Post #342061 by Cammo on Sun, Nov 4, 2007 8:43 PM

People of the Bog
Part 3

The thing that really makes historians shake their heads is how common this practice seems to have been. Some of the oldest Bog Bodies have been dated to 3500 BC, the most recent right up to 400 AD. Almost 4000 years of Bog Slayings, maybe older ones that just haven’t been found yet.

There are simply no surviving traditions to explain why it was done. Nothing. There’s a lot of argument about it, as expected when people know nothing about something. Lots of explanations, based on no facts at all:

The Bog Bodies were suicides.

The Bog Bodies just fell in the bog, hit their heads accidentally and never got up.

Bog Bodies were bad people who shouldn't be buried with everyone else. They were tied down to stop them taking vengence on the village.

The Bog Bodies were condemned prisoners, sacrificed to ensure the wheat crop. The wheat crop is big with historians. They like saying it. ‘Wheat crop’ can double the interest in an otherwise dreary theory.

The Bog Bodies were homosexuals.

Etc.

The only thing definite you can say about the Bog Bodies is that the more you study them, the less they make sense. Nothing adds up to a reasonable conclusion. Were they all killed as sacrifices to a Goddess of Spring? Nope, they were killed at different times of the year. Were they thieves? Nope, pillars of the community. Captured warriers? Nope, spoiled gentry. Willing victims? Nope, they fought the attackers.

And folk legends just don’t mention them. You’d think they would. No stories of bog laws and bog punishment. No tales of bog executions, of bog torture or bog sacrifice selections. It seems to be an empty book, opened to a blank page in a dark room.

Except, there are so many European legends of horrors from the world of the dead. The more we know about Bog People, the more interesting and inter-related these tales seem.

Wraiths are of Scottish – Old Norse origin; meaning a water spirit bent on vengeance. The original term may mean ‘Guardian’. They appear as ghostly figures with sharp clawed hands just before you die, either causing your death or foretelling it.

Banshees are ancient Irish myths about women rising from burial mounds to foretell the death of an important person, or to bring announcements from the land of the dead.

Fairies, or people from the “Land of the Fae”, are such old beliefs their origins are lost. They are over and over again associated with the dead, though. They don’t like iron, and won’t go near it. Rowan staffs, wands, or brooms also can be used to keep them away.

Morgens are Welsh spirits that drown men. In the King Arthur tales, the “Lady of the Lake” who gives Arthur his sword is called Morgen. She lives just under the surface of the lake, and is known as a Water Fae.

Vampires and Revenants. Originally, vampires were not seen as smooth talking Counts, but as bloated, dark, dead things that crept about villages at night. There’s a strange old custom of burying a scythe next to a corpse that will cut it if it begins to bloat and move around. Cutting the head off a corpse was seen as a way of hurrying the soul to leave the body. A vampire’s body or clothing could also be held down to the earth with stakes or spikes, to prevent them rising. This is where the stake-in-the-heart myth comes from. To this day, gypsies drive steel or iron needles into a corpse’s heart, and place steel in the mouth and over its eyes to prevent it becoming a vampire. Hawthorn was also used to tie its legs down. Vampires can be drowned – sinking a vampire body into water is a sure way of stopping it from roaming around.

Isn’t this creepy?

Poltergeist stories date back to at least the first century. They are literally “noisy ghosts” from the German poltern (noise) and geist (spirit). They are spirits of the dead who annoy the living by throwing rocks, sand, dirt, and shaking homes, furniture, etc. They can be very violent, and many cases are recorded up to the present day. Poltergeists often attack women under the age of 25, and can be extremely dangerous. Ghost Hunters have found that poltergeists can often be tracked back the death of a young man, a suicide or accidental death; a young man taken before his time. His restless, violent spirit seems to live on, angry and violently sexual.

Geist; an Old Germanic word meaning ‘spirit’, or more accurately ‘lifeforce’. All of Northern Europe had prehistoric traditions of inviting honored dead ancestors to feasts, to discuss the future with them. The words “ghost” and “guest”, then, are said to have descended from Geist.

Bereginya are mentioned in the oldest written sources as the most ancient supernatural beings worshipped in Russia. “Vampires and Bereginya” as translated from Greek sources, pre-12th century, were the centers of their pagan religions. The word Bereginya is related to the old Russian for ‘riverbank’. The idea that vampires and unholy spirits were worshipped is interesting; Russian folktales may reflect the oldest traditions of Europe, unchanging over the years due to the size of Russia, the remoteness of their villages, and the impossibility of travel during winter months. Bereginya were later called Rusalkas, or their stories seem to have overlapped eventually.

Russian Rusalkas are female ghosts that dwell in a lake. They are restless souls of young women who drown in a lake and forever haunt it. They are especially evil and vicious at night. Some very old stories say that Rusalkas are women who have died suddenly and before their time, sometimes because they have been jilted by lovers, are pregnant, committed suicide, killed their babies, or died without last rites. This is almost an exact modern explanation of Bog deaths.

Vodianoi are almost the same Russian beings, but male. They are as well associated with water and deep pools, often found beside a mill, and are reputed to drown swimmers there. They are as well seen as ‘unclean souls’, suicides, non-baptized, sometimes wandering drunks.

Legends of Rusalkas and Vodianoi are interesting, because descriptions of how they ‘die before their time’ don’t touch on how they were dropped into a lake or a bog, afterward.

Unless they were put there by the villagers who had condemned them.

Because the more you read about Vampires, Selkies, Morgens, and beings from the Land of the Fae, the more you ask –

What if these were all real?

Not monsters walking about at night, but real descriptions of actual practices?