A Canadian Fear Census December 10, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern , trackback
John Widdowson is one of our finest British folklorists and some of his most interesting work has been on how to scare the living bejesus out of ten year olds. Indeed, his first book had the winsome name If You Don’t Be Good and describes how parents, in the 1960s and 1970s, in Newfoundland (Canada), frightened their sons and daughter into behaving with the help of bogey monsters. The book runs to some 350 pages, and in case you can’t actually get hold of a copy or justify the several hours needed to read it here are the top seventeen supernatural bogeys in interwar and postwar Newfoundland (numbers in brackets, references from JW’s sampler).
Boo Man (105)
The Black Man (94)
Fairies (92)
Boo-beggar (59)
The Devil (53)
Santa Claus (49)
Witches (47)
Sandman (44)
Jack O’ Lantern (40)
Bogey Man (31)
Crust Man (25)
Jack Frost (18)
Jack the Ripper (14)
God (12)
Named and Specified Ghosts (12)
Ghosts (11)
Rawhead and Bloody Bones (10)
If there were but time some number crunching would bring better results for this post. For example, ‘Ghosts’ and ‘Named and Specified Ghosts’ should be brought together. Still even in this rather crude form the numbers allow us to glimpse the trembling children in St Johns a half century or a century ago. Beach is particularly happy to see that ‘the Fairies’ run ‘the Black Man’ close. He was surprised to see Santa Claus: but the examples had parents threatening children with Santa Claus not coming (a kind of positive bogey then). The Crust Man was apparently a chap who would grind up children who did not eat the crusts of their bread. Boo-Beggar must be, as Widdowson points out, Bull Beggar who first emerges into print in the sixteenth century in England. Then there is Jack the Ripper. Bizarre to think that men and women who lived through the Whitechapel scare, albeit at a distance, would give a psychopath with a small penis immortality in their children’s minds. Other interesting entries which did not though make the top seventeen include: a flying saucer, the Hockshaw Man (whoever he is), a Ghost Ship, Mermaids (the only place in the English-speaking world where mermaids were figures of horror?), Reddy Kilowatt (an advertising figure, would you terrify your kids with the Michelin Man?)* and Spring Heeled Jackson (clearly a Dominion Spring Heeled Jack). John Widdowson also give a chapter to human bogey men. Rather depressingly these beat their supernatural rivals: the Police, 119; Doctors, 105 (dentists only two though!); Teachers, 61; Fathers (as in ‘wait till your father gets home’), 16. There is also a real man dressed up as the Crust Man, which begs a number of questions: not least what did the Crust Man actually look like?
Beach is trying to remember what he was threatened with a child: just possibly old Boney (or did he read that?), Father Christmas not coming… No fairies unfortunately. Other childhood bogeys: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
*perhaps
