The Man in the Iron Mask

The Man in the Iron Mask is a name given to a prisoner arrested as Eustache Dauger in 1669. He was held in the custody of the same jailer for 34 years. His identity has been thoroughly discussed because no one ever saw his face, which was hidden by a mask of either black velvet cloth or iron. What facts are known about this prisoner are based mainly on correspondence between his jailer and his superiors in Paris.

The first surviving records of the masked prisoner are from July 1669, when Louis XIV’s minister sent a letter to the governor of the prison of Pignerol informing him that a prisoner named Eustache Dauger was due to arrive in the next month or so. Historians have noted that the name Eustache Dauger was written in a different handwriting than the rest of the text, suggesting that while a clerk wrote the letter under dictation, a third party, very likely the minister himself, added the name afterwards.

The governor was instructed to prepare a cell with multiple doors, one closing upon the other, to prevent anyone from the outside listening in. The governor himself was to see Dauger only once a day in order to provide food and whatever else he needed. Dauger was also to be told that if he spoke of anything other than his immediate needs he would be killed. According to many versions of this legend, the prisoner wore the mask at all times. 

The prison at Pignerol was used for men who were considered an embarrassment to the state and usually held only a handful of prisoners at a time, some of which were important and wealthy and granted servants. One prisoner, Nicolas Fouquet’s valet was often ill and so permission was given for Dauger to serve Fouquet on the condition that he never met with anyone else. The fact that Dauger served as a valet is an important one for whilst Fouquet was never expected to be released, other prisoners were, and might have spread word of Dauger’s existence. 

In time the governor was offered positions at other prisons and each time he moved Dauger went with him until he died in 1703 and was buried under the name of Marchioly. Though she may merely have been repeating rumours In 1711, King Louis’s sister-in-law stated in a letter that the prisoner had “two musketeers at his side to kill him if he removed his mask”. 

In 1771, Voltaire claimed that the prisoner was the older, illegitimate brother of Louis XIV but other theories include that he was a Marshal of France; Richard Cromwell; or François, Duke of Beaufort; an illegitimate son of Charles II, amongst others.

‘KING OBREON, seeing Robin Good-fellow doe so many honest and merry trickes, called him one night out of his bed with these words, saying :

Robin, my sonne, come quickly, rise :  First stretch, then yawne, and rub your eyes ; For thou must goe with me to night, To see, and taste of my delight. Quickly come, my wanton sonne ; Twere time our sports were now begunne.

Robin, hearing this, rose and went to him. There were with King Obreon a many fayries, all attyred in greene silke: all these, with King Obreon, did welcome Robin Good-fellow into their company. Obreon tooke Robin by the hand and led him a dance : their musician was little Tom Thumb ; for hee had an excellent bag-pipe made of a wrens quill, and the skin of a Green-land louse: this pipe was so shrill, and so sweete, that a Scottish pipe compared to it, it would no more come neere it, then a Jewes-trump doth to an Irish harpe.

After they had danced, King Obreon spake to his sonne, Robin Good-fellow, in this manner :

When ere you heare my piper blow, From thy bed see that thou goe ; For nightly you must with us dance, When we in circles round doe prance. I love thee, sonne, and by the hand I carry thee to Fairy Land, Where thou shalt see what no man knowes: Such love thee King Obreon owes.

So marched they in good manner (with their piper before) to the Fairy Land: there did King Obreon shew Robin Good-fellow many secrets, which hee never did open to the world.’

— “How King Obreon called Robin Good-Fellow to dance”, Anonymous, Robin Good-Fellow, his mad prankes and merry iests (1639).

[FULL TEXT] 1841 reprint, no priapic satyrs unfortunately (via archive.org). Above image from original text in Folger Shakespeare Library (via EEBO)

Grýla

In Icelandic mythology Grýla is a terrible mountain-dwelling monster and giantess who ventures down from her lair at Christmas time in search of naughty children to cook in a stew and eat, with the vain hope of remedying her insatiable appetite.

According to the legend Grýla has been married three times and her current husband, Leppalúði, lives with her and her their sons, the Yule Lads - mischievous and criminal Santa-type figures who also torment the Icelandic people by harassing sheep, stealing food, and window-peeping - in their cave in the Dimmuborgir lava fields, along with the black Yule Cat.

The legend dates back to the 13th century, though it didn’t become associated with Christmas until the 17th. In 1746 a decree was issued banning the use of Grýla and the Yule Lads to scare children.

[Written with the help of Wikipedia. Image: Grýla by Þrándur Þórarinsson]

The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancashire

A somewhat Hallowe’en themed oddment. It’s a bit of a long read but it’s pretty interesting:

The 1612 Pendle Witch trials are perhaps the most famous in English history, involving twelve individuals accused of murdering ten people by witchcraft. Two families were primarily concerned, each with octogenarian matriarchs: Demdike, her daughter, and grandchildren, then Chattox and her daughter.

The Justice of the Peace for Pendle Hill in Lancashire, a county “fabled for its theft, violence and sexual laxity,” was tasked by James I to seek out religious nonconformists, and it was with this attitude that he heard allegations made by a John Law, who claimed to be the victim of witchcraft.

Walking along a quiet path Law encountered Alizon, the infamous Demdike’s granddaughter, who asked him for some metal pins. Such pins were often used for magical purposes – healing, treating warts, divination, and for love magic, which may be why Law refused. A moment later he slumped to the ground. Initially he made no accusations against Alizon, but she appears to have been convinced of her own powers, later confessing to Law, who convalesced at a nearby inn.

At court Alizon confessed she had sold her soul to the Devil and she told him to lame Law after he had called her a thief. Her mother said Demdike had a mark on her body, which many would have regarded as having been left by the Devil after he had sucked her blood.

Alizon was also questioned about Chattox, another suspicious figure, and, seeing an opportunity for revenge, as there was much bad blood between their families, she accused Chattox of murdering five men by witchcraft, including her father. She claimed her father had been so frightened of Chattox that he gave her oatmeal each year so she wouldn’t hurt his family. On his deathbed he claimed that his sickness had been caused by Chattox because he missed a payment. 

Demdike, Chattox and her daughter Anne, were summoned to court. Both elderly and blind Demdike and Chattox provided damaging confessions. Demdike claimed that she had given her soul to the Devil 20 years ago, and Chattox that she had given her soul to “a Thing like a Christian man”, who promised “she would not lack anything and would get any revenge she desired”. A witness claimed her brother had fallen sick and died after having had a disagreement with Anne, and that he had frequently blamed her for his illness. All three were committed to gaol to be tried for maleficium.

Then Demdike’s daughter organised at meeting at their home, Malkin Tower. Those sympathetic to the family attended, but when officials heard they investigated to determine the purpose of it. As a result, eight more people were accused of witchcraft, including Demdike’s daughter.

All but two were tried in Lancaster in August 1612, along with the Samlesbury witches and others, in a series of trials that have become known as the Lancashire witch trials. One was tried in York, and another died in prison. Of the eleven who went to trial ten were found guilty and executed by hanging; one was found not guilty.

[Written with (a lot of) help from Wikipedia]

“Necropants”

The necropants, as they’re called, are at the center of a very strange legend that’s part of an exhibit at Iceland’s Holmavik Witchcraft and Sorcery Museum (a macabre little pit-stop where you can learn the stories of 17 people burned at the stake in the 17th century — for supposedly “occult” practices like cursing someone with uncontrollable farting). The necropants were made from the skin of the bottom half of a dead guy — but that’s not the weird part, if you can believe it. From Lonely Planet Iceland:

And from the Museum’s website:

[The ‘uncontrollable farting’ link is left in there for your reading pleasure too]

Cat Organ

A cat piano is a conjectural musical instrument which consists of a line of cats fixed in place with their tails stretched out underneath a keyboard so that cats cry out in pain when a key is pressed. The cats would be arranged according to the natural tone of their voices. There is no official record of a Cat Organ actually being built, but it is described in literature as a bizarre concept.

[Legend has it] This crazy musical instrument was designed in 1650 by Athanasius Kircher, a 17th century German scholar.

In his book, Musiciana, Descriptions of Rare or Bizarre Inventions (1877), Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin describes how:

This is a reusable condom dat[ing] back to 1640 and completely intact, as is its orginal users’ manual, written in Latin. The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases. The antique, found in Lund in Sweden, is made of pig intestine and was one of 250 ancient objects related to sex on display at the Tirolean County Museum in Austria in 2006.

Oliver Cromwell’s head

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who was part of the joint republican, military and parliamentarian effort that overthrew the Stuart monarchy as a result of the English Civil War, and was subsequently invited by his fellow leaders to assume a head of state role in 1653. Following [his] death on 3 September 1658, he was given a public funeral at Westminster Abbey, equal to those of monarchs before him. After the monarchy was reinstated, and Charles II, who had been living in exile, recalled, parliament ordered the disinterment of Cromwell’s body from Westminster Abbey. After hanging “from morning till four in the afternoon”, the [body was] cut down and the head placed on a 20-foot (6.1 m) spike above Westminster Hall. In 1685 a storm broke the pole upon which it stood, throwing the head to the ground, after which it was in the hands of private collectors and museum owners until 25 March 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge.

The symbolic value of the head changed over time. While it was spiked on a pole above the London skyline, it gave a potent warning to spectators. In the 18th century, the head became a curiosity and a relic. The head has been admired, reviled and dismissed as a fake throughout the centuries. After Thomas Carlyle dismissed the head as “fraudulent moonshine”, and after the emergence of a rival claimant to the true head of Oliver Cromwell, scientific and archaeological analysis was carried out to prove the identity. Inconclusive tests culminated in a detailed scientific study by Karl Pearson and Geoffrey Morant, which concluded, based on a study of the head and other evidence, that there was a “moral certainty” that the head belonged to Oliver Cromwell.

The Wicked Bible, sometimes called The Adulterous Bible or The Sinners’ Bible, is a term referring to the Bible published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, which was meant to be a reprint of the King James Bible. The name is derived from the compositors’ mistake: in the Ten Commandments the word not in the sentence “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was omitted, thus changing the sentence into “Thou shalt commit adultery”. This blunder was spread in a number of copies. About a year later, the publishers of the Wicked Bible were fined £300 (roughly equivalent to 33,800 pounds today) and were deprived of their printer’s license.