Every culture has stories that are passed down from generation to generation. They serve many purposes. They teach us how to live, explain the world around us—and, occasionally, serve as warnings. English folklore is among the most well-known in the world: From King Arthur to garden gnomes, it has shaped the folk culture of English-speaking countries around the world and inspired globally successful works of literature like Harry Potter.

There is another side to English folklore, though. A darker side, full of unexplained mysteries and stories of the paranormal. These are the stories we’re looking at today.

10 Redcap

For hundreds of years, the continuous war between England and Scotland made the Anglo-Scottish border a lawless and dangerous place. Raiders frequently passed from one country into the other, committing crimes they knew they wouldn’t be punished for when they returned home. Over time, myths and legends about evil criminals and their horrific deeds sprang up. Alongside these, there also appeared many stories of malevolent spirits and creatures who took advantage of the hostile land to wreak havoc on the people who lived there.

One of these creatures was the Redcap, a sinister being which took the form of an old man with iron shoes.^[1] He had long, unkempt hair, red eyes, thin fingers with nails like talons, and long teeth. He wore a deep red hat.

Prowling between the abandoned castles along the border, he would hunt for bodies left behind by war or raiding and use their blood to dye his cap. If there were no bodies, he would lie in wait in the old ruins, looking for unfortunate travelers, who he would kill with a rock and exsanguinate.

While the Redcap sounds scary, there was a way of defeating him: It was said that if someone recited the scriptures in front of him or brandished a crucifix, he would scream in pain and disappear in a ball of fire, leaving one long, ragged tooth behind.

9 Cutty Dyer

Cutty Dyer was either a water sprite or an ogre who stalked the waters of the River Yeo or Ashburn, depending on who you ask.^[2] The legend is most famous in the town of Ashburton, where he was said to have slept in the darkness under the King’s Bridge. He watched for children or drunks who strayed too close to the river’s edge and then pounced on them, pulling them under the water and gorging himself on their warm blood.

The legend of Cutty Dyer stretches back to at least 1879, when it was first written about in a local publication, but even then, it was said that people’s great-grandparents also feared him when they were children. Cutty Dyer was often used as a bogeyman figure to scare children into behaving themselves and staying away from the river. Two men claimed to have seen him one night, standing waist-deep in the water, with bright red eyes like saucers and teeth like a shark’s. They were frozen to the spot in terror and only fled when he reached out and touched one of them.

Fortunately for the people of Ashburton, legend also has it that Cutty Dyer fled once the town was equipped with streetlights.

8 Drake’s Drum

Sir Francis Drake accomplished a lot during his lifetime. As well as being the first Englishman to see the Pacific and circumnavigate the world, he performed many feats of skill in his career as a privateer, particularly by defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588 and putting an end to Spain’s hopes of invading mainland England.

Drake is undoubtedly an English hero, but there are many dark tales that have followed him. For example, some believed that he elicited the support of the Devil in order to beat the Spanish. In his final days, he was said to have ranted and raved deliriously “in words that no one cared to record.” Shortly after his death, one of his friends wrote a poem in his honor, which seems to hint that, in its time of dire need, he will return to save England again and usher in a new age of glory.

This led to the rise of a popular myth surrounding “Drake’s Drum,” an artifact which was kept on display until recently in his home of Buckland Abbey.^[8] According to the legend, in times of hardship or peril, the drum can be heard beating. People are said to have heard it beating in the Napoleonic Wars as well as both World Wars. In recent times, the drum has been moved to a secure, climate-controlled location to keep it safe. A replica now sits in its original place.

7 Legend Of The Mistletoe Bough

The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough was first written in 1822, though its author, Samuel Rogers, insisted it was much older.^[4] According to him, it was already a story well-known across the country, and many old houses asserted that the tragic events of the tale happened in their halls. The story was put to verse in 1830, and by the middle of the 19th century, it was one of the most popular songs ever written in England. People frequently sang it on special occasions, and thousands across the country knew its words.

So the tale goes, a newly married couple and their guests were celebrating long into the night. After getting tired of dancing, the bride started a game of hide-and-seek. She went deep into the castle and found an old oak chest, which she crawled inside. The lid snapped shut, and she was unable to open it. As days, weeks, and years went by, they hunted for her but couldn’t find her. Eventually, in his old age, the husband found the chest and opened it, finding the skeleton of his beloved bride inside.

6 Will O’ The Wisp

The Will o’ the Wisp, also known as a Will o’ the Torch or Jack o’ Lantern, is a softly glowing light that often appears at dusk or early night in marshes and swamps, though they occasionally occur elsewhere. References to these mysterious phenomena (which are also sometimes called “orbs”) appear in folklore across the world but have a particular prevalence in cold, wet England.^[5]

According to myth, they are often found along out-of-the-way paths, trying to lure travelers who are lost along the road. Depending on how the traveler treats the wisp, they may lead them to safety or even to treasure, but most of the time, the wisp is a malevolent creature seeking to lead the unsuspecting to their doom. In Celtic myth, the wisp is a light carried by a fairy or other mischievous spirit, who will blow it out once the traveler is well and truly lost.

In some myths, the named character, Will or Jack, was an individual who led an extremely wicked life. When he died, he was cursed to roam the world forever, and the Devil gave him a single hot coal to warm himself. He used the coal to make a lantern, which he uses to lead people to their deaths. Others think they are spirits or paranormal beings. They have the power to predict the future, sometimes appearing before a local tragedy happens.

5 Black Annis

Black Annis, originally called Black Anny, is a mysterious witch who was first mentioned in a title deed in 1764, which referred to a road known as “Black Anny’s Bower Close.” According to the myth, Annis lived in a cave known as Black Anny’s Bower, which had a large tree by its entrance. The site of the cave is now lost; it is widely believed to have been built over during the housing boom that followed World War I.^[6]

Black Annis herself was a witch with a blue face and claws made of iron. She would haunt Leicestershire at night, looking for young children or animals to eat. She had long, spindly arms, which she would use to reach in through people’s windows and snatch their children. Once she had them, she would take them back to her bower, drain them of all their blood, and then drape their skins on the tree outside. Once the skins were dried, she would add them to her skirt (which she’d made from the skins of children she’d killed before). Fortunately, Annis’s howls could be heard up to 8 kilometers (5 mi) away, so people had plenty of time to secure their windows and place protective herbs above them to ward her off.

4 Spring-Heeled Jack

Spring-Heeled Jack was a mythical creature who terrorized Victorian Britain, particularly London, from the 1830s onward.^[7] The mythical creature was first mentioned in a newspaper in Sheffield, England, in the 1810s, but Spring-Heeled Jack became notorious almost overnight after a spate of stories in 1837 and 1838. At least three women reported being attacked by a strange figure with red eyes, a skin-tight black suit, long fingers, and metal claws. In some cases, he breathed blue flames in their faces, paralyzing them. Fear spread like wildfire across Victorian London. People formed vigilante groups to try to catch Spring-Heeled Jack, and the police interrogated several suspects, but no culprit was definitively identified.

In the following years, Spring-Heeled Jack became an extremely popular figure, featuring again and again in sensationalist pamphlets and penny dreadful horror stories. As his popularity increased, actual accounts of his attacks became rarer and rarer, until he essentially became a figure of folklore, used as a bogeyman character to scare children into behaving—or Spring-Heeled Jack would jump up to their windows and get them.

Nowadays, most people believe the original Spring-Heeled Jack was the creation of a prankster with a daring sense of humor. The finger is often pointed at Lord Beresford, Marquis of Waterford, who apparently enjoyed scaring unsuspecting people at night and was in London when the first stories appeared.

3 Gytrash

The countryside of Yorkshire is one of the most mysterious and least-traveled parts of Britain even today. The expansive hills are crisscrossed by ancient pathways that have been in use for hundreds of years. As a result, it is easy to get lost there, especially if the traveler is not familiar with the area. The wilds of Yorkshire are stalked by all manner of mysterious beings, from hobgoblins to wailing spirits that would lead the unsuspecting off cliffs or into marshes.

The Gytrash was one of the most dangerous spirits said to live in Yorkshire.^[8] Often appearing as a black dog, mule, or horse with fiery red eyes, it would haunt out-of-the-way paths at sunset in search of travelers who had lost their way. The traveler would follow the Gytrash, only to be led further astray and become totally lost. Once the traveler was at its mercy, the Gytrash would either attack or disappear, leaving the lost voyager alone on the dark road. Occasionally, however, the Gytrash could also be a benevolent figure, leading lost people back to civilization. Famously, the Gytrash makes an appearance in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, when she is scared by a solitary horse following her down the road.

2 Beast Of Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor lies in the southwest of England, a place infamous for sightings of the unusual and the paranormal. It is sparsely populated and dotted with ancient ruins from the Neolithic period onward. Many local people consider it to be haunted.

The Beast of Bodmin Moor, however, is not thought to be a ghost but a large black cat that stalks the highlands and attacks livestock.^[9] The stories first began in 1978, alongside several reports of animals being found mutilated. Some speculated that a large panther must have escaped from a private zoo—and since the panther would have been kept illegally, the owner didn’t report it missing. As time went on and the sightings continued, however, people began to look to other explanations. Some now think there might be a whole family of black cats roaming Bodmin Moor. Others say they are the descendants of ancient black cats which used to stalk Britain in the distant past.

There have been over 60 reported sightings of the Beast of Bodmin Moor over the years—enough to interest the UK government, which conducted an official investigation into the mystery in 1995. They concluded that there was no definitive evidence of an unusual beast living in the Moor, but the attacks on livestock were not adequately explained. Sightings of the beast continue to this day, and no definitive explanation has been found.

1 Boggarts

Boggarts have been made famous by J.K. Rowling, who featured them in her Harry Potter novels as evil creatures who take the form of whatever the victim fears most. In English folklore, however, a boggart was a kind of evil creature which attached itself to families or households and was a nuisance.^[10]

According to traditional fairy tales, boggarts love to hide in dark spaces, such as unused attics or cellars, cupboards, or under beds. They were sometimes described as shape-shifters. Boggarts were the source of many misfortunes in the home: They broke things, turned food sour or rotten, and made the house creak, among other things.

Boggarts were also notoriously difficult to get rid of, following families from place to place even if they moved house. People were warned not to name their boggart, because once it was named, it would become even more powerful and angry and much harder to remove. There are many similarities between the boggart and the modern idea of the poltergeist, the main difference being that a boggart wasn’t a ghost but a malevolent fairy or other mythical creature.

English is an amazing language with its roots in the Eastern Germanic family of languages with an enormous dollop of influence from the Romance languages (mostly through French). That has led to a number of very curious but definitely fun words to appear over the centuries. This list looks at ten of those words: mostly familiar but seldom used.

See Also: 10 Wrong Words That Are Actually Right

10 Malarkey

You may have heard this word recently when Democratic hopeful for the 1820 presidential election and supercentenarian, Joe Biden, recently surprised everyone with his hilarious use of the phrase “no malarkey” which he also painted on his campaign omnibus. But jocularity aside, what does malarkey mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it refers to “nonsense talk” and it originated in the 1920s. The rise in popularity of its use occurred in parts of the US with heavy Irish immigrant influence so it is possibly related to some unknown man by the name of “Mullarkey” but we’ll never know. What we do know is that there is a tinge of irony to the fact that Mr Biden has chosen this particular phrase for his campaign given his recent public speaking blunders, such as “poor kids are as bright as white kids” and the incredibly hilarious, yet so terribly wrong “No man has a right to raise a hand to a woman in anger other than in self-defense and that rarely ever occurs. And so we have to just change the culture. Period. And keep punching at it and punching at it and punching at it.”

9 Flim-flam

Flim-flam is yet another word with much political use! It means insincere talk or deceitful words. Here it is in a sentence: “Ninety percent of political commentary is flim-flam”. Its origins are in the 16th century and the term is a form of symbolic reduplication. Reduplication is a linguistic trick used in most languages to draw attention to something or emphasize it. A recent (and somewhat shocking) form of this is when Whoopi Goldberg absolved Roman Polanski of his child-molestation crime by saying it wasn’t “rape-rape” (so much for #metoo). I’m not certain his 14 year old victim would have felt the same way. Other common uses of reduplication are the words “razzle-dazzle”, “bye-bye”, “hip-hop”, and the funnest form (shm-reduplication) “fancy-shmancy”.

8 Gigglemug

Once upon a time politics was filled with gigglemugs. These days there are more triggeredmugs but that is beside the point. A gigglemug is a face (and by extension a person) who has a smile constantly plastered to their face. The word implies disingenuousness. Hollywood is still bursting to the seams with gigglemugs. The term comes from the British use of the word “mug” to mean face which probably came from the old 17th century mugs that were often decorated with faces (toby jugs are an example of this). This use of the word mug is seldom seen in modern English except in the form a mugshot. And the word giggle comes from the 1500s and is an onomatopoeia for the sound we make when we giggle.

7 Collywobbles

Collywobbles refers to a stomach ache or butterflies in the stomach. Despite what you may have heard about this word originating as an aberration of “cholera morbus” that is unlikely. When this word arose in the early 1800s, there was also a commonly used meaning for the word “colly” which was a reference to coal dust. Here’s a great bit of knowledge for you: you’ve been singing the twelve days of Christmas wrong your whole life. You know the “four calling birds”? They weren’t calling at all! They were “colly birds”—a slang for blackbirds. Anyway, there is no real reason to believe that coal dust was the root of the term either, though both theories have been suggested. Most likely it is just a cutesy word made up to distract a child from his stomach pains.

6 Poppycock

Neither related to opium nor penises, poppycock is a very American term from around the mid 1800s and most likely came from Dutch migrants who used the phrase zo fijn als gemalen poppekak meaning a person with great religious zeal (literally meaning “as fine as powdered dolls shit”). The connection to feces (and dolls obviously) was lost and the term ultimately came to be used in English to mean something which is nonsense. It is easy to see how a term referring to the type of character who preaches enthusiastically on a street corner could come to be used to mean anything nonsensical.^[1]

5 Nincompoop

A nincompoop is a foolish or stupid person—it is somewhat synonymous with the term “Youtube commenter“. The word first appears in the greatest language of all (English, duh), in the 1600s. It’s origins are widely disputed but range from the boring (a reference to the Biblical Nicodemus who naively questioned Christ), to the logical sounding opinion of the brilliant Dr Johnson who claimed it to be an aberration of the Latin non compos mentis (not mentally competent). And then finally the most bizarre origin theory is that it comes from Dutch nicht om poep which could refer to a farting effeminate gay man (I didn’t make that up . . seriously).^[2]

4 Claptrap

Claptrap is a weird word with a slightly different meaning originally to its current use. Now it means something which is a load of rubbish; actually it’s pretty similar to malarkey. The source of this word, however, has theatrical origins. If you are a fan of the hacker named 4Chan, you’ll know the use of the term “trap” to refer to a crossdresser who traps straight guys by tricking them into thinking he is really a girl (this is not related to transgenderism by the way). “Claptrap” came about in much the same way. When something was claptrap, it was a special theatrical trick designed to make people clap unexpectedly. Presumably this was often done with actions that were ridiculous or foolish so in modern parlance the term has no relation to clapping and every relation to ridiculous or foolish talk—in other words: nonsense.

3 Whippersnapper

When not rejecting a bunch of Malarkey, Mr Biden can be found sniffing the heads of young whippersnappers. A Whippersnapper is, of course, a belligerent youth or simply a lazy bored youngun. The term is a fascinating mixture of two things: in the late 16th century and early 17th century some young people took up the habit of snapping whips to pass the time: much like modern kids playing with fidget spinners. Emerging in the English language around the same time was the phrase “snipper-snappers” which referred to street kids. Simply by chance these terms merged and left us with “whippersnapper”. It is not very commonly used these days unless you are in a black and white British moving picture.

2 Mumbo-Jumbo

Mumbo-Jumbo refers to meaningless words: phrases that make no sense or make sense to just a small number of people (such as political jargon). It can also mean the practices of a person involved in strange non-standard religious practices (typically religions deemed sinister or dark such as voodoo or witchery). It is this latter meaning from which the word originates. Maamajomboo is a Mandkinan word (a language in Gambia) describing a man who dresses up in a weird costume to perform rituals. Here is the rather hilarious 1803 Encyclopedia Britannica definition of Mumbo Jumbo: “A strange bugbear employed by the Pagan Mandingos for the purpose of keeping their women in subjection. [E]very man marries as many wives as he can conveniently maintain; and the consequence is, that family quarrels sometimes rise to such a height, that the husband’s authority is not sufficient to restore peace among the ladies. On these occasions, the interposition of Mumbo Jumbo is called in; and it is always decisive.”^[]

1 Trumpery

The French word Tromperie came from their verb tromper meaning “to deceive”. The word travelled, via Middle English (before Shakespeare and that darned confusing modern English of his) to our own language as trumpery, which means the same thing: deceitfulness or a deceitful thing. It has no historical confluence with the current President of the United States of America—though, in a similar fashion to the “backronym” (an acronym definition invented after the acronym itself), many fancifully believe it does. Another word that very much describes politicians in general is “snollygost”—a shrewd and unprincipled person who does things for their own gain. Can you name a politician who has done this? Or more simply: can you name one who hasn’t?

+ Competition Time!

COMPETITION IS NOW ENDED: See the comments for the winner’s names. It’s time for another competition! In order to combat the unfairness of comment voting count when people around the world wake at different times of the day, the winner of this competition will be chosen at random from all the comments. Five people will win a copy of this amazing book! There are unlimited entries allowed (one comment is one entry) but your comment must contribute to the discussion; you can’t just post mumbo-jumbo and hope to win! I’ll pick the winners at midnight (Pacific time). You can be from any country. You can be any age. You need to be a registered user of .com, you can sign up here or log on here. If you are already registered you are eligible. Guest posts are not included.

What do you win? Just the best book on languages ever! The Mother Tongue – English And How It Got That Way by the brilliant Bill Bryson whose books we have featured before. In The Mother Tongue, Bryson “brilliantly explores the remarkable history, eccentricities, resilience and sheer fun of the English language.”

As one reviewer puts it: “Who would have thought that a book about English would be so entertaining? Certainly not this grammar-allergic reviewer, but The Mother Tongue pulls it off admirably. Bill Bryson—a zealot—is the right man for the job. Who else could rhapsodize about “the colorless murmur of the schwa” with a straight face? It is his unflagging enthusiasm, seeping from between every sentence, that carries the book.”

Bryson’s book are some of my favorite so I’m certain it will be loved by the winner. Good luck!

The English language is notoriously difficult to learn. First, it is full of strange idioms, like the sayings about not crying over spilt milk, looking a gift horse in the mouth, or having egg on your face. Second, it is shocking, stupefying, formidable, and distressing that we have so many synonyms.

Many of these difficulties arise from the fact that English is based on a combination of different languages. Sometimes, we can easily see the similarities between English words and the languages from which they are borrowed. Other times, this can be a little harder.

The following 10 English words have rather strange origins that may surprise you.

Top 10 Silliest English Words And Their Origins

10 Lesbian

The word “lesbian,” which is used to describe women who love other women, is derived from the Greek island of Lesbos. Around 600 BC, a poet named Sappho lived on this island. Most of her poetry has been lost to time, but we have collected fragments of her works from other writers who quoted her in their works.

Much of her writing was about women, and many of her poems are quite passionate about love. This has led to speculation that she may have been homosexual. By some accounts, she may have been married and had a daughter. But it is difficult to piece together the snippets that exist about Sappho.

Her daughter was named Cleis, but some scholars argue that this was really the name of Sappho’s lover. Her husband was said to be Kerkylas from the island of Andros.

However, the name “Kerkylas” is close to the word for “penis” and “Andros” is like the word for “man.” So the fact that her husband was named “Penis from the Island of Man” implies that this was probably a joke.^[1]

9 Assassin

An “assassin” is a person who commits murder for money or a fanatical reason, such as political ideology. The history of this word stretches back to the Crusades. At that time, a sect called the Nizari Ismaili operated out of Lebanon. They were fanatical Muslims answering to a leader known as the “Old Man of the Mountains.”

This sect was responsible for murdering many leaders of opposing forces. It was believed by Western Europeans that the members of Nizari Ismaili did so after consuming large quantities of hashish, which would make them high. Although this is debatable, it earned them the nickname hashishin (“hashish user”).

By the time this word became part of the English language, it had already made its way through the Italian and French languages and mutated into the word “assassin.”^[2]

8 Walrus

Before writing The Lord of the Rings, author J.R.R. Tolkien worked for the Oxford English Dictionary. As part of his duties, he had to uncover the histories of words beginning with the letter W, including “walrus.” Tolkien found varying histories behind this seemingly simple word.

He believed it to be most likely that “walrus” was derived from hrossvalir, an Old Norse word that translates to “horse-whale.” The whale part makes sense because walruses are also massive and have flippers. But the horse part is confusing. All we really know is that someone long ago probably looked at a massive mustachioed creature with giant tusks and thought the best comparison to a land animal was a horse.

Although Tolkien decided on the horse-whale etymology of “walrus” as the most reasonable, he labored over this decision for quite some time. Reportedly, he had more than six versions of this word’s history, some of which still exist in the Oxford English Dictionary archives.^[3]

7 Quarantine

Undoubtedly, we have all encountered the word “quarantine” on television or in the newspaper. Some may have even experienced it firsthand since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic as this term has long been associated with disease outbreaks.

“Quarantine” is derived from the Italian word quarantino (“40-day period”). Back when the plague was spreading across Europe, Venetian policies dictated that incoming ships from affected countries could not enter the ports until 40 days had passed. This was meant to ensure that no cases of plague were brought into the country.

In a similar manner, people traveling during the coronavirus pandemic have been ordered to isolate for two weeks to prevent disease transmission. We should probably be thankful that we no longer use the 40-day period from the time of the plague.

However, you may be wondering how 40 days was chosen as the correct length of time to isolate someone. It is likely because 40 is an important religious number in Christianity. Medieval Christians believed that Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert and that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights in the story of Noah’s Ark.

The idea that people needed 40 days to become purified fit well within existing religious beliefs of the time.^[4]

6 Nimrod

“Nimrod” is often used as an insult for someone who is clumsy or foolish, but this word originally had a very different meaning. Nimrod is the name of the great-grandson of Noah in the Bible, and he was said to be a mighty hunter. This word only came to be associated with clumsiness and foolishness in the 1980s, and the reasons for this are debatable.

According to one theory, the alternative meaning of the word arises from its use in Bugs Bunny cartoons. Bugs was pursued relentlessly by inept hunter Elmer Fudd. That rascally rabbit sometimes referred to Fudd as a “Nimrod” to sarcastically compare his lack of hunting skills to those of the mighty Nimrod from the Bible.

However, due to the young audience misunderstanding the insult and the sarcasm, “nimrod” became a widely used term to describe someone who was klutzy or foolish.^[5]

10 Offensive English Words With Hazy Origins

5 Muscle

When you look at a large, muscular person, the first image to pop into your head is unlikely to be a teeny-tiny mouse. Thus, it may surprise you to know that the word “muscle” is derived from the Latin word musculus (“little mouse”).

The reason for this odd connection between muscles and mice is all about appearances. Our ancient ancestors simply thought that a flexed bicep looked a lot like a tiny mouse was moving under a person’s skin.

The Middle English language had another word for someone muscular—lacertous. You may be happy to note that this word does not have anything to do with mice. Instead, it means lizard-like. Perhaps the lizards back in the day were quite jacked.^[6]

4 Cancer

The connection between the astrology sign Cancer and the disease of the same name is based on crabs. The word “cancer” is derived from the Latin word meaning “crab.” The Cancer astrology sign is based on a constellation that is supposed to look like a crab, though it really looks more like an upside-down Y in the sky.

In Greek mythology, Heracles crushed a giant enemy crab under his foot during a battle with Hydra. Afterward, Hera rewarded the crab for its service by placing its remains in the sky among the stars. That became the Cancer constellation.

Returning to reality, a cancerous growth, usually surrounded by swollen veins and connections, was named after its similar appearance to a rounded crab body with legs extending from it. The likeness between crabs and cancerous tumors was noted by multiple prominent ancient Greek physicians, including Hippocrates.^[7]

3 Malaria

Malaria is a disease spread by mosquitoes and characterized by recurring fevers, anemia, and jaundice. However, the history behind the name of this disease comes from a misunderstanding about its cause.

Before we knew that mosquitoes were responsible for infecting humans with malaria, there was something called the miasma theory. According to this theory, decaying materials gave off a toxic vapor that caused illnesses like malaria and cholera.

The word “malaria” is derived from the Italian mala aria (“bad air”). The vapors involved in miasma theory were often linked to marshes. A lot of decay was found in these wet regions, and people living near marshes often got sick.

The real cause? Mosquitoes like to lay their eggs near the standing water found in marshes.^[8]

2 Tragedy

When you think of a tragic event, you probably do not automatically think about goats. Then again, maybe you do. The ancient Greeks certainly did, and this is why “tragedy” is derived from the Greek words tragos and oidos, meaning “goat song.”

Some confusion surrounds the exact origins of this word. But the connection to goats seems to arise from plays involving satyrs, nature spirits that combine human and goat or horse features. They were commonly seen in satyr plays. These plays often accompanied the performances of tragic plays, and they tended to be dramatic but funny.^[9]

1 Candidate

Candidates running for political offices nowadays tend to be shrouded in scandal. Back in ancient Rome, they were shrouded in white togas instead. These garments were specially made to be very white, leading to the men who wore them being called candidati (“whitened men”).

This term originates from the Latin word candidus (“pure white”). Funnily enough, this word is also the basis for the English word Candida, which is a persistent type of fungus that can be difficult to eliminate.

This is likely because the fungus itself is white and can overgrow on the tongue, forming white patches called thrush. However, the connection between an annoying fungus and politicians is certainly interesting enough to be mentioned.^[10]

Top 10 English Words Derived From Arabic

What do you do if you’re the victim of a crime? In the 21st century, you call the police. They go out and arrest the criminal, and an impartial justice system deals with him from there. You can go about your life, secure in the knowledge that the law makes sense, and everyone can expect to be treated fairly. Or that’s the idea, anyway.

In England before the 19th century, that was not the way that things worked. From a modern perspective, everything looks backward and upside down. For starters, you didn’t call the sheriff when a crime was committed. The sheriff called you.

10 You Had To Arrest Criminals Yourself

There were no police officers in Anglo-Saxon England, or if you look at it another way, every able-bodied male between the ages of 15 and 60 was a police officer.^[1] If you saw a crime committed in your neighborhood, it was your job to “raise the hue and cry.” This literally meant shouting something like, “Stop, thief!” or “Murder!” at the top of your lungs. Doing so let your neighbors know it was time to jump into action. All of you had to work together to catch the criminal and bring him to court.

Every man was required to keep weapons at his house just for events like this. The more important a man was, the more expensive weapons he had to keep. Knights needed a chain mail shirt, an iron helmet, a sword, a knife, and a horse. The poorest people had to make do with a bow and arrows. If your arrest attempt failed, and the criminal got away, you and your neighbors had to pay a fine. This sounds unfair to us, but the Anglo-Saxons had a very strong sense of community responsibility. If one person broke the law, that meant the whole community had failed. It was everyone’s job to make sure that justice was restored.

9 You Had To Pay To Be In Jail

In modern times, the money spent to feed and house prisoners comes out of our taxes. This wasn’t true in the past. Back then, prisoners paid for their own upkeep. It didn’t matter if they were eventually found innocent—they still had to pay. Prisons could be a profitable business for the officials who ran them. The warden, or “keeper,” of Newgate Prison paid up to £5,000 to the government for the privilege of running the prison. He recovered his investment by making prisoners pay a fee when they entered Newgate and another one before they could leave.

Inmates paid to have leg irons put on and taken off. They paid for candles, soap, and bedding. If they died in the prison, their relatives had to pay a fee to get their bodies back.^[2] Prisoners also had to pay money to the other inmates. When new prisoners entered, the criminals who’d been there a while would tell them, “Pay or strip.” If the newcomers had no cash to hand over, they were forced to give up some of their clothing, which would then be sold. This system was particularly cruel to debtors, who were in prison precisely because they had no money.

8 You Could Be Executed For Practically Anything

This wasn’t originally the case in England. In 1688, only 50 crimes carried the death penalty. By 1815, the number had swollen to 288. Crimes you could be hanged for included stealing something worth more than five shillings (about $40 today), stealing from a rabbit warren, impersonating a pensioner, cutting down a young tree, damaging Westminster Bridge, and hunting while in disguise. The laws were so harsh that juries sometimes refused to convict defendants who were obviously guilty. Jurors didn’t want to see people executed over minor crimes, so they just set them free.

Most of the new capital crimes added during the 17th and 18th centuries were for theft. During that time, many people left farms in the country for London and other cities. The newcomers were looking for work, but they often didn’t find it. There was a growing number of very poor people in the cities. At the same time, new inventions in manufacturing were making a small number of people very rich. The rich citizens feared “the mob” of the poor and pushed for harsher and harsher punishments for those who stole.^[3]

7 The Criminal Code Often Made No Sense

Preindustrial English law operated by making terrifying examples of a small number of criminals. The hope was that people would remember these rare but frightening punishments and be too afraid to commit crimes.

This helps explain why it was a minor offense to pick fruit from someone else’s fruit trees but a capital crime to steal fruit that had already been picked. You could be executed for breaking a window to rob someone’s house if you did it after dark, but if you waited until after sunrise, breaking and entering was only a misdemeanor. Pickpocketing carried the death penalty, but kidnapping a child did not.

Historian Frank McLynn summed the situation up nicely: “The criminal Code was unjust, irrational, and exceptionally severe.”^[4]

6 You Could Pay A Thief To Catch Another Thief

England had no professional police force until 1829. Before that, laypeople took turns acting as constables in their neighborhoods. The constable’s job was to chase and catch lawbreakers, not to investigate crimes. So what could you do if you didn’t know who had stolen your property? And how could you get that property back? One thing you could do was hire a kind of combination private detective and bounty hunter called a thief-taker. Thief-takers used their contacts in the underworld to find out who had your stolen goods. For the right price, they’d haul the thief in front of the sheriff and bring you your things back.

Some thief-takers were legitimate and performed a valuable service. However, it won’t come as a surprise that not everybody with extensive contacts in the underworld was honest. Some thief-takers operated on both sides of the law, taking citizens’ reward money on one hand and then demanding protection money from criminals on the other. Others convinced gullible people to commit crimes, only to turn around and arrest them in exchange for payment.^[5]

The most famous of the thief-takers was Jonathan Wild, the self-styled “Thief-Taker General.” At one time hailed as a crime-fighting hero, Wild was secretly “finding” goods that he himself had stolen. At the height of his career, he was both a London gang leader and an anti-crime consultant to the British government. Unsurprisingly, Wild’s advice to the Privy Council was that they should offer higher rewards to thief-takers. Wild was betrayed to the authorities by some members of his gang and executed in 1725. He was the inspiration for the character of Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay.

5 You Could Have A Great Time At An Execution

If the public was frightened into submission by the spectacle of public executions, then no one seems to have told the execution-goers. In London in the 18th century, hanging days were holidays. Up to 200,000 people took the day off from work and lined the 5-kilometer (3 mi) path from Newgate Prison to the hanging scaffold at Tyburn.^[6] The event was supposed to be a kind of morality play, in which the deaths of criminals inspired people to be obedient to church and civil authorities.

The criminals themselves seldom acted the part of remorseful penitents, though. It was common to curse the courts and witnesses for the prosecution. Some people dressed in their finest clothes and behaved as if they were at a party in their own honor. Some were so drunk on the alcohol that sympathetic spectators gave them that they barely seemed to know what was going on.

Many of the spectators were drunk, too. They drank gin and ate snacks sold by enterprising peddlers. They bought good seats in public viewing stands and copies of what were supposed to be the dying speeches of the condemned. They threw things at unpopular prisoners and cheered the popular ones, especially those who faced death with courage and panache. Executions were so popular that they were written up as a tourist attraction in the 1740 Foreigner’s Guide To London.

4 You Could Be Jailed For The Rest Of Your Life For Owing Money

Being unable to pay your debts was a civil offense in England, but you could still end up in prison because of it. If someone sued you for the nonpayment of a debt, the court could order you to be jailed until the debt was paid. But if you couldn’t pay a debt while you were still working at your job, how were you going to pay it from inside a prison cell? Things got worse for you every day you spent in jail, because you had to pay the jailer for your upkeep while you were imprisoned. With each day that went by, you owed more money.^[7]

Debtors in prison had different strategies for paying their way out. Some got money from their families and friends; others found ways to work in prison. Some were able to renegotiate the terms of their debt with their creditors. And some just died in prison.

In 18th-century London, the poorest of the poor often ended up in the “common side” of Marshalsea prison. (Those who had more money could pay to stay in the more comfortable master’s side.) The prison officials weren’t required to provide food, so they didn’t. Charitable donations provided the only food poor prisoners got, and that wasn’t much. Inmates who got on the jailers’ bad side were sometimes beaten with clubs, tortured with heavy chains attached to their legs, or forced to stay in rooms where people were dying of smallpox. Deaths were very common.

If you didn’t die in debtor’s prison, you might have to stay there a long time. When London’s Fleet Prison finally closed, two of its debtors had been locked up for 30 years. Most people who went to debtor’s prison owed large sums of money, sometimes many times what they earned in a year. That wasn’t true of everyone, though. In one London prison in 1789, about a third of the debtors owed less than £20, which would be an amount up to $30,000–$40,000 today.

3 You Could Be Arrested For Wandering Around While Poor

This had to do with how charity was distributed. A parish was a subdivision of a county and the basic unit of English government. Parishes charged a form of property tax called rates from all the local house owners. Part of the rate money went to help support poor people who lived in the parish. For the most part, citizens were fine with supporting their poor neighbors, but they didn’t want to have to look after the poor of other parishes. For that reason, poor people were discouraged from traveling. “Persons wandering abroad and begging” were labeled vagrants or vagabonds and could be subjected to punishments ranging from being put in the stocks to two years of slavery.

In 1695, two men named Peter Lawman and Francis Buckley were actually sentenced to death for vagabonding. Buckley was found with a pistol, which could have been part of the reason the sentence was so severe. There was virtually no practical difference between “vagabonds” and simple poor people, except that vagabonds were more likely to be strangers to the neighborhood.^[8]

The 1744 Vagrancy Act contained a long list of who was considered undesirable, including all kinds of travelers who had no steady employment. Some examples of prohibited people were “common players of interludes,” unlicensed peddlers, “persons pretending to be Gypsies,” and vaguest of all, “All persons wandering abroad and lodging in alehouses, barns, outhouses or in the open air, not giving a good account of themselves.” Essentially anyone without resources in the form of money or connections could be prosecuted as a vagrant, especially if they wandered far from home.

2 It Was Alarmingly Easy To Be Charged With Piracy

According to the Piracy Act of 1698, it was a crime to “receive, entertaine, or conceale” a pirate or to accept any of his stolen goods.^[9] Accessories to piracy could be punished with death.

This is precisely what happened to six Englishmen who had the misfortune of boarding Calico Jack Rackham’s ship in 1720. Their day started with them in a canoe looking for turtles. Then Rackham’s crew invited them on board to share a bowl of punch, and a few hours later, they were at anchor and drunk. While the pirates and their guests were indisposed, pirate-hunter Jonathan Barnet slipped up on them and captured the lot. Three months later, the punch-drinkers were on trial for their lives. They were condemned to death based on the facts that they were found armed and had helped Rackham row his ship. They were executed in February 1721. Likewise, in 1722, four men were hanged for being seen drinking and carousing with “Black Bart” Roberts’s crew.

The obvious moral of this story is to never drink with pirates, or if you must drink with pirates, don’t let anybody catch you. Essentially any felony committed on or in a body of water could count as piracy, and that fact sometimes resulted in surprisingly mundane “piracy” convictions. In 1768, a man named George Geery was executed for piracy after boarding a Dutch ship, assaulting one of its officers, and stealing several of his hats. The broad definition of piracy was still on the books in 1848, when several men were tried for piracy for trying to mutiny aboard a steamship. The cause of the mutiny? An argument over whether one particular sailor could bring his chickens aboard. All of the men were acquitted.

1 There Was No Real Equal Protection Of The Law

The whole legal system was stacked in favor of the rich and against the poor. You can see this in the way that power was distributed. Government officials got their positions one of two ways. One was patronage, in which officials were chosen for their jobs by a powerful friend, relative, or person who owed them a favor. The other was the sale of offices. Sometimes, men with money but no powerful friends bought their jobs. These jobs were then treated as private property, much like owning a piece of land. Those who paid for their offices charged for their services as a means of making back the money they’d invested.^[10] This was not considered corruption; it was just thought of as business as usual.

Judgeships were appointed offices that didn’t pay. Even if a poor person was offered the job of judge, they couldn’t have afforded to work for free. Likewise, you had to be a man of property to sit on a jury. If you had no money and didn’t know anyone who did, you stood virtually no chance of becoming an important decision-maker. You stood no chance at all if you happened to be a woman. Only men were allowed to have power in the realm of government and the law.

If a wealthy and important citizen was accused of a crime, it was often difficult to find witnesses for the prosecution. Nobody wanted to get on the bad side of a powerful person. On the other hand, defense witnesses could always be found, for a price. In the unlikely event that someone with a lot of money was arrested, the practice of allowing people to bring to prison the most luxurious comforts they could afford ensured that the accused didn’t suffer too much. The poor had no such advantages. Instead, they were imprisoned, fined, executed, and transported to prison colonies at far higher rates than their wealthy neighbors.

Ben Eggertsen is a freelance writer, former special education teacher, and amateur historian. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Usually, when people think of English Renaissance drama, they think of the plays by Shakespeare that they studied in school, such as Romeo and Juliet (1597) and Hamlet (c. 1599–1601). English Renaissance theater (also known as Elizabethan or Jacobean) refers to the theater of England between 1558 and 1642. Nowadays, English Renaissance plays are often thought of as highbrow, with their impressive monologues about love and death and everything in-between. But during this time, going to the theatre was the standard entertainment of the day. As a result, the plays are sometimes absolutely wild.

While serious and heartfelt speeches were often included, audiences also had a taste for over-the-top deaths, outlandish situations, and dirty jokes. Here are 10 of the weirdest moments from English Renaissance theater. Spoiler warnings ahead (but to be fair, they are all over 400 years old).

Related: 10 Shakespeare Authorship Theories That Will Surprise You

10 Necrophilia in The Revenger’s Tragedy

Revenge tragedies were all the rage during the Renaissance, and Thomas Middleton’s satiric The Revenger’s Tragedy sends up this violent genre. This 1606 play features the typical elements of disguise and deception but employs them in morbidly sexual ways. It basically stages necrophilia, though the person committing the act is unaware of the dead state of the recipient.

The play starts with Vindice wanting to get revenge on the Duke who poisoned his fiancée when she refused to sleep with him nine years previously. He has been creepily carrying around her skull ever since. Vindice puts on a disguise and is hired by the Duke as a pimp. In an act of poetic justice, he poisons the skull of his dead lover and places it on a dummy dressed up as an attractive woman. Thinking it is a shy prostitute, the Duke kisses the deadly effigy “like a slobbering Dutchman” (III.v.164), after which his teeth and tongue rot away.^[1]

9 Lioness Attack in As You Like It

Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599) contains the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech (II.vii.139). And, as in many of his plays, it features people falling in love at first sight and gender-bending disguises. The male lead, Orlando, is forced into the forest by his mean-spirited older brother, Oliver. Of course, as the play is a comedy, they make up toward the end, but Shakespeare’s choice of reconciliation is certainly inventive.

Orlando sees Oliver sleeping against a tree with a lioness crouched nearby, ready to go in for the kill. Shakespeare overlooked the fact that lions have been extinct in Europe for thousands of years. Instead of leaving his brother to die, which he genuinely considers, Orlando fights the big cat: “The lioness had torn some flesh away, / Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted” (IV.iii.156-7). Orlando’s bravery causes Oliver to repent for his earlier cruelty, though a wolf attack could have achieved the same outcome.^[2]

8 Devil-Dog in The Witch of Edmonton

Written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford in 1621, The Witch of Edmonton was inspired by the real-life Elizabeth Sawyer, who had been executed for witchcraft that same year. In the play, Sawyer is shunned by her neighbors after being wrongly accused of witchcraft. However, she decides that she has nothing left to lose, so she gets revenge by selling her soul to the Devil.

The Devil doesn’t appear to her as a man, though. Instead, he takes the form of a dog called Tom (although onstage, he was obviously played by a human actor). Sawyer can be seen as a sympathetic character, but her relationship with the Devil-Dog is vaguely—and weirdly—sexual. She asks him to “Stand on thy hind-legs up. Kiss me, my Tommy” (IV.i.170) and then demands “Let’s tickle.” (IV.i.173). While reports of witchcraft sometimes involved sexual acts with the Devil, it feels extra weird when he’s in animal form.^[3]

7 Bottom’s Donkey Head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in 1595 or 1596, is set in a forest inhabited by fairies, so you know some wild stuff is going to happen. As the title would suggest, the comedy has a dream-like quality to it. Midway through, the mischievous sprite, Puck, takes Bottom’s name as another word for ass and transforms his head into a donkey’s head.

Puck had previously given Titania, Queen of the Fairies, a love potion that compelled her to fall in love with the first creature she saw upon waking. That creature just so happens to be Bottom. So despite his half-man half-donkey appearance, she declares that “So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. / And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (III.i.127-9). Thankfully, the play isn’t a tragedy, so Bottom eventually gets his human head back.^[4]

6 Poisoned Portrait and Hat in The White Devil

John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) is based on the real-life murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in Padua 27 years earlier. Webster’s version of the tale contains all the ingredients of a typical Renaissance tragedy, such as adultery and corruption. Brachiano has fallen in love with Vittoria, but they each have spouses. However, the answer to every problem in a tragedy is, of course, murder.

Brachiano’s wife has a nightly ritual of kissing a portrait of her husband, but poison has been applied to it, and she dies. Vittoria’s husband, Camillo, is killed by her brother, Flamineo, when they decide to have a gymnastics competition (as you often do, I’m sure). Flamineo breaks Camillo’s neck and then arranges his body under the vaulting horse to make it look like an accident. Brachiano is later killed after poison is sprinkled into the helmet that he wears at a tournament, prompting him to cry out, “O, my brain’s on fire” (V.iii.4). However, it doesn’t kill him quickly enough, so he is then strangled.^[5]

5 Merlin Being Born as an Adult in The Birth of Merlin

When most people think of the wizard Merlin, they probably conjure up an image of an old man with a beard. Well, William Rowley decided Merlin should be born like that. His play The Birth of Merlin (1622) is about a woman named Joan, who has been impregnated by a stranger, and her brother, who happens to be a clown. The story follows them as they wander through a forest looking for a man to be a father to her unborn child (which doesn’t seem like a great plan).

It turns out that the Devil is the father, and instead of having a baby, Joan gives birth to a grown man. However, how that is physically possible is left unanswered. The Devil being Merlin’s father is actually rooted in traditional mythology; it is being half-demon that gives Merlin his prophetic powers. But the wizard being born as an adult was Rowley’s idea. Merlin’s clown-uncle comments on how bizarre this is: “a child to speak, eat, and go the first hour of his birth; nay, such a baby as had need of a barber before he was born, too; why, sister, this is monstrous” (III.iv.45-7).^[6]

4 Cannibalism in Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus (c. 1588–1593) is one of Shakespeare’s least staged plays, primarily because of its extreme violence. It depicts the cycle of revenge between Titus, a Roman general, and Tamora, Queen of the Goths. Lucy Bailey’s production of the play, staged at The Globe in London in 2006 and 2014, was so grotesque that it caused some spectators to faint.

Titus sacrifices one of Tamora’s sons and kills one of his own sons during an argument. Two of Tamora’s sons murder a man so that they can rape Titus’s daughter Lavinia. They cut off her tongue and hands so that she is unable to reveal their names, but she outsmarts them. Titus cuts the throats of her rapists as Lavinia holds a basin to catch their blood. He explains that he will “grind their bones to powder small / And with this hateful liquor temper it; / And in that paste let their vile heads be baked” (V.ii.250-2). Tamora then eats the pies that her sons have been baked into. Titus is basically the prototype for Mrs. Lovett of Sweeney Todd fame.^[7]

3 Incest in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (c. 1626–1633) controversially depicts incest. It is about the sexual relationship between brother and sister, Giovanni and Annabella. Their love is portrayed as both sinful and sincere. A reviewer of a 2014 production of the play explains that it “is unsettling” because of “Ford’s refusal to either condone or condemn incest: he simply presents it as an unstoppable force.”

Giovanni gets Annabella pregnant, and she marries another man to conceal the relationship. The play ends with Giovanni stabbing Annabella then telling everyone of their incestuous affair while he holds her heart skewered on a dragger. He explains that “For nine months space, in secret I enjoy’d / Sweet Annabella’s sheets” but “her too fruitful womb too soon bewray’d / The happy passage of our stolen delights” (V.vi.43-4, 47-8). This revelation causes the sibling’s father, Florio, to die of shock.^[8]

2 The Bear in The Winter’s Tale

The Winter’s Tale (c. 1610–1611) progresses as a regular Shakespearean tragedy until Act III, Scene iii, where Antigonus abandons baby Perdita in the woods. Then the funniest and most famous stage direction in all of Shakespeare’s plays occurs: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Of course, a real bear wouldn’t have been used on stage, although bears were used for other forms of entertainment in Renaissance London, but the moment is startling all the same.

The sudden materialization and then exit of this bear isn’t the only funny or odd moment in the play, though. Hermione, Queen of Sicily and mother of Perdita, dies, and her husband has a statue built to commemorate her. The statue then comes to life somehow, and Hermione is restored. It also features a scene where a servant is comically unaware that the word dildo has a sexual meaning. It is potentially the first recorded use of the word, so thanks for the dildo jokes, Shakespeare.^[9]

1 Lycanthropia in The Duchess of Malfi

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1613) is another play loosely based on real events. It is about the titular Duchess who marries a man beneath her class, setting off a chain of murderous events involving her two brothers and a man they hire as a spy. Toward the end of the play, it is revealed that one of the brothers, Ferdinand, felt so much shame over murdering his sister that he lost grip on reality and now suffers from lycanthropia, the belief that one has become a wolf.

A doctor explains that the disease causes him to “Steal forth to church-yards in the dead of night, / And dig dead bodies up” (V.ii.14-5). He explains that Ferdinand was found “Behind Saint Mark’s church, with the leg of a man / Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearfully” (V.ii.17-8). The other brother, the Cardinal, displays no remorse. After revealing his part in his sister’s murder to his mistress, he forces her to take an oath of silence by kissing a bible. But he has poisoned the bible, and she dies instantly. Renaissance playwrights certainly loved to kill characters with poisoned objects.^[10]