FOLKLORE AND RELIGION
Dark Romantics are often inspired by religious
symbolism and mysticism - especially Christianity. According to
christian faith there are both good and evil forces.
But there are of
course many other supernatural phenomena in the Dark Romantic works
that doesn't belong in a certain religious community. People
have been scared of fabolous creatures which does not exist in the Bible
or other regligious texts. Mystics like William Blake and Emanuel
Swedenborg revealed their own Supreme Beings.
People
spoke of good and evil ghost in this world while the priests spoke of
angels and demons in another world. In folklore and mythology, the world
is not black or white. In Christian faith, Satan is described as
an awful creature with horns and tail. In folklore, Satan might appear
as a gentleman dressed in black, as a goblin, wolf, magpie, dog, cat or
snake. "But never has my tormentor come in such a cunning
disguise" (Nick Cave)
People have always been seeing
supernatural signs in their everyday life, especially in the
preindustrial society where people lived closer to nature. In the 18th and 19th century people were superstitious,
escpecially farmers at the countryside, living in the dark forests. This
belief laid the foundation for the Gothic novels. The vampires and the
werewolfs already existed in people's minds.
Folklore
is seldomly written down. It is more often told from one generation to
the next. The legends, myths and folk tales of course originated
in a specific nation or region, but they are often adapted to local culture in other places.
For example, there is a Japanese vampire, I have heard, even though the
myth originated in East and Central Europe. If you
know of any darkly romantic legends from around the world, please contact
me. I would like to assemble them here. Bokkerijders is a
contribution from Lian about Dutch and Belgian folklore. This section will be
updated as my research continues.
THE BOKKERIJDERS
One
of the first
things
that comes to my mind is the legend of the 'bokkerijders'
(translated
it is 'buckriders' or 'goatriders', also spelled as
'bokkenrijders'):
a group of highwaymen that pillaged and plundered large
parts
of the Belgian and Dutch Kempen (a region in the south of the
Netherlands
and in the north of Belgium) and who where also active in the
western
part of Germany in the second half of the 18th century. There was
poverty
in these regions at that time, and these highwaymen were angry, for
the
Church had all the wealth.
It started of with plundering abbeys,
churches
and cloisters. But like with so many things, the success of the
raids
got into their heads and they started plundering villages. Excesses
started
to surface, and this is were the legend begins. The people were
getting
frightened of these highwaymen, who sometimes appeared out of
nowhere,
raided churches and abbeys, and spat on the cross. Because of this
the
people thought they had made a pact with the devil, and some 'eye
witnesses'
had seen them riding through the nightly heavens, sitting on
bucks
(the buck is symbolic for satan; a lot of images from that time
pictured
the devil with buck hooves), and their eyes glowing in the dark.
So
it was said. That is why they were called 'bokkerijders'.
Ton
van Reen wrote a sequel of 4 historical childeren's books where these
bokkerijders
are the main theme: http://www.tonvanreen.nl/html/histjeug.htm.
And
one of the Netherlands' most visited theme parks has dedicated one of
the
rides to the bokkerijders. The story there is about Hugo van den
Loonsche
Duinen, who was a member of these highwaymen and who is one of the
most
famous of them. One night, when he and his mates came back from a
raid,
they wanted to spend the night indoors, but couldn't find a village.
They
came across the Abbey of Postel, entered the building, and there they
saw
all the gold and gems lying on the altar. They packed up, when suddenly
a
woman in white, floating in the air, appeared before Hugo. She said that
he
should stop at once, and turn to the Lord, or else His wrath would turn
upon
him. He ignored the woman, and when he got back home he saw the same
woman,
standing on the top of his roof, waving her arms, saying: "Nowhere
in
your own house, wherever on this earth, you will find peace now that you
have
violated God's house. Only when a noble person, pure at heart, will
enter
this house, the curse will be removed".
The
ride is a house where all the furniture moves all around you, and which
goes
upside down, by the way.
An english site dedicated to Villa Volta, as
the
ride is called, can be found here:
http://home.conceptsfa.nl/~mjhoeve/English/frames.htm
The
moonlit road - American folklore
LIFE AFTER DEATH
In Christian faith, dead human beings depart to another world.
If we are virtuos we'ill go to heaven, if we are sinful we'ill go to
hell. According to calvinism,
we are predestinated. In folklore there are other names for similar
places. All over the world, people have believed, and still believe, in a
world of the dead, as for example the Celtic
"Otherworld" and the "Underworld" in parts of
Africa. The peolpe in the world of the living are closer to the
world of the dead at night. In the darkly romantic art, this other
world is obscure, hidden to us.
In Europe, the priests often condemned the popular belief
in ghosts since it did not always, or rather
seldomly, coincide with the Christian faith. People in the agriculture
society believed in destiny - our lifespan could not be altered. If someone died
earlier than he or she was supposed to, in an accident for example, he or she
returned after death
in order to complete the interrupted journey. Those who were
murdered returned for revenge. Those who were not buried in holy
ground returned to have their coffin moved to another, more peaceful
place. There are stories of depraved monks which returned to repair their mistakes. We meet such vicious saints in the novels by Radcliffe
and Lewis (see literature).
Dead people returned as ghosts to haunt and make disturbances.
People
saw signs of death everywhere. There are an enormous amount of legends
where peolpe have been warned and lived to see the prophecy come true.
For example, when people saw a weak, flickering light outside someones
house or a funeral procession travelling by at night, it meant
that the person living there would soon die. I think that these symbolic
signs in everyday life are of great importance for the imaginative
darkly romantic stories. Where romanticists find a pale and empty
reality, dark romanticists find a rich and shifting reality where the
supernatural sometimes speaks to us. We catch a glimpse of the
supernatural, luring obscurely around the corner.
GHOSTS
People were afraid of ghosts and took
precautions to assure that friends and relatives did not return.
Traditionally, people drove a wooden stake through the coffin to assure
that the buried could not rise at night.
This method might be 4000 years old, according to some researchers.
Garlic and crosses of various kinds also protected the living from the
dead. It was also common to bind together the feet. Sometimes the
priests visited the farms and forced the ghosts to return to their
coffins underground..
Ghost slept at day and rose from
their graves at night.
We recognize the stake, the garlic and
the cross - besides many local variations - from the vampire folklore and mythology.
Thanks to Bram
Stoker, this legend from East and Central Europe is known all over the
world (see
literature). Many authors
before Stoker wrote about vampires, as Le Fanu's Carmilla and
Polidori's The Vampyre. We have seen the vampire is movies like Nosferatu
(see movies). Vampires are in
many ways different from other ghosts - they wish to bothe take life and give
life.
MALEVOLENT
SPIRITS - VAMPIRES
Vampires in the novels are often enchanting creatures. They seduce
and allure - contrary to the werewolf, also a legend from the
Slav area - and the ghosts that often wish us harm. The blood, which vampires drink from their relatives,
sometimes while having sex with them, have always more or less been seen
as the life force in folklore and mythology. Even in the Christian
rituals. Vampire beliefs were
most prevalent among Ukrainians and Belorussians. Certain persons become
vampires after death - those who commited suicide, werewolfs, witches,
sorcereres, sinners and the godless. In Bulgaria, for example,
murderers, robbers and prostitutes also became vampires. When burial
rites was not read, the buried would rise from the grave. There are many
similarities with the poupular ghost lore in other parts of Europe and
the world. Despot Vlad Tepes in Bram Stoker's Dracula was considered a
vampire, and Despot Vuk was considered a werewolf, with certain
birthmarks and the ability to breathe fire. People spoke of human beings
which transformed to wolfs even before Christ. The Leshii is
another malevolent spirit of the forest, feared by children and elders
in the Slav Area.
Adams first wife was Lilit, according to the oldest hebrew
tradition. Lilit left Adam and gave birth to all kinds of demons,
vampires, werewolfs and condemned humans. In the jewish tradition, Lilit
drank the blood of children. In the bible, she is referred to as
"The witch of the night". In other places, she was called
Lamma. In ancient Rome, people feared Lamia, Lilits sister. In ancient
Babylon, the souls of the dead were called Ekimme. Other examples:
Stigoi and Moroii in Romania, Vepir or Krvoijac in Bulgaria, the Greek
vampire Vrykolakas, Vámpir in Hungary, Upier or Upierzycka in Poland,
Vurdalak or Upjerzji in Russia, The Albanian Sampiro, The Cretan
Katalkanás, the hebrew Motzetz Dam, le Vampire in France, the Spanish
El Vampiró, Il Vampiro in Italy, Bruxsa in Portugal, Owenga or Otgiruru
in parts of Africa, Ciuapipiltin or Ciuateteo in Mexico, Loogaroc in
Grenada and Kiang-tsi in China. In India there are many vampires:
Rákshasa, Jigar-Khor, Hánt-Pare, Hánh-Saburo, Vetála, Pisáchaerna,
Pęnangal and Hántu-Dor-Dong.
Many authors has written vampires stories. Just to mention a
few: Goethe, Keats, Scott, Byron, Polidori, Prest, Dumas, Le
Fanu, Stoker, Gautier, Baudelaire, Lautrémont, de Maupassant, Gogol,
Tolstoj, Wells, Doyle, Benson, Blackwood, James, Lovecraft, Poe,
Durrell, Bradbury, Matheson, Kerouac, Bowles and Rice.
Vampires are given eternal life, they are not returning from the dead
for a limited time as I understand it. It is suggested that the
plague in the Middle Ages originated in the Slav Area. Animals like
rats, wolves and dogs are therefor associated with death - they were bearers of
the virus.
ANIMALS - RAVENS AND BATS
With roots in the thousand year old nordic mythology
(Odin and his ravens, Hugin and Mumin ) the black raven inhabits
people's minds for different reasons. Dead peolpe sometimes
returned as animals, often birds. The poem The
Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is a perfect example of this
folkloristic tradition. The raven also appears in movies such as Omen II,
where the bird is an omen of death. In North American folklore, the
raven is a culture hero, a trickster.
Another animal which has always been considered supernatural is the bat.
The bat flies at night. It is a creature associated with evil, as the
vampire and other ghosts. The bat's blood - the
three drops - had magic powers. If someone fell unhappily in love,
her or she could impose the desired person to drink the bat's blood in
order to light the fire. Bats could not see at day, and therefor some
people believed that the blood had the ability to awaken blind love. In
some vampire movies, there are bats in the castles. Today the most
famous example is of course Batman,
the gothic comic. The bat is mentioned already in the Old Testament
as an evil creature of the night. There are four types of Vampire
Bats: Desmodus Rufus, Didemus Yungi, Diphylla Caudata and Desmodus
Rotunda. Vampire Bats often drink animal blood, but sometimes they drink
human blood.
The headless horseman in Sleepy hollow (adapted to
the screen by Tim Burton)
is a remarkable legend. Decapitated people returned as ghosts, according
to the legends, often carrying their head under one arm.
GREEK MYTHOLOGY
The characters of the Greek Mythology appear in many
novels, movies and intellectual debates. The large number of Gods exists for different
reasons and purposes. The nine muses are the
inspireres and protectors of nine kinds of sublime art. (Nick
Cave sometimes speaks of his muse.)
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Clio -
historic storytelling
Euterpe - flute
Thalia - comedy
Melpomene -
tragedy
Terpsichore - dance
Erato - love poems (see
picture)
Polyhymnia -
choir-singing
Calliope - heroic poems
Urania - knowledge of
stars
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Apart from the Greek mythology, there is, needless to say, the
protector and inspirer of this site - The Muse
of Obscure Wonders, Malice in Wonderland. One might suspect that Erato and Calliope are closely related to
Melpomene...Inspiration and imagination might be gifts from God(s). Today, there is
of course a strong tendency towards a scientific explanation of imagination. Other Gods from the Greek Mythology are Dionysos,
or Bacchus, the god of wine and ecstasy, or why not whisky
and cigarettes. There is of course Prometheus - the inspirer of Mary
Shelley's Frankenstein - that made a human of water and clay. The
furious Zeus punished the humans by suffocating all heat and light in
the world. Pandora's Box was openend, and evil and sickness was
released. Only hope remained in the box, and have probaly done so until
these days.
FOLKLORE NOW AND THEN
This is a collection of mostly European
legends that in one way or another influenced dark romantis, many of them taken from the works of
the great Swedish researcher and author, Ebbe Schön. Today people are not that
superstitious. People do
not live that close to nature. People do not imagine evil hobgoblins
wandering the streets - they appeared in the forests a long time ago. The agricultural
society is behind us. Which are the new popular beliefs? Ghosts still
fascinates us in movies and literature.
Today people think of the supernatural as
something good and bright. The old Christian faith with demons and evil angels seems to have become unpopular. Many of
us believe in a spiritual reality of a folkloristic rather then
religious character. We do not wish to avoid the dead, at least not to
the same extent - we
call upon them. We do not fear them. The spirits are no longer to same
extent portrayed
as malevolent in literature, music and movies.