A Queer Bogeyman

Hallowe’en is with us again, with its US-inspired misappropriation and distortion of traditional European customs and neo-pagan fakery.

The world is full of monsters and evil spirits who “live” all year round in every culture. There are no supernatural spirits that are specifically associated with Hallowe’en (unlike Christmas). Some of these spirits lurk in the shadows, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting. They are a wide range of bogeymen, a general name given to the many different types of spirits and monsters in all sizes and physical forms often used by parents to keep their children in order.

In South Africa there’s a bogeyman that has some gender-bending characteristics called Antjie Somers.

While most bogeymen originate in centuries-old folk belief, Antjie Somers can be traced back to more recent times. The first printed reference appears in a South African magazine called “The Friend of the Free State”, published in Bloemfontein on 10th August 1866. I haven’t been able to track down a copy of this edition but I have found snippets and references to it from other sources. From these it seems that Antjie Somers was a devilish character who stalked the streets at night, preying on lone travellers or looking for naughty children to carry away in his sack.

Several different urban legends and folk motifs merge in this Afrikaan bogeyman. First there is the Sackman, common throughout the world in many forms, including the original 19th century American Santa Claus who has a sack from which he distributes presents to good children and kidnaps naughty children (later downgraded to a “naughty list”).

Another common folk motif in Antjie Somers is the urban myth of a highwayman or robber disguising himself as a vulnerable character in need of protection or rescue. The urban myth of a hitch-hiker who appears innocent and turns into a bogeyman is still quite common. Although hitch-hiking bogeymen are scary they are also not very intelligent. Victims who see through the disguise can easily make an excuse to stop the car or horse and carriage by saying they accidentally dropped something onto the road, or there’s an obstruction ahead and ask the hitch-hiker to get out and pick up or remove the object. The potential victim can then just to drive off at speed, leaving the bogeyman behind.

A third common folk motif is one which concerns us today, that Antjie Somers is a male bogeyman disguised as a woman. This is a variation on the preceding hitch-hiker motif (commonly referred to as “the hairy-armed hitch-hiker”). There’s several indexes of world folk motifs. In the Thompson Folk Motif Index, for example, tales of a man disguising himself as a woman is category K.1836.

The 1866 “The Field” article states that there were two bogeymen called Antjie Somers and Antjie Winter, one operating in summer and the other in winter, hence their names. The article indicates that the characters were known from the time of Lord Charles Somerset who was the Governor of Cape Colony 1815-26.

Over the decades, these urban myths merged to produce the Antjie Somers known today. Such additional myths include his ability to become invisible and to fly around in the sky, other common motifs applied to evil spirits in European folk tales. The Dutch, the ancestors of the Afrikaans, certainly had legends about female-disguised robbers, as did other European colonists.

By the mid-20th century the stories of Antjie Somers had been reduced to those told to scare children. This was part of a general global turn from traditional folk stories and customs as humanity began to turn away from old days of superstition and into the modern scientific and technological world.

When Pieter W. Grobbelaar, a South African author and folk tale collector, published his 1968 book “The Most Beautiful Afrikaans Fairy Tales”, he wrote the “full story” of Antjie Somers. Briefly, it went like this: Andries Somers was a brave and strong Afrikaans fishermen. No-one could haul in the full nets as fast as he could. One day, the other fishermen became jealous and attacked him. Andries knocked them all to the ground, but one fisherman didn’t get up. He was dead. Andries, hoping to avoid being accused on murder, stole some women’s clothes to disguise himself and ran away. He managed to find work in another part of South Africa. His new work colleagues found the stolen clothes in his hut and began taunting him, calling him by the female name Antjie Somers. Andries could bear it no longer and fled once more and was never seen again. However, children began talking about an old woman in the mountains who was always angry and kept threatening them. People believed this was Antjie Somers and that children should keep away or he would carry them away in a sack. From this Antjie developed into a bogeyman. This was Grobbelaar’s version.

By the end of the century the origin myths of Antjie Somers had been further elaborated. Rather fancifully, modern social rights were applied to the bogeyman’s origin, including sexism and racism.

The first modern interpretation came from feminist activists who claimed Antjie Somers is proof of the patriarchal misogyny of the 19th century. As mentioned above, Antjie Somers is just one of many variations of combined folk motifs. The Thompson Folk Motif Index lists other disguises used my male bogeymen in folk tales, including animals, old men, and other people. There are also folk motifs of female bogeymen disguising themselves as men, even among the Afrikaans. Even today, most female fiction writers feature men as the main villain. Very few write about evil women.

Next we come to the most obvious fake addition to Antjie Somers, the idea that he was a slave and his myths are racist. I haven’t found any reference to Antjie Somers being either a slave or black before 2000. The version by given by Grobbelaar in 1968 clearly identifies him as Afrikaans, i.e. white, and every other reference I’ve found from that period implies the same.

The black slave link seems to originate in a musical called “Antjie Somers” which premiered in South Africa in 2000. The musical sets the origin of the Antjie Somers legend in 1834 which contradicts the 1866 “The Friend” article which dates if before 1826.

The character of Antjie Somers is portrayed as a black ex-slave. The musical’s creators haven’t said why they changed his race, or why the musical is set in the wrong period. The disturbing aspect, however, is that people who saw it probably went away thinking it was historical fact, like people have who have seen the musical “Hamilton” or the film “Braveheart”.

This is probably why a South African student wrote an MA thesis in 2011 about Antjie Somers which was solely based on the “fact” that the bogeyman was based on a real slave. The student even retold Grobbelaar’s 1968 version of the legend and wrote quite specifically that she changed Antjie’s race to a black purely to suit the purpose of her thesis, not because she had any new proof. Why her university didn’t throw out this student’s pathetic attempt at academic research is puzzling.

Be that as it may, the idea that Antjie was a black slave soon spread across the internet, and every time it appears it is usually repeated word-for-word as if it was fact, so that now it is virtually impossible to find any reference that restores the original version.

One earlier attempt to discover the origin of this bogeyman to find any basis in historical fact was made in the mid-20th century. One South African historian was told a story by a respected poet and folklorist C. Louis Liepoldt (1880-1947) who, in turn, heard the story from an elderly couple in around 1900. In their youth they were told of a real un-named robber who stalked Tuin Street, Cape Town, dressed as a woman. It was a rough area and most people avoided going there at night. When his activities became too well known he feared capture and ran away into the mountains.

This may just have been a story about a different robber, and there are other origins that have been suggested, including being the ghost of someone who committed suicide. Whatever Antjie Somers’ origin story actually is, he’ll be scaring children and travellers for generation to come.

I hope I haven’t put you off going out tonight, so why not stay indoors with a nice bottle of wine. A few years ago you could have enjoyed a nice sauvignon blanc from Folklore Wines in South Africa called Antjie Somers (pictured below). I don’t think it is available now, but you’re free to search around for a bottle.

For me, I’m celebrating Hallowe’en as it was intended, by remembering our ancestors, like the ancient Roman festival in late October which inspired the Roman Catholic Church to create Hallowe’en in the first place. The neo-pagan cultural appropriation of an alleged British Celtic festival unknown to the distant Italian Catholics, is not for me.

Day Of The Dead: Out Of His Hollywood Tree

We’re halfway through what the Christian Church calls Hallowtide. This is the 3-day period of remembrance and devotion to our ancestors. It began with All Hallow’s Eve (corrupted into Hallowe’en), followed by All Hallow’s Day (or All Saint’s Day), and tomorrow is All Soul’s Day. We don’t need to go into the history of Hallowtide, except to say that historians day there’s no evidence that there was any similar festival in pagan of pre-Christian times. No, the Celts didn’t have a festival called Samhain. As far the evidence suggests, Samhain was the name of a month or time of year, not a festival.

Mexico is the country that is most widely recognised as celebrating Hallowtide in a unique way in the festival which translates into English as the Day of the Dead. It was the Spanish colonists are recorded as taking Hallowtide to the Americas, and perhaps the ancestors of today’s subject was among them. The person whose ancestors I have chosen to delve into was the early Hollywood sex symbol Ramon Novarro (1859-1968).

There another reason why I have chosen him. Two days ago, the day before Hallowe’en, was the 55th anniversary of Ramon Novarro’s murder. You can read a bit about Ramon in this “80 Gays” article.

Ramon was not the only member of his family to make it big in the early days of cinema. His first cousin (daughter of his mother’s sister) was Andrea Palma (1903-1987), who became a big star in their native Mexico, though she did make a memorable supporting role in an American gilm, “Tarzan and the Mermaids” (1948) starring Johnny Weismuller.

A more distant cousin, Dolores del Rio (1904-1983), had bigger success in the US. She is particularly remembered as a lead character in “Flying Down to Rio” (1933), though people usually only remember two supporting actors, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, the legendary dancing partnership first brought together for this film. Dolores and Ramon were third cousins, both being great-great-grandchildren of Leandro Sanchez Manzanera and his wife. Dolores was also famous for an affair she had with Orson Welles.

There are several other acting cousins of Ramon Novarro, including some alive today, but his ancestry shows no indication of where the acting bug came from. So, what is his ancestry?

Ramon Novarros’ real name was José Ramón Gal Samaniego. His parents were Dr. Mariano Sameniego (1871-1940) and Leonor Pérez-Gavilán (1872-1949). Both came from well-connected and prominent families with long lineages. Ultimately, as you might guess, the majority of Ramon’s ancestry came from Spain.

There is a tantalising rumour that Ramon has Aztec ancestry through his mother, to no less a person than Moctezuma (or Montezuma), probably the most famous Aztec “emperor”, but I am unable to find any information to verify this. However, that doesn’t stop Ramon from having family connections to other Mexican emperors. His grandfather’s great-uncle was married to the sister of Agustin I Yturbide (1783-1924), the first Emperor of Mexico after independence from Spain. He wasn’t in office long. There was a lot of opposition to Mexico becoming a monarchy, most strongly in the Mexican Congress. Agustin dismissed Congress and appointed his own. Very soon almost everyone else turned against him and he was ousted.

A feature of European colonialism is that quite a lot of the first colonists came from wealthy, landed families and minor aristocracy (most of the US Founding Fathers were from the upper classes). Because of this Agustin Yturbide can be put on the list of Ramon Novarro’s famous distant blood relatives in addition to his connection though marriage. Ramon and Agustin are descended from a Spanish noble called Fernán Yañez de Saavedra (d.1370). In turn, Fernán is descended from an illegitimate daughter of King Sancho IV of Castile (1221-1284). Going back further, and one of King Sancho’s ancestors was King Henry II of England, meaning I am a very distant cousin of Ramon Novarro also.

That opens up a huge catalogue of blood relatives that Ramon Novarro can claim. For this particular article, however, let’s just concentrate of some Hispanic cousins.

I haven’t done a massive amount of research into the ancestries of many Latin American or Spanish celebrities and famous people, though I have done some into those of national leaders. Through the same small group of Conquistadors in Ramon’s ancestry he is distantly related to at least two Presidents of El Salvador, six Presidents of Nicaragua, several dozen from Costa Rica, a couple from Colombia, and a couple from Argentina.

Among the Colombian Presidents in Virgilio Barco Vargas (1921-1997). One of my previous “Out of His Tree” articles featured President Barco’s gay son, the activist Virgilio Barco Isakson.

As far as Mexico is concerned, Ramon has at least four Mexican Presidents as distant cousins. One in particular is of interest, the fourth president Anastasio Bustamente (1780-1853). We enter Abraham Lincoln territory here. That is to say, there is clear evidence that the president shared a bed with another man, but that doesn’t necessarily indicate homosexuality. Both Lincoln and Bustamente shared a bed with another man. That was common in pre-20th century times. We have no evidence that any physical or sexual intimacy occurred. However, even though I still have reservations about the sexuality attributed to Abraham Lincoln I a have fewer regarding Anastasio Bustamente. It is widely reported that he preferred the company of young men, and he never married. So perhaps, he could have been gay.

Which other well-known Latin Americans are related to Ramon Novarro though his Conquistador ancestors? Well, there’s Che Guevara, Simon Bolivar, Eva Peron, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Going back and looking at Ramon’s non-Hispanic cousins, you can get a good idea from the articles I wrote about descendants of King Edward II of England, beginning here.

So, that’s Ramon Novarro’s family tree. It is dominated by the bloodlines and legacy of the Spanish Conquistadors. His immediate ancestry centres on the Durango province of Mexico, but most of his earliest colonial ancestors settled in the northern part of Spanish Mexico, the area which is now the US state of New Mexico.

A Ghostly Warning of Doom

On previous Hallowe’ens I’ve written about vampires, Frankenstien’s monster and mummies, but not about ghosts. So, how about an lgbt ghost story from ancient Greece today. The story is a sort of companion article to one I wrote a few days ago – you’ll see why when you read on.

In the city-state of Aetolia on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth there lived a man called Polykritos. He was a man of good standing, of noble blood, and well-like by all the citizens. One year the people (i.e. the men) of Aetolia voted him their leader. During his term of office he married a girl from the neighbouring Locrian community, but after just three nights Polykritos died leaving his young bride pregnant.

Nine months later the young widow gave birth to a healthy baby. However, the birth caused a good deal of fear in the Aetolians for the baby was born with both female and male genitalia, the baby was intersex. In ancient Greek societies an intersex baby, or hermaphrodite, as they would say, was a sign of bad luck.

Polykritos’s family took the baby to the agora, the city square, where they had called for a meeting of all the citizens and priests. The assembly debated and argued about what to do about the baby. Some people were worried that taking the baby away from its Locrian mother might cause a deterioration of the friendly relations between the Locrians and Aetolians. The priests said that both the mother and baby should be taken far away and burnt to death like an animal sacrifice.

As they were still debating a dark phantom appeared. It was the ghost of Polykritos.

The crown recoiled in terror and began to run away, but the ghost called out to them, “Don’t be afraid.” It took a little while for the crown to settle down but they were still a bit frightened. The apparition spoke again:

“Citizens. Although I am dead, because of the goodwill I feel towards you I have appealed to the masters of the underworld to let me come and help you. I beg you, hand over my child to me so that no violence will come to it. I won’t let you harm my child as the priests demand. I can understand that my appearance has frightened you and caused some confusion, but if you do as I ask all fears will be removed and you’ll be saved from any disaster as a result. If you come to another decision your distrust of me will only result in disaster. I’m telling you this for your own good. So, don’t wait, make the right decision and give me my child now, because the masters of the underworld won’t let me stay here much longer.”

After a stunned silence the crowd began discussing Polykritos’s plea. Some suggested that they hand over the baby straight away. Others thought that they needed more time to think about it, but Polykritos’s ghost could wait not longer. “Okay, don’t blame me for what happens next”, it said, and with that the ghost picked up the baby and without waring began tearing the child’s arms and legs out of their sockets and ripping at its body. The ghost then ate the bleeding flesh.

The crowd stared in horror and tried to stop the ghost by throwing stones at it, but they went straight through it. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, the ghost vanished. All that was left of the baby was its head, lying in a pool of blood on the ground.

The crowd didn’t know what to do next. Perhaps they should go to consult the oracle at Delphi. Before they could discuss it further the baby’s head began to speak.

“You cannot go to the oracle because your hands are steeped in blood” the head said. “I will tell you what the oracle will foretell. One year from today death will come to everyone in this place. The offspring of Aetolians and Locrians will live together, but there will be no escape from the evil to come. A rain of blood will fall upon you and the gods will render your descendants inglorious.” The head told the crowd to leave the city if they wanted to live. The women, children and elderly were sent away leaving the men behind to await their fate.

One year later the remaining Aetolians fought a battle against their rivals to the west, the Akarnanians. Very few Aetolians survived.

I’m not much of a storyteller, I know, but I hope you found this tale nice and spooky enough for Hallowe’en. But what are we to make of it? Was it real?

The story comes from a 2nd century work by Phlegon of Tralles called “The Book of Marvels” (“Rebus Mirabilus”). Books about marvels, trivia and lists were all the rage in Phlegon’s lifetime. Phlegon himself wrote three – his Book of Marvels, a history of ancient Olympians, and a book on the longest lived humans in history. Modern scholars have given this sort of ancient trivia mania a name – paradoxography.

Modern popular culture still has a fascination for unusual and trivial facts and there are many books, and especially YouTube channels, on the subject. They are all copying what the ancient writers did a couple of thousand years ago.

So, who was Phlegon of Thralles anyway? He wasn’t a historian. He was a freedman, a former slave of the gay Roman Emperor Hadrian. He must have been fairly intelligent and literate to be able to read and write several books. But that doesn’t tell us if the story of Polykritos and the talking baby’s head was true. Phlegon said he got the story from an earlier writer called Hieron of Ephesus. A later account of the story adds that Hieron wrote about the ghostly encounter in a letter to King Antigonus of Macedonia, a contemporary of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.

Scholars aren’t even sure where Hieron of Ephesus got the story from in the first place, and in the later account which mentioned the letter it is claimed that Hieron was even an eye-witness to the grisly affair. In the end it may all have been ancient urban legend or folk tale which Phlegon believed to have been true, something else which is also a feature of modern popular culture. What ever it’s ultimate origin the two surviving accounts serve as a gruesome and ghostly tale for any Hallowe’en party.

King Tut and the Mummy's Curse

Its Hallowe’en and time to scare ourselves silly with the 20th century interpretation of the many traditional global ancestor worship festivals held at this time of year. Today I’m writing about one of the most popular supernatural elements often included in 20th century Hallowe’en celebrations, the curse of the Egyptian mummy, and why we have to thank a member of the lgbt community for it.

Today the mummy’s curse has come to include that of any real or fictional Egyptian mummy but for most of the 20th century the curse was associated with one Egyptian in particular, the world famous Tutankhamun.

The fabulous treasures of Tutankhamun, not to mention the story behind its discovery, still captivates the world. A new touring exhibition of some of the treasures is currently making its way around the globe. It is being billed as the first and last chance to see these treasures outside Egypt.

The attraction of Tutankhamun is not only in the treasures and his own life story but what is alleged to have happened to those who were involved in the opening of his tomb in 1922. It didn’t take long for the media to start labelling the series of supposedly unexplained deaths as the curse of Tutankhamun. But where did that idea come from?

Curses are, of course, not a modern concept. They’ve been around for as long as humanity has. Yet none of them refer specifically to any revenge from a mummy. Even the idea of an Egyptian mummy going on the rampage to eke out its revenge wasn’t a new one in 1922.

Ever since ancient Egypt became “fashionable” during the Napoleonic era in the early 19th century there have been novels written about mummies coming alive. The first was “The Mummy!” published in 1827. Even such authors as Louisa May Alcott of “Little Women” fame tried her hand at Egyptian gothic horror in 1869 with “Lost in a Pyramid, or The Mummy’s Curse”.

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb sparked a revival in Egyptology. Improvements in international communications in the early 20th century made it a worldwide phenomenon. Similarly, the mummy’s curse became known worldwide, and it was after 1922 that the curse became associated with one pharaoh in particular. There were letters published in the world’s press at the time that voiced objection to the desecration of Tutankhamun’s tomb. One letter, published on 24th March 1923, stated that the Earl of Carnarvon, leader of the Tutankhamun excavation, was the victim of a curse. Carnarvon had been seriously ill just a few months after the tomb was opened. Very few people took much notice of this opinion – until the Earl of Carnarvon died two weeks later.

The press went into overdrive. They reported Carnarvon’s death as the result of the curse of Tutankhamun. Many other people on Carnarvon’s excavation team were also reported to have become victims of the curse when they died, irrespective of any proven natural cause. I won’t go into all the details but you can discover more for yourself on the internet.

Let’s return to that specific letter in 1923 which linked the mummy’s curse to Tutankhamun. It was written by the most popular novelist in Victorian England. Not Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or even Charles Dickens, but Marie Corelli (1855-1924).

Marie was born Mary Mackay in London, the illegitimate daughter of a Scottish song-writing poet and his house servant. Mary inherited her father’s musical talents and began giving piano recitals under the more romantic name of Marie Correlli. It was under that name that she wrote dozens of novels and short stories. He novels were extremely popular, though a little melodramatic (very reminiscent of the extreme camp melodrama of television series like “Game of Thrones”).

Although Marie fell in love with a married man the love was not returned and she never fell in love with another man after that. At the time she was living with Bertha Vyver (1854-1941). They had attended school together before Bertha became housekeeper and nurse to Marie’s father. They lived together for over forty years. There’s nothing to prove a physical lesbian relationship between them, though several of Marie’s biographers have remarked that some of her novels contain many erotic descriptions of feminine beauty which they suggest may be an indication of her own bisexuality. Bertha was an inspiration to Marie and became her literary executor. After their deaths they were buried together.

What interested Marie Correlli in the mummy’s curse and Tutankhamun was her fascination for the supernatural and esoteric subjects. The Victorian era saw a growth in a variety of beliefs and practices whether it was Spiritualism or reincarnation. The mummy’s curse was just one of the supernatural beliefs that she supported.

In her letter to the press in 1923 Marie said that the illness that had descended upon the Earl of Carnarvon was foretold in a book she owned called “An Egyptian History of the Pyramids”. She claimed it described various methods the ancient Egyptians used to poison any intruder into tombs, and that a supernatural curse is implied. It didn’t matter that the book in question was mainly fiction.

To the general public and the press what Marie said was important because she was so popular. She wondered if Carnarvon’s illness was really caused by a mosquito bite (which it actually was). Carnarvon was just one of the hundreds of people who died in Cairo from an infected mosquito bite.

The press started circulating rumours of death warnings found on the walls of Tutankhamun’s tomb (there were none) and Marie Correlli confounded the issue by starting her own rumour by claiming that there was an inscription carrying the famous warning “death comes on wings to he who enters the tomb of a pharaoh” (evidence suggests she made this up herself).

But, like urban legends and modern fake news reports the public and press came to believe it as fact. They believed that the mummy’s curse and Tutankhamun’s curse in particularly were true. Those who said it wasn’t true were ridiculed and were accused of proving there was a cover-up.

And so we arrive in 2019 and the mummy’s curse and Tutankhamun still has a mysteriously strange grip on society, thanks in no small part to Marie Correlli, a bisexual best-selling Victorian novelist.


I’m having another short break now. I’ll be back on 15th November.

Dracula, St. George and Lesbian Vampires

In anticipation of tomorrow’s Hallowe’en this article deals with some of the inspirations behind modern horror clichés, in particular the lesbian vampire. As well as the legendary serial killer Countess Erzsebet Bathori there is another real historical woman who helped to inspire the fictional lesbian vampire and she has a link to the patron saint of England, St. George.

Lesbian vampires have been an integral stereotype found in many horror films, epitomised by the Hammer Horror films of the 1960s. The female vampire who sucks the blood of young maidens can be traced to a novel called “Carmilla” written by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (a friend of both Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker). The novel was published in 1872, several years before Stoker’s “Dracula”. The novel’s title character Carmilla makes deeply affectionate advances to a young woman whose family she lived with. As a child the young woman, Laura, had nightmares of a woman resembling Carmilla laying in bed with her and leaving needle-like pains in her breast. A visiting general recognises Carmilla as a vampire. Tracking her to her grave she has the now customary stake driven through her heart.

The origin of Carmilla may have been inspired by the real-life Countess Barbara von Celje (d.1451), the wife of Holy Roman Empire, Szigmund von Luxembourg. Barbara was an extremely powerful and intelligent woman. She was married to Szigmund, then just the King of Hungary, after her father had freed him from imprisonment by rebel Hungarian barons. Barbara effectively acted as ruler of Hungary while her husband was on his many battles and campaigns against both his own barons and neighbouring kingdoms. They only had time to have one child, a daughter called Elizabeth. Szigmund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1414.In December 1408, not long after King Szigmund and Queen Barbara married, they co-founded an order of knighthood usually known as the Order of the Dragon. Women don’t found orders of knighthood, so it is a testament to Barbara’s power that her husband allowed her to share founder status. The badge of the order was a curled dragon with a red cross on its back (pictured). It represented the dragon tamed by St. George.

Embroidered badge of the Order of the Dragon from around 1430 now in the Bayerisches National Museum.

One of the founding members of the Order of the Dragon was the Voivode (Prince-Governor) of Wallachia, Vlad II. In his own country he acquired the nickname of Dracul, meaning dragon, based on his membership of the order. Vlad’s son, Vlad III, called himself the Son of the Dragon – Dracula.

Back to Queen Barbara. Like all powerful people she was the victim of smear campaigns. In the fight against her enemies, mainly Catholic princes, Barbara supported the Hussite sect who were declared heretic. After her death Barbara was accused of more heresy and of drinking blood and keeping a female harem for her sexual and bloody pleasure. For the Countess Erzsebet Bathori two centuries later there was no need for rumours, she was actually like that. But for Queen Barbara it was merely a smear campaign by her enemies.

A mystic book on sorcery and magic published in 1458 adds to Queen Barbara’s vampiric reputation. The author stated that he restored the dying soul of the “lady who was much beloved by the emperor Sigmund” back into her dead body and gave her new life. It is assumed that he was referring to Queen Barbara because there’s no record of Sigmund having and other “beloved”. Added to this are other legends that circulated after her death that she was an enchantress herself. She was given the name “The Black Witch” and the “Messalina of Germany” (Messalina was the adulterous and conniving wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius).

Whatever the origin of all the rumours of Queen Barbara’s alleged supernatural, vampiric or magical abilities they may all have contributed to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s title character in his novel “Carmilla”. After all, he is known to have visited the region before writing his book.

So a smear campaign by her enemies after her death and the founding of an order of knighthood led to the lesbian vampires and Count Dracula. Being labelled a lesbian vampire doesn’t indicate that Queen Barbara was either, of course. Yet, even today, there are still esoteric and pseudo-historical groups who believe it all to be true.

The Ballad of the Murderous Toy-Boy : Part 2

Of damned deeds, and deadly dole,

I make my mournful song

By witches done in Lincolnshire

Where they have lived long

And practiced many a wicked deed

Within that country there

Which fills my breast and bosom full

Of sobs and trembling fear.

Do you believe in witchcraft? I don’t mean the modern Wicca belief but the old-fashioned notion of women with pointed hats riding on broomsticks. This traditional view of witchcraft has always been based on the Medieval Christian belief that witches were servants of Satan.

Belief in witchcraft has led to many terrible abuses and persecution throughout the centuries. Just like the Holocaust, slavery and the Crusades, there’s not a lot we can do to change it, but we can ensure that nothing like them can happen again. With witchcraft it has been women who have borne the brunt of persecution, hence the traditional Hallowe’en image of a witch on broomstick.

I want to write about three specific witches today and their connection to last week’s first article on “The Ballad of the Murdering Toy-Boy”. Both are linked to King James I and his “favourites”. Last week’s was about Robert Carr who was convicted of implication in a murder and the ballad that was written about it. Today we look at another ballad, the one whose opening lines are given above. But the link to James I’s toy-boy isn’t evident because it was only discovered nearly 400 years after it was written. Here’s the background to that ballad.

In 1613 the Earl and Countess of Rutland employed a local woman called Joan Flower and her daughters Margaret and Philippa as servants in their home Belvoir (pronounced “beever”) Castle. However, the other servants didn’t like them very much and accused them of stealing from the castle, whereupon the Earl fired them.

Not long afterwards the Rutland family became very ill and the eldest son and heir, Henry, Lord Ros, who was less than 10 years old, died. This was followed by the younger son, Francis. At that period in time there were many accusations of witchcraft all around the country and many people were hanged (we didn’t burn witches in England, despite what you see in the movies). The Flower women were well-known as herbalists and, more significantly, non-church-goers. Both amounted to witchcraft in those days, so the Earl of Rutland had the women arrested on suspicion of causing the deaths of his sons by witchcraft.

Joan Flower died on the way to imprisonment in Lincoln Castle proclaiming her innocence, but her daughters confessed. They were tried, found guilty and hanged on 11^th March 1619. In less than year a ballad was published about these Witches of Belvoir, as they were called.

In 2013 historian Tracey Borman published a book in which she suggested that the Witches of Belvoir were innocent, and that the Earl’s sons were actually murdered on the orders of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1592-1628), who succeeded Robert Carr as the favourite/toy-boy of King James I.

New, let’s have a closer look at the story. When the Earl’s two sons died his heir was his only other surviving child, Lady Katherine. As a woman she wouldn’t have inherited the English title of Countess of Rutland, but would have inherited the Scottish title of Baroness de Ros and all the estates and income from both titles. She was a very wealthy heiress. One of the appointments her father held was Constable of Nottingham Castle, an important honorary position that had become virtually hereditary in the family for several generations.

King James had visited the Earl at Belvoir Castle many times, and the earl would have attended the king on the royal visits to Nottingham. Perhaps between them they thought Lady Katherine would be a suitable wife for George Villiers. George, however, may have been impatient to obtain the estates of his wife and contrived to remove the two Rutland boys who stood in the way of the inheritance, leaving Lady Katherine as sole heir. He had them poisoned and then framed the Flower women as scapegoats to cover his tracks.

That’s Tracey Borman’s theory. It’s probably more believable than witchcraft. Whatever the truth it is a fact that George Villiers and Lady Katherine married a year after the deaths of the first boy.

George’s plan backfired. Although the Earl passed on the appointment of Constable of Nottingham Castle to George not long after the wedding George predeceased the Earl and didn’t inherited his estates. George met his untimely death at the hands of a disgruntled ex-soldier who had served in one of George’s continental campaigns. The Earl’s estates were inherited by Lady Katherine and passed to her second husband.

But let’s return to the Witches of Belvoir and another connection to the previous article on Robert Carr. I mentioned in that other article that the king and court stayed at Thurland Hall in Nottingham, named after the grandson of John Tansley, Mayor of Nottingham. One of Tansley’s other grandchildren married into the same Flower family to which the Witches of Belvoir belonged. They may even have been descended from Tansley. The evidence is hard to find. As also mentioned previously Tansley is my 14-times great-grandfather, making the Witches my ancestral cousins.

The verse that began this article comes from the ballad of the Witches of Belvoir. It’s a very long ballad, so I’ll finish with the last few verses. They tell of the demise of my witch cousins – Joan choking on a piece of bread and her daughters hanged at Lincoln.

And unto Lincoln City borne

Therein to lie in jail,

Until the judging sizes came

That death might be their bail.

But there this hateful mother witch

These speeches did recall,

And said that in Lord Ros’s death

She had no hand at all.

Whereon she bread and butter took,

“God let this same” quoth she,

“If I be guilty of his death,

Pass never through me.”

So mumbling it within her mouth

She never spoke more words,

But fell down dead, a judgement just,

And wonder of the Lord’s.

Her daughters two, their trials had,

Of which being guilty found

They died in shame, by strangling twist,

And laid by shame in the ground.

Screaming Scores

Considering today is Hallowe’en there’s a noticeable absence of decent horror films on British television tonight. And I’m not referring to modern slasher/zombie films. I mean proper horror films like those made by Hammer. Hammer’s first horror film “The Curse of Frankenstein”, was shown on Monday. Next time you see it take more time to listen to the music. It was composed by one of the most prolific horror film composers, James Bernard (1925-2001).

An Oscar winner and a wartime code-breaker James Bernard’s fame rests on his long association with the Hammer films, and the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Dracula/Frankenstein films in particular.

Before going into detail about his Hammer work I’ll take a few minutes to look at his musical background. Born in the Himalayas into a British military family James was sent to England to live with his aristocratic grandparents. It was a typical “Downton Abbey” childhood, with a piano in the nursery on which he began to play when he was about 6 years old.

Through his mother James claimed he was descended from Thomas Arne, composer of “Rule Britannia”. I haven’t had time to check this, but it’ll make a good “Out of Their Trees” article in the future.

At school he met Benjamin Britten who was visiting a schoolmaster, and who encouraged James to compose. They stayed in touch when James left school and served in the army during World War II. During the war James met his first life partner Paul Dehn, a major in MI6 who went on to write the screenplay for “Goldfinger” (among many other famous and popular films). After the war James enrolled at the Royal College of Music. On graduating he was asked by Britten to copy out his new opera “Billy Budd” for his publishers. James attended the opera’s premier with E. M. Forster.

James’s wartime work on the Enigma machine with Alan Turing, and his Oscar-winning screenplay, are best left for another time. Let’s return to his Hammer horror film music.

James had been composing for stage and radio productions for several years before he was approached by the chief music director of Hammer films. He was impressed by James’s score for the BBC radio production of “The Duchess of Malfi” and asked him to compose the music for Hammer’s “The Quatermass Xperiment” (1955) – one of my favourite films.

Readers may be familiar with the music from the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. The use of violins to produce a harsh, discordant, almost screeching sound which the “Psycho” shower scene best illustrates was actually pioneered by James Bernard in his two Quatermass films. Violins were generally used to provide a romantic or soothing emotion and James used the discordant technique throughout his films. Horror films have copied this musical technique ever since.

Hammer moved into the serious horror genre with the afore-mentioned “The Curse of Frankenstein”. James had been a life-long fan of horror and suspense, so he had the right credentials to write for horror films. You can often feel his enthusiasm fro writing a horror score in a lot of his work.

In 1958 Hammer made its first Dracula film, and in total James wrote the music for 9 Frankenstein and Dracula films for Hammer. He also wrote for other Hammer horror classics such as “The Gorgon” and “The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires” (his last Hammer score).

James was fortunate enough to compose the music for the film versions of three of his favourite boyhood books – “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, “She” and “The Devil Rides Out”. “She” was my introduction to Hammer films. It was shown on tv when I was a young teenager and I’ve never forgotten the impact it made on me (I had nightmares about that lava pit!). It was also the music which stuck in my mind. The main theme sounded very eerie and atmospheric. None of the subsequent Hammer films that I’ve seen have ever given me the same feeling, so I suppose the music for “She” must be my favourite James Bernard score.

James wasn’t even 50 years old when he “retired” and went to live in the Caribbean. He continued to compose for documentaries and to horror programmes, including two episodes of “Hammer House of Horror”.

For a few years Hammer horror films lost their popularity following the rise of American slasher and monster films like “Hallowe’en” and “An American Werewolf in London”. But the cult status of Hammer revived at the end of the 20^th century and James found himself a popular contributor to documentaries and conventions.

I’ll end at the beginning – the beginning of horror films. In 1997 James was asked to compose a score for the classic early silent horror film “Nosferatu” (1922).

I wasn’t sure which of James’s scores I wanted to let you hear. In the end I’ve chosen the main theme from “Dracula” (1958), where you can almost sing along to the music with the blood-thirsty count’s name.

Hallowe'en Bride of Frankenstien

After last year’s Hallowe’en look at vampires we’ll look at that other classic movie monster this year – Frankenstein’s monster.

Like the modern image of the vampire, Frankenstein’s monster has his origin on a storm-ridden night near Lake Geneva in 1816. The story was told to the group by young Mary Shelley, the plot being inspired by a nightmare she had had. She didn’t publish it until 1831, anonymously.

It has been speculated in recent years that Mary Shelley didn’t actually write it at all. She may have told the original tale, but in 2001 John Lauritsen published a book suggesting that the novel of “Frankenstein” was actually written by Mary’s husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Percy was present at that monster-making night in 1816. At the risk of upsetting the feminist movement, who had seen Mary Shelley’s authorship of “Frankenstein” as an example of a strong female writer in a man’s world, Lauritsen suggested that Percy wrote the novel as a gay love story.

A gay love story?! Looking at the Boris Karloff film I can hardly think so, but Lauritsen used his analysis of the original version of the novel and Percy’s own bisexuality to develop his theories. The idea of Frankenstein as a gay love story wasn’t new. It had surfaced in 1977 in a paper called “The Problem of Frankenstein”, which compared it to such literary classics as the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad, Lord of the Rings and even the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau. For those who like reading psychoanalytical gobbledigook you can read this paper for yourself here.

Lauritsen claims that Percy Shelley deliberately chose to allow his wife Mary to claim authorship of “Frankenstein” to distract attention away from his own sexuality, the original 1818 version of the novel being much more homoerotic in its subtext. After reading Lauritsen’s theories I am unconvinced – he hasn’t proved to me that Mary Shelley couldn’t have written it.

The power of Frankenstein survives to this day. All over the world children and adults will be dressing up as Frankenstein’s monster, all of them copying the famous make-up created for Boris Karloff in the 1931 film. Other films, such as the Hammer horror series, and recent tv and theatre productions have tried to follow the original novel’s description more closely, but the famous flat-headed, bolt-through-neck monster will never be replaced.

The Boris Karloff films were directed by a gay ex-pat from the West Midlands called James Whale. He had gone to America to direct one of his plays on Broadway. There he came to the attention of Hollywood film producers. Signing for Universal Studios in 1931 Whale chose “Frankenstein” for his second film with them.

James Whale’s sexuality was a secret to the film-going public for many decades. He made no secret of it in his professional life, but he didn’t advertise it. Just like the original version of the novel recent historians have looked for Whale’s sexuality in his films. This has been suggested for both “Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), in which the monster has been seen as symbolic of someone with “non-common” characteristics trying to exist in a world which hates and fears him. The parallels with 20^th century homophobia is easily seen.

Whale died in 1957, drowning himself in his swimming pool. His last months were the subject of the novel which became the film “Gods and monsters” (1998) in which Sir Ian McKellen played James Whale.

A Queer Hallowe'en

Strolling through the shops this month I realised that Hallowe’en is growing in size very year. And just like Christmas it lasts longer as well.

Of course it all goes back to pagan times and the celebration of the New Year. They didn’t have the luxury of a regular, precise calendar like ours. They used the stars, the sun and moon to set dates, so events weren’t always on the same date each year – just like our Easter.

The most popular costumes I saw in the shops were of witches, demons, ghosts and vampires. Whilst the first three have been around for centuries, vampires are relatively new in the west. Surprisingly, it was the 19^th century Romantic poets who established the vampire image we recognise today. Based on eastern European legends, poets like Coleridge, Shelley and Nottinghamshire’s own polysexual poet Lord Byron gave the blood-sucking demon its more human and sexual overtones which sells TV shows today.

The word vampire first appeared in 1734, taken from a French word, which in turn was adapted from the Slavonic word for a witch.

Dracula, the most famous vampire of them all, was created by Bram Stoker, a close friend of Oscar Wilde’s family, and a man who struggled with his own sexuality. Dracula was influenced by “The Vampyre” by Dr. John Polidori which in turn was influenced by one of the greatest literary “brain-storming” sessions in history.

One stormy night in 1816, in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, a group of friends gathered to drink and take drugs. Present were Shelley, his wife Mary, Byron and Polidori. As the storm raged outside they read ghost stories to each other. Then Byron challenged the group to come up with the scariest ghost story of them all. It was Mary Shelley who eventually won the contest with her story of Frankenstein.

Byron wrote down a short vampire tale of his own which he never got round to turning into a full novel, but it inspired Polidori to write “The Vampyre”.

The traditional vampire is a demon who possesses corpses and can change into animals, usually a wolf. The classic image of a vampire doesn’t come from legend or Bram Stoker. The suave charming Dracula character was created by actor Bela Lugosi on stage in 1927, and the bat comes from thousands of miles away and had nothing to do with vampires at all until a distant cousin of my grandmother, Charles Darwin, saw blood-sucking bats in South America. Darwin knew of the popularity of vampires in literature and gave them the name Vampire Bat. Since then, people get the idea (for no reason whatsoever) that vampires turn into bats – they don’t! Bram Stoker’s Dracula didn’t. Perhaps that’s why people are so scared of bats these days.

Just think – if Darwin had seen blood-sucking gerbils in South America instead of bats people would be  dressing up as gerbils for Hallowee’en instead!

Ready to be horrified?

Preparing for a few Thrills

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was trying to produce a gay Hallowe’en tour. Well, I think I’ve done it. Using my Seven Deadly Gay Sins tour as the basis I’ve put together a bigger tour with lots of new stories. I did it this way because there’s very little I could use for a traditional Hallowe’en tour with a gay theme. But don’t despair – the way it has turned out there is still blood and guts, and tales of vampires, ghosts and murder.

I intend this to be a one-off tour – never to be repeated. Because of that, and because it’ll last longer, I’m going to put up my usual charge and ask people to pre-book. I haven’t finalised a date or time yet, but if you’re interested let me know anyway.

Another reason for the increase in charge is the need to raise funds for an exhibition in LGBT History Month next February. I don’t have the financial resources that Nottinghamshire’s Rainbow Heritage has for their displays so funding it myself is my only option at the moment.

Without giving too much away – the new Hallowe’en tour will take us to old and new locations around Nottingham city centre and look at the origins of the modern vampire, a cross-dressing clairvoyant, and perhaps the ghost of Oscar Wilde. Add a good sprinkling of dismembered body parts and I think it’s a tour to thrill.

More information and full details of the tour will appear in a few days.

Future Shocks!

It’s a little early in the year, I know, I’m thinking ahead.

My tours of Nottingham have always been well received. Several groups have even been on more than one. I’m always looking for new themes and ideas. For several years I’ve been trying to come up with a Hallowe’en tour – complete with references to being “grabbed by the ghoulies” and “putting the willies up you”! There isn’t much information to work on with regards to the lgbt angle, except that Nottinghamshire’s Lord Byron was present at the birth of the story of Frankenstein.

Earlier this year I thought I might adapt my “Seven Deadly Gay Sins” tour and put emphasis on the various gruesome punishments in Hell awaiting the sinful. I might work out a combination of the two and research new information. I could even include my own encounter in Canning Circus cemetery with a dead (human) body that wasn’t supposed to be there (a tale I’ll go into more detail about in November).

As a Christian I also commemorate All Saints Day the day after Hallowe’en, being the dedication of my home parish church in Misterton. So by combining the 2 days I could come up with a “ Gay Demons and Queer Saints” tour.

If people would be interested in a Hallowe’en tour, conducted late at night of course, please let me know and I’ll be spurred on to put one together. If you know of any gruesome gay tales of Nottingham, suitable for a light-hearted tour, also drop me an email.

I’ll leave you with a truly awful joke – Why can’t you ever see the cross-dressing father of a ghost? Because he’s trans-parent!!! Get it? Oh, never mind.