Scenes of fiery Viking funerals have been woven into any number of literary and cinematic tales, but sources on the topic are limited. In this episode, we hear from what’s probably the definitive source, a firsthand account written in the 10th-century by an Arab traveler and diplomat, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who was visiting what would be modern Ukraine, an area then populated by Germanic tribes originating in Sweden. Fadlan’s unflinching description of the bloody and brutal rites, it should be noted, may not be an easy listen for younger or more sensitive members of our audience.
The Seeress: Germanic Tribes, Vikings, and Witches
In pagan Germanic cultures, the seeress played an extremely important role, not only as a clairvoyant, but also often fulfilling the role of a priestess, wisewoman or witch.
We begin with a short clip from Robert Eggers’ The Northman, in which Björk plays a seeress. Old Norse words used to describe this role include spákona, or völva (pl. völvur, völur) — the last meaning “staff bearer,” as a staff was a signifying attribute of the völva, one possibly also used as a magic wand. Staffs discovered in graves of certain high-status women, as suggested by luxurious grave goods, suggest these individuals may have been völvur. We hear some details regarding such discoveries in Denmark and Sweden.
Wands (grave-goods) believed to belong to seeress. Danish National Museum.
Next we provide a quick overview of the Nordic magic that may have been part of the völva‘s repertoire. Two Old Norse designations for witchcraft are galdr and seiðr (Anglicized as seidr). The latter has more to do with spoken or sung charms, and the latter most prominently with control of mental states but can also involve manipulation of physical realities.
We also address briefly the notion that, like the sibyls of the Classical world, the völva likely entered a trance in order to produce her utterances. Drumming is popularly associated with this, as it is central to the shamanic practice of the Sammi people on the northern and eastern fringes of Scandinavia and Lapland.
The first accounts we have of völvur come from Roman encounters with Germanic peoples on Europe’s mainland. A particularly important account we hear comes from Tacitus’ Histories, in which he describes a seeress by the name of Veleda, who guided the Bructeri tribe through their conflicts with the Romans. We also hear about a sacred grove of the Germans, one likely described to Tacitus by a Germanic priestess by the name of Ganna during her visit to Rome.
Illustration of Veleda and Romans from Alois Schreiber, Teutschland und die Teutschen (1823)
We also hear from the Greek historian Strabo, who in his Geographic portrays female seers of the Cimbri people, sacrificing prisoners of war, bleeding them, and telling fortunes from their entrails. Mrs. Karswell provides a lovely reading of this passage.
The earliest of our Scandinavian texts. one written anonymously probably around 960, is the Völuspá, (literally: “the prophecy of the völva). In the narrative the seeress in question is sought out by Odin himself, a dynamic testifying to the importance of the völva in Germanic culture.
Odin and the Völva by Karl Gjellerups, from Det kongelige Bibliotek, 1895
A particular episode in this epic poem features a seeress by the name of Gullveig (later changed to Heidr) who is attacked by the gods in Odin’s hall, an event leading to the war between the two divine races, the Aesir and Vanir. It’s speculated that this seeress may be the narrator of the prophecies recounted in the poem.
Probably the most finely detailed account of the völva’s activities in the real comes from the 13th-century Saga of Erik the Red. Its description emphasizes the honor with which the seeress was treated while visiting farmsteads to relate her prophecies. It also notes the use of galdr (singing magic) and lavishly details the special attire worn by a seeress.
Our next selected episode featuring a völva comes from the 13th-century Icelandic saga, the Saga of Örvar-Odd, a name translated usually as “Arrow-Odd”. This one involves the seer’s prophecy of an inescapable fate involving a horse.
Our final story of a Nordic witch is from Gesta Danorum or”Deeds of the Danes,” a 12th-century chronicle of the country by Saxo Grammaticus. It features a witch who transforms herself into a walrus at a critical moment and a body that really needs to be buried.
We close with some audio snippets from Freyia Norling, a modern practitioner of seidr, who from her home in the Arctic Circle, hosts the intriguing YouTube Channel “A Discovery of Nordic Witches.”
Cases of madness and even murder were associated with Hexerei, a form of witchcraft brought to Pennsylvania by German immigrants. Following up on our previous examination of the tradition of Braucherei or Pow-Wow as practiced in 18th and 19th century Pennsylvania, our current episode eplores some more disturbing cases of witchcraft beliefs surviving into the 1920s and ’30s.
By the 1890s, any public notice taken of Braucherei tended to be negative. Journalists were quick with comparisons to the Salem witchcraft mania and tended to focus on cases in which witchcraft belief led to madness. We hear an example of this from an 1891 Pittsburgh Dispatch article describing two women driven to paranoia in the hills of Earl and Douglass townships. From the Public Weekly Opinion of Chambersburg, PA, we hear bits of an 1894 story describing the extreme (and destructive) measures taken by a George Kellar to rid his property of witches.
The first of the witchcraft-related homicides we examine comes from a March 1922 edition of the York Daily Record. It’s the case Sallie Heagy, whose belief in witchcraft and a night-hag like entity known in Pennsylvania as “Trotterhead,” led to her shooting her husband while he slept.
We then move on to the most famous witchcraft murder in Pennsylvania, namely that of a part-time Braucher and potato farmer, Nelson Rehmeyer, who met his end in York County in 1928. Mrs. Karswell opens this segment reading a description of the discovery of the decedent’s body taken from a Nov. 30 edition of the Hanover Evening Sun.
The murder was committed by a group of men organized by John Blymire, a third generation Braucher or Powwower, who believed himself to have been cursed by Rehmeyer. We hear a bit of his troubled history (which included being committed to a psychiatric hospital from which he escaped) and of his accomplices, including John Curry, a younger man whom Blymire took on as a sort of magical apprentice and Wilbert Hess, whose troubles with his wife and farm, according to Blymire’s increasingly paranoic beliefs, were also tied to a curse by Rehmeyer. We also hear of the involvement of the Braucherin Nellie Noll, sometimes called the “River Witch of Marietta,” from whom Blymire sought help in identifying Rehmeyer as the one responsible for the curse laid upon him. The commission of the crime itself is described in our show via the court testimony given by Wilbert Hess.
Rehmeyer’s House in 1928
The media circus generated by a witchcraft-related murder in 20th-century Pennsylvania resulted in the press becoming obsessed with investigating any possible links to Braucherei in any Pennsylvania crime they reported on. We hear several examples of highly speculative connections made including that of the twenty-one-year-old woman Verna Delp, whose death by poison was erroneously connected to concoctions given her by a Braucher in 1928. A similar connection is examined in the 1930 case of Mrs. Harry McDonald, who was found burned to death in her home, as well as the case of Norman Bechtel, whose body was discovered in 1932 in a mutilated state, bearing injuries, the press presumptively identified as “hex marks.”
Only 6 years after the Rehmeyer case, however, another murder with an undeniable connection to withcraft belief occurred in the vicinity of Pottsville (the same region as that of our Hex Cat case in Episode 69). This was the murder on March 17, 1934 of Susan Mummey by Albert Shinsky. Mummey was a local Braucherin, known by locals as “Old Susie,” or sometimes “The Witch of Ringtown Valley,” who had a cantankerous reputation with her neighbors. At the age of 17, Shinksy experienced one such unpleasant encounter, which he came to regard as the origin of a seven-year curse placed upon him by Mummey — one that could only be resolved ultimately by slaying the witch with a magic bullet. We’ll leave the lurid details of this case for you to experience as you listen, but suffice it to say, the region still seems to have had problems with Hex Cats in 1934.
From The Philadelphia Inquirer, 24 Mar 1934
Our show closes with a look at the Rehmeyer case explored in different media. A highly fictionalized version of the story was produced in 1987 under the name Apprentice to Murder, this one featuring Donald Sutherland as a notably more bookish John Blymire type. There’s also a good 2015 documentary, Hex Hollow, which features interviews with Blymire and Rehmeyer’s descendants. Strangest of all is the manner in which this story seems to have influenced the musical psychedelia of the York County band Lenny Lionstar and The Hillbillies of The Universe. We close with a snippet of their work.
For new Patrons who may not have heard these or for those of you who just want some seasonal listening to revisit, check out the shows below. (And another episode with a Christmas season tie-in is coming this weekend along with another ghost story episode later in December.)
Frau Perchta, sometimes known as “the Belly-Slitter” for the trademark punishment she’s said to inflict on disobedient or lazy children, is figure of Alpine folklore of Austria and Germany in many ways similar to the Krampus.
“Perchta” is only one spelling or name for this figure, who may also go by Pehrta, Berchte, Berta, and a myriad of other names. A particularly good representation of the figure, a woodcut from 1750, identifies her as the “Butzen-Bercht,” with the word “Butzen” coming from a word for “bogeyman.” This word also appears in a classic 19th-century German children’s song and game “Es Tanzt Ein Bi-Ba Butzemann,” or “A Bogeyman is Dancing,” from which we hear a clip at the show’s start.
The woodcut in question depicts a crone-like character with dripping, warty nose, who is carrying on her back a basket filled with screaming children, all girls. She stands before the open door of a house where more girls are screaming, and is holding a dangerous looking pronged staff as well as a distaff, the stick used to hold fibers that will be spun into wool or flax on a spinning wheel. The importance of the illustration is the way it emphasizes Perchta’s connection to spinning and to the females of the household responsible for this task. The woodcut also features some text delightfully detailing a series of horrid threats delivered by Perchta, dramatically read by Mrs. Karswell.
Perchta’s name it comes from her association with Epiphany or Twelfth Night, January 6, the last of the “Twelve Days” or nights of Christmas, the “Haunted Season,” we discussed last year in our episode of that name. “Perchta” is a corruption of the word giberahta inthe Old High German term for Epiphany, “giberahta naht,” meaning, the “night of shining forth or manifestation.
Now there’s another name many of you will have encountered if you’re read up on Perchta: Perchten, figures very similar to the Krampus. (Perchten is plural. The singular is Percht.)
“Berchtengehen” (“Going as Perchten”) from illustrierte Chronik der Zeit (1890)
While the first mention of Perchta appears around 1200, the word “Perchten” is not employed until centuries later. In 1468, there appears a reference to her retinue, but its members are not called Perchten, nor do they explicitly resemble Perchten as we think of them today. At this stage in Perchta’s mythology, the company she leads is most often understood as spirits of the departed. With time, and frequent attacks from the pulpit, Perchta’s pagan company came to be commonly feared not as ghosts but as demons, something presumably closer to the horned figures we now know. By the 15th century, a tradition involving costumed processions or appearances of these figures had evolved. The very first illustration we have of Perchta seems to show not the figure herself, but in fact a masker impersonating “Percht with the iron nose.” It appears in South Tyrolean poet Hans Vintler’s 1411 Die Pluemen der Tugent (“The Flowers of Virtue”).
Frau Perchta (right) from Hans Vintler’s Die Pluemen der Tugent
This beaklike nose of Perchta may be related the figure’s ancient connection to the classical strix (plural striges) which appears in both Greek and Latin texts. The strix is bird of ill omen, often thought of as an owl, one that visited at humans at night to feed on blood and flesh. Bird-like representations of Perchta or the Perchten appear in the Schnabelperchten (“beaked Perchten“) figures that appear in the town of Rauris, Austria.
In addtion to Perchta threatening to cut open the bellies of the disobedient, she’s sometimes said to stamp on those who offend her. In certain regions, it is the Stempe, or the Trempe (from the German words for “stamp” or “trample”) who appears to frighten the disobedient on Twelfth Night. A medieval poem, alluding to the terrible Stempe, one quoted in Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, is read by Mrs. Karswell.
One way to avoid Perctha’s wrath was to prepare certain foods, particularly a porridge called Perchtenmilch, which would be partially consumed by the family on Twelfth Night with a portion set aside as an offering to the Perchten. Certain signs, that the porridge had been enjoyed by the night-traveling spirits could provide omens for the coming year. Mrs. Karswell reads an Austrian account from 1900 detailing these.
This custom of leaving out offerings on this night was frequently condemned by the clergy in Austria and Germany, and we hear similar practice involving the Swiss “Blessed Ones” (sälïgen Lütt) derided in an 17th-century account by Renward Cysat, a city clerk of Lucerne.
The dead who accompany Perchta and consume these offerings are in many tales called the Heimchen, the spirits of children who have not received baptism. Several tales of Perchta and her Heimchen from Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie are recounted.
Our episode concludes examining a peculiar connection between Perchta and the beloved English and American figure of Mother Goose.
Our seasonal look at butcher lore begins with the slaughter of an immense ram as related in the centuries-old English song, “The Derby Ram” (AKA “The Darby Ram”). In the lyric, a butcher and his boy assistant are “washed away in the blood,” giving us our episode’s title. The song is roughly enacted in an old Christmas folk play from Derbyshire, “Old Tup” (an old local word for “ram.”) We hear a montage of snippets of the song from The Kossoy Sisters, John Kirkpatrick,John Roberts, and Matt Williams.
A photograph of Old Tup at Handsworth, taken pre-1907.
While the 19th-century trend among folklorist to view mummer’s plays like this as vestiges of ancient pagan rites is no longer accepted, the notion does suggest our next topic: a Germanic emphasis on sacrifice during the month of November, which the Anglo-Saxons called Blod-monath (“month of sacrifice.”) We look at the Scandinavian yuleblót marking the beginning of Winter and its connection to Freyr and his sister Freyja, both symbolized by boars or swine sacrificed in this rite. Along the way, we hear Mrs. Karswell read a famous 11th-century account by the chronicler Adam of Bremen describing particularly spectacular sacrifices said to be offered in the ancient temple that once stood outside Uppsala, Sweden. We also touch upon the Anglo Saxon Modranicht or “Night of the Mothers,” which was celebrated on Christmas Eve.
Next we discuss the slaughter of swine, November’s traditional “Labor of the Month”among medieval peasantry. Its aristocratic equivalent is the boar hunt carried out in November and December. We have a look at the serving of boar’s head at Christmas among the nobility and hear a snippet of the medieval Boar’s Head Carol as well as a whimsical tale told at Oxford supposedly explaining how the boar’s head custom arrived at Queen’s College.
November Labor of the Month from Parisian Book of Hours, c. 1490-1500
The particular day most traditionally associated with the slaughtering of animals for the Winter (and the old day regarded as the beginning of winter) is November 11, St. Martin’s Day. We hear of a strange St Martin’s custom associated with the slaughter of beef in Stamford, Lincolnshire in the 17th-century and of the magical use of blood from fowl slaughtered on this day in Sweden and Ireland. Our “meaty” segment ends with a bit of the comic song “A Nice Piece of Irish Pig’s Head.”
A tradition in Lower Bavaria fixes December 21, St. Thomas Day, as the date for dispatching swine and is associated with the appearance a demon or ogre by the name of “Bloody Thomas.” We hear a description of a cruel and/or amusing 19th-century prank played on children on this day.
Next we look at the legend of “St. Nicholas and the Three Schoolboys,” which has an unsettling connection to our gory theme. A clip from a French song from the 16th century ‘”La légende de Saint Nicolas“” is included as is a story of the Alsatian bogeyman, Père Fouettard, an equivalent of the Krampus or Knecht Ruprecht said to be related to this particular Nicholas legend.
From 14th century Scotland, comes the story of butcher from the town of Perth who famously turned to cannibalism. Born Andrew Christie, he is better known as “Christie Cleek,” from an old Scottish word for “hook,” an implement important in his grisly deeds.
We close the show with a look at Sawney Bean, Scottish leader of a incestuous cannibal clan believed to be a legendary reworking of the more historically based tale of Christie Cleek.
This episode examines the terrors that come by night, not-so-soothing lullabies, prayers and charms against the nightmare.
We open with the grim Icelandic lulluby “Móðir mín í kví kví,” which tells the story of a newborn’s ghost haunting the mother who abandoned it. Another lovely, yet menacing Icelandic lullaby follows. “Bíum, bíum, Bambaló” alludes to an unnamed horror drawing nearer and nearer.
We learn that our word “nightmare,” originally designated a nighttime visit by a supernatural creature that pinned down and menaced the sleeper, ie, the “mare,” a word that arrived in English via the Saxons, and was derived from the Germanic “mara.” Recently, we’ve seen versions of this creature popping up in a number of horror films, snippets of which appear in a montage. These are: the 2018 film Mara and the 2011 Swedish film Marianne, both of which allude to the creature in their titles, and 2016’s Dead Awake and Before I Wake, as well as 2017’s Slumberand Don’t Sleep. And of course we include a nod to Nightmare on Elm Street, the film that started it all.
Still from the film “Mara”
Stripped of its supernatural interpretation, the sleeper’s sensation of being pinned down and experiencing the sense of a malevolent presence is recognized by medical community as “sleep paralysis.” But researches of the last century are not the first to attempt to describe the phenomenon in physiological terms. We hear such a physiological take on the subject from 1584, drawn from The Discoverie of Witchcraft, a somewhat skeptical book on witchcraft.
The equation of the mare and the witch in English and Germanic culture is longstanding. The other term sometimes used by the scientific community to describe this phenomenon, “Night Hag Syndrome,” points to this, as the word “hag” is traceable to an ancient German term for witches, “Hagazussa,” which also happens to be the title of an excellent new folk-horror film from Germany. A snippet of the dark and droney soundtrack from that film is included.
Digging in a bit more on the topic of the mare, we learn that how the creature assumed a number of nocturnal forms while appearing in the day as either a witch or an unwitting human cursed by a witch, and hear a 13th-century account of an attack by a mare from the old Norse Norse Ynglinga Saga read by Wilkinson.
Next, we listen to a bit of another lullaby, this one from Russia, “Bayu Bayushki Bayu,” which tells of wolves ready to drag the sleeping child into the forest.
Whereas the “mara” (mare) is the preferred term for this creature in Great Britain (and English-speaking countries), Scandinavia, and northern Germany, further south in Germany, we hear of the “Alp,” a largely identical creature, with an etymological tie to our English word “elf.” The Alp exhibits a wider range of mischievous, elfin traits not common to the mare.
19th-century illustration of the nightmare, artist unknown
This same region is also haunted by the nocturnal “Drude” or “Trute,” which likewise presses and torments sleepers, but is more strongly connected to witches than elves. The word “Drude” is often combined with other words in German to describe witchy concepts, like the “Drudenfuss,” a word for “pentagram.” In the sometimes confusing world of folk-magic, the five-pointed star can be used as a form of white magic to combat darker magic and for this reason was often used on infants’ cradles to repel the Drude as in the illustration here. We also hear of a connection of the Drude to the recently released folk-horror anthology film A Field Guide to Evil.
Austrian cradle with pentagram against the Drude
There follows perhaps the most explicitly terrifying lullaby in tonight’s collection, the Russian song “Tili-tili-bom.”
A number of folk practices against the nightmare are described including methods of trapping the creature. Wilkinson reads us a story from Germany’s Black Forest in which the creature is trapped in a particularly peculiar way. Counting charms, such as those used against vampires are also discussed.
Our show ends with a discussion of traditional bedtime prayers, including “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep,” which we learn can be traced to prayers used in 16th-century witchcraft, ancient Jewish “devil trap bowls,” Babylonian incantations, and a rite created by the 19th-century British occult gropu, The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Along the way, we also hear a traditional southern-German nighttime prayer (Abendsegen) as featured in the 1893 opera Hansel and Gretel.
For Mother’s Day this year we examine murderous mothers and maternal instincts gone very, very wrong in folklore, legends, and ballads.
We begin with a look at the Latin American legend of La Llorona (“the weeping woman”). We begin with a snippet of the trailer from the recently released film The Curse of La Llorona and also hear a clip from a 1961 Mexican film released in the US as The Curse of the Crying Woman. We also here an alleged recording of La Llorona herself captured in one of many such user videos uploaded to YouTube.
Still from “The Curse of the Crying Woman, 1961
La Llorona’s story is that of a mortal woman who drowns her two children to avenge herself on faithless husband. In the afterlife she becomes a remorseful ghost and fearsome child-snatching bugaboo. We learn that this form of the legend is relatively modern, with the name “La Llorona” earlier attaching itself to a variety of tales that ascribe rather different motives and actions to the figure. Wilkinson reads for us a few of these earlier descriptions.
Next we have a look at some possible antecedents to the figure including the Aztec Cihuateteo (deified women who die during childbirth later becoming child-snatching spirits) as well as a water goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, a figure sometimes associated with drownings. Somewhat less credibly, a connection to tales brought by 19th-century German settlers in Mexico has even been suggested, namely that of the Weisse Frau (“White Lady”) who haunts the Hohenzollern Castle of Baden-Württemberg. She also does away with children in the context of a thwarted love relationship (in a particularly gruesome way).
Cihuateteo sculpture
Whatever the source of the Llorana legend, it is not difficult to find parallels. Our next example is the Greek myth of Medea, who kills the children she’s had with Jason to punish him for taking a new lover. Her revenge on her rival, Princess Glauke of Corinth, is also dreadful, and dreadfully interesting in the description Euripides provides in his play. We hear Wilkinson read this passage and also hear a snippet of dialogue and the startlingly original soundtrack from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1969 film Medea.
“Medea” by Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, 17th century.
Our next segment looks at some legends and songs about unwed mothers who kill their unwanted newborns. We hear a bit about the numerous “Cry Baby Bridges” of North America. This modern urban legend associates certain bridges, usually in rural areas, with the ghosts of infants drowned in the rivers the bridges span. Often, particularly in older stories, the infants are illegitimate newborns.
In the Scottish or English ballad “The Cruel Mother” (also known as “The Greenwood Side”), we encounter a mother who has murdered her illegitimate children and later meets their spirits, learning from them the fate that awaits her on the other side. We hear a mix of various renderings of this folk song including: The Owl Service, Anna & Elizabeth, Fiona Hunter, Rubus, 10,000 Maniacs,Lothlórien, and Addie Graham. We also hear a bit from the nearly identical song “The Lady Dressed in Green” which serves as the basis of a macabre childrens’ song-game.
In the song, “The Well Below the Valley” (also known as ‘The Maid and the Palmer”) describes a meeting between a mother who has given birth to and killed a number of illegitimate babies and a mysterious holy man who visits her at the well and displays supernatural knowledge of her deeds. The song seems to originate with the biblical story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at a well and likewise displaying supernatural knowledge of her checkered past. This story is also the basis of the gospel song “Jesus Met the Woman at the Well,” from which we hear brief snippets by The Fairfield Four and Nick Cave. The version of “The Well Below the Valley” we hear is by Shanachie.
La Llorona’s child-snatching aspect is anticipated by the Greek myth of Lamia, a woman with whom Zeus was said to have fallen in love, who was then punished by Zeus’ wife Hera. who either kills Lamia’s children or causes her to do so. Thereafter Lamia becomes a monstrous creature devoted to stealing or killing the children of mothers everywhere. We hear how this story later merges with medieval witchcraft beliefs.
The show ends with two stories involving cannibalism and murderous mothers. The first is that of Gudrun (or Kriemhild) from the Germanic Völsung saga upon which Wagner based his Ring Cycle (we hear a bit of Wagner here, music from The Twilight of the Gods. The second story is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, involving a grisly vengeance exacted by Procne on the Thracian king Terseus, an act of vengeance for the rape of her sister Philomela. Wilkinson here again provides a dramatic reading from Ovid.
Peter Paul Rubens “Tereus Confronted with the Head of his Son Itys,” 1637
The show also includes a short bit from Henry Burr’s 1916 song “M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word That Means the World to Me)”
In this episode we look at legends of musicians and marksmen said to have made Faustian deals with the Devil.
We begin with ThePhantom of the Opera, a story which does not exactly share our theme, but was set against the backdrop of a staging of the opera Faust by Charles Gounod. The story, written in 19111 by French journalist and writer Gaston Leroux, also has a macabre connection to Der Freischütz (“the marksmen,” for our purposes), the German legend of a marksman who enlists the Devil’s help in a test of marksmanship. This particular connection is discussed at the conclusion of our show, but is one of several historical incidents said to have inspired Leroux’s novel. The establishment of a subterranean lake beneath the Paris opera house and an unfortunate accident with a chandelier in 1896 are discussed in this context.
1925 Phantom poster showing underground lake
Next, we hear some clips from Brian DePalma’s 1974 rock-opera-horror-comedy Phantom of the Paradise, a retelling of the Phantom story within the setting of the fictional Paradise rock club. Conveniently enough, DePalma’s film inserts not one but two Faustian pacts with the Devil into its storyline and provides an intro to the topic of the trope of rock musicians making deals with the devil.
After a nod to the overt introduction of Satanic themes into rock-and-roll by the band Coven in their 1969 album Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls (discussed in our last episode), we flash through a few other examples of the trend in the 1960s to arrive at the legend of Robert Johnson’s alleged deal with the Devil at “the crossroads.”
Robert Johnson
This bit of folklore, which seems to have been spun out of traditional Vodoun and European notions of the magical significance of crossroads, did not attach itself to Robert Johnson until long after the musicians death, and was in fact, first attached to another blues musician by the name “Johnson” (Tommy) long after the death of the latter. We hear brief snatches of Robert Johnson’s songs “Cross Road Blues ” and “Me and the Devil Blues,” said to have inspired the connection of this legend to R. Johnson.
Because of lightweight portability making it ideal for providing music at taverns and secular gatherings, the violin was historically a favorite instrument of the Devil. Baroque composer Giuseppe Tartini reinforced the notion in his story of a dream in which the Devil had become his servant and provided him his Violin Sonata in G minor, better known as the “Devil’s Trill Sonata.” Wilkinson relates his account of the dream, and we hear a bit of the piece.
“Tartini’s Dream,” by Louis-Léopold Boilly (1824)
At least until the advent of rock and roll, the diabolical musician par excellence, however, was violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini (1782 – 1840). Rumors that dogged his career included that of a pact with the Devil, the manifestation of the Devil onstage during his performances, lightning bolts flying from his bow, and that the soul of a women he murdered resided within the strings of his instrument.
Paganini’s diabolical mystique owed much to his unprecedented virtuosity and theatricality on stage, libertine lifestyle, and unusual appearance, which German poet Heinrich Heine described “a corpse risen from the grave, a vampire with a violin.” As for his libertine lifestyle, we hear a bit from a film particularly dwelling on this — Klaus Kinski’s Paganini(1990) directed by and starring the notorious German actor, whose identification with the role appears to have been somewhat pathological.
(Forged) daguerreotype of Paganini (1900)
The macabre postmortem odyssey of Paganini’s body after being denied burial in consecrated ground by the bishop of Nice is discussed at some length. In the background of our Paganini segment, we hear a bit of his Caprice No. 5 played by Sumina Studer.
We then turn to the Freischütz, the German legend of of the Devil providing a huntsmen a number of magic bullets, the majority which are charmed to hit whatever the shooter wishes, while a small fraction remain exclusively under the Devil’s control. While it’s mostly known in its literary or operatic form, I provide some evidence of the story as a matter of actual folk belief, namely a confession made in a Bohemian court by an ambitious hunter charged with visiting the crossroads(!) where he attempted the ritual to create these charmed bullets in 1710.
Freischütz set design (source unknown)
With the aid of Wilkinson’s dramatic reading, we retell the literary version of the tale from Johann Apel’s 1811 collection of (mainly) traditional ghost and horror stories called The Book of Ghosts. An interesting connection between this volume and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is also discussed.
Next we discuss Der Freischütz, an 1821 opera by German Romantic Carl Maria von Weber. It’s a bit cheerier take on the story than Apel’s but does include a sublimely gothic scene in which the magic bullets are cast. We hear a bit about the staging of that scene (moved from the crossroads to a haunted gorge, “Wolf’s Glen”). Behind that description, we hear a chorus of “owls” from the that scene in von Weber’s opera. Our Freischütz discussion also opens with a bit of the overture.
“Wolfs Glen” set design for 1822 production of Der_Freischütz
We also hear some bits from the 1990 avant-garde retelling of the Freischütz legend by Tom Waits and William Burroughs — The Black Rider.
The episode ends with the story of how a human skeleton ended up onstage in an 1841 production of DerFreischütz. It’s a tragic tale of an unhappy romance that likely inspired Gaston Leroux to have his Phantom buried beneath the opera house in order to be near to his beloved Christine Daaé after death.
The legend of Faust is the archetypal deal with the Devil. This episode looks at the figure as represented in folklore, local legends, plays, puppet shows, literature, films, and opera.
A precedent for the tale seems to be the story of St. Theophilus, a cleric in 6th-century Adana (in modern Turkey) who, as legends have it, summoned the Devil to help elevate him to the status of bishop (and, yes, there is some repentence involved in this one, seeing as how he went down in Church history as a saint). He is the subject of a 13th-century French play, The Miracle of Theophilus, which happens to be the source of a chant to summon Lucifer written in an unknown language — one, which made its way into Wiccan traditions via Gerald Gardner, and which even ended up in the lyrics of the 1969 album Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls by the band Coven. The segment starts with a snippet from this cult album.
There does seem to have been an actual magician, astrologer, or alchemist by the name of Faust wandering southern Germany in the late 15th and early 16th century, though very little is known of his life other than passing references in a few letters and some town records noting that individuals by this who were banned for fraudulent or roguish activities. We look at a few of these historic references.
Legends regarding the figure are more plentiful. We hear of a number of supposedly dangerous grimoires attributed to Faust said to be kept at sites in Germany and also discuss a number of legendary feats of magic (including conjuring an entire castle along with a sumptuous, if unsatisfying, banquet for castle guests). We also have a look at a number of towns offering “evidence” that they were the site where the Devil came to claim the doctor, including one town that rents a room in an ancient inn where the grim event was said to have transpired.
Frontispiece “The remarkable life of Dr. Faustus, a German astrologer and enchanter” (1838)
The meat of our show is a look at the earliest written narrative on Faust, a chapbook published anonymously in Frankfurt in 1587, The History of Doctor Johann Faustus. We hear a dramatic, even cinematic, passage describing Faust’s summoning of the Devil in Germany’s Spessart forest (an area rich in folklore and home to the Brother’s Grimm). Also related are Faust’s whirlwind tour of of Hell, a number of comic supernatural pranks he plays, and, of course, the dramatic hour of reckoning and its grisly aftermath.
Richard Burton in his 1967 film, Doctor Faustus
We next hear some snippets from one of the legend’s most prominent film treatments, the 1967 Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor vehicle Doctor Faustus. Though the subject of numerous negative reviews, the film may appeal to horror fans thanks to its visual styling similar to a Hammer film of the period. The wonderful 1926 German silent, Faust, by F.W. Murnau (director of Nosferatu) is also mentioned.
Marlowe’s Faustus
The script for Richard Burton’s film was the classic of Elizabethan stage,TheTragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Though the story presented by Marlowe is rather similar to the chapbook version previously discussed, we hear of a few comic additions made then jump forward a bit in theater history to William Mountfort’s pointedly comic 1697 work, The Life and Death of Dr Faustus, Made into a Farce, with Harlequin and Scaramouche. Wilkinson shares some monologues from the play spoken by two of the Seven Deadly Sins. We also have a look at the legend’s treatment in Faust puppet shows popular in Germany and Bohemia, a tradition that proved influential on the 1994 Czech film, Faust, Jan Švankmajer’s must-watch stop-motion/live-action treatment of the story. We hear bits of the audio from the Švankmajer film as well as a couple more Faust films, the Peter Cooke-Dudley Moore comedy Bedazzled (1967) and the nicely dreadful 2000 horror-superhero film, Faust: Love of the Damned.
From Jan Švankmajer’s Faust (1994)
The show closes with a look at Faust at the opera, namely Hector Berlioz’ 1846 work,The Damnation of Faust(with a nod to Charles Gounod’s operatic take on the tale). In particular we look at a famously disastrous staging of the Berlioz work by the Paris National Opera in 2015.
