't that she wasn't allowed to marry the stablehand, as everyone knew this could never have happened. It's that once she'd fallen for a man she couldn't face being married off to the one who'd been chosen for her.

She'd've been better off obediently marrying Sir Dullness and then having him take on the handsome stablehand. That'd work under
courtly love.
Ask the minstrels. :wink2:
But how many girls really DID throw themselves to their nightly, or weekly, re-enacted deaths, for love? How many even had the opportunity to meet, and fall for (in any aspect we would recognise) another man before being introduced to their intended?

It is SUCH an enduring back-story for hauntings that I am wondering a) how often it actually really and truly happened because the likelihood doesn't match the number of stories, and b) when these stories of thwarted love to explain wailing ladies, etc, starting to arise? Even as recently as Victorian times, the wealthy and landed weren't free to marry just anybody, so I would guess the 'not allowed to marry the man she''d somehow managed to fall in love with despite never being allowed out of the house alone or left unattended' would be more recent than that?

I don't have the same problem with 'weeping ladies looking for their lost babies' origin stories, because that is a perennial condition that anyone could empathise with.
 
Today I was watching a YouTuber talking about the Ghosts of Bamburgh castle. It was the usual stuff, lots of 'and she fell in love with a stablehand, was forbidden to marry, so threw herself off the castle walls.' Now, I know a little bit about the history of marriage, and the whole concept of marrying for love, indeed, marrying anyone that your parents hadn't chosen for you, was seriously only for the very poorest. Those who didn't need to secure succession, or who didn't have a large dowry in demand from other families. It is my understanding that marriage of those in the upper crust (ie, the castle and large house owners) was nearly always secured by the family. It was not a love match. In fact, the whole 'love' thing is reasonably modern, in that couples hoping to marry even back in the 1800s would maybe only have met a handful of times, and their idea of romantic love would be a million miles from ours.

So how recent is the idea of 'girls who were thwarted in their desire to marry someone from a lower class killing themselves for love'? Does anyone know? Because, while it gives a great, sorrowful backstory for the tales of white ladies seen throwing themselves from battlements, would it really have happened in such number? Did girls not, mostly, do as they were told by their families and marry Cousin Guy or the son of the next door estate?
Have had a large amount of research into contemporary hauntings, manifestations etc in recent years and for no other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity. So a lot of reading to back up my own experiences of having lived and worked in alleged/actual haunted locations and meeting people who haven't always had positive experiences with poltergeist activity. In my opinion the places that have a "she threw herself off the tower"-type haunting are almost always going to disappoint if that is what you are hoping to experience.

For example, at Dartington Hall (Devon, UK) there were several alleged ghosts and poltergeist activity recored in the Peter Underwood books and others, including a headless horseman on the drive, music from a locked room, the 'famous' grey lady and a woman who had thrown herself off the church tower after being spurned by her lover (or whatever). During my nine years living there I received one reliable account of a glowing figure in a medieval cape being seen on the drive (but with its head), a ghostly cat in the lodge house witnessed by two unrelated individuals and personally experienced poltergeist activity in the old kitchen building and applause and cheering coming from the locked and empty Great Hall (twice). Never saw or heard of any sightings of the 'famous' grey lady nor the ghost of the woman who threw herself off the church tower. This was despite being in the Hall and gardens at all times of day and night and having reached out to other people who lived and worked on the estate.

Personally, I feel we need to consign these old haunting 'legends' that no one has actually witnessed in living memory to a dusty archive and go after the multitude of 21st Century ghost sightings and poltergeist activity. However, this does not mean we disregard these famously haunted locations as in my experience they seem to be 'active areas' for other activity, but rather we need a more open mind than chasing after old folk tales.

Just my personal option.
 
Today I was watching a YouTuber talking about the Ghosts of Bamburgh castle. It was the usual stuff, lots of 'and she fell in love with a stablehand, was forbidden to marry, so threw herself off the castle walls.' Now, I know a little bit about the history of marriage, and the whole concept of marrying for love, indeed, marrying anyone that your parents hadn't chosen for you, was seriously only for the very poorest. Those who didn't need to secure succession, or who didn't have a large dowry in demand from other families. It is my understanding that marriage of those in the upper crust (ie, the castle and large house owners) was nearly always secured by the family. It was not a love match. In fact, the whole 'love' thing is reasonably modern, in that couples hoping to marry even back in the 1800s would maybe only have met a handful of times, and their idea of romantic love would be a million miles from ours.

So how recent is the idea of 'girls who were thwarted in their desire to marry someone from a lower class killing themselves for love'? Does anyone know? Because, while it gives a great, sorrowful backstory for the tales of white ladies seen throwing themselves from battlements, would it really have happened in such number? Did girls not, mostly, do as they were told by their families and marry Cousin Guy or the son of the next door estate?
I wonder if the killing yourself for love motif is a euphemism for young women who killed themselves when finding themselves pregnant outside of marriage. This was a major disgrace until relatively recently, and still is in conservative societies. Becoming pregnant may well have killed off marriage prospects and all hope for the future, resulting in suicide, then euphemistically referred to as "killed herself for her lost love".
 
Have had a large amount of research into contemporary hauntings, manifestations etc in recent years and for no other reason than to satisfy my own curiosity. So a lot of reading to back up my own experiences of having lived and worked in alleged/actual haunted locations and meeting people who haven't always had positive experiences with poltergeist activity. In my opinion the places that have a "she threw herself off the tower"-type haunting are almost always going to disappoint if that is what you are hoping to experience.
It's not so much the 'actual' haunting that engages me, as the story behind it, particularly at the moment the 'killed herself for love' theory. As it's really quite an incredibly unlikely happening, and always seems to be of the 'it is said' variety, I'm more interested in the why's of the fiction than the ghosts themselves.
I wonder if the killing yourself for love motif is a euphemism for young women who killed themselves when finding themselves pregnant outside of marriage. This was a major disgrace until relatively recently, and still is in conservative societies. Becoming pregnant may well have killed off marriage prospects and all hope for the future, resulting in suicide, then euphemistically referred to as "killed herself for her lost love".
Along with the 'not being allowed to meet other men sufficiently to become attached', young ladies of the upper echalons wouldn't be alone for long enough to become pregnant. Girls of high breeding, with large dowries and expectations of inheritance simply were never unchaparoned. Although it did happen, girls have always got pregnant out of wedlock, I think the number of 'girls pregnant who couldn't be conveniently 'married off' to a suitable suitor in very quick order would be fairly small.
 
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