Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.   

               THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT

“From goulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night - may the Lord protect us.”  Nobody has ever tracked down exactly who originated this prayer but apparently it comes from centuries ago. Because it is so quaintly presented with words such as “goulies” “ghosties” and “long-leggedy beasties”, it now seems more amusing and funny than serious, which indeed it is. But the fact is that even now many millions of people in the world believe in things we would regard as superstition.

When I was a kid (about 10 years old, I think) there was an English woman who lived two doors up from us. She was a generous woman and she would allow me and one of my brothers to scrounge the odd biscuit every so often. But one day I visited her on my own, and for some reason she told me all about the ghosts her family had encountered, and those who had second sight. She informed me that a seventh son of a seventh son would always have second sight. She must have known that I was a seventh child, but she didn’t realise that her superstition wouldn’t work with me, because one of my siblings was a girl, not a son – and besides, both my parents came from families who did not have seven sons. But (being 10 or so, remember) I was completely taken in with her tales. So ghosts really existed!

I spent the rest of the day terrified, wandering around, thinking that the world was filled with ghosts who were looking at me, spying on me, haunting me. I was shaken and upset. Finally it was nearly dinner time. Mum was making the dinner. I told her the awful truth that I had been told by the woman up the road. Mum was a very religious person, but she immediately laughed and told me that ghosts were not real, just things told in storybooks. Good old Mum! It was the laugh as much as anything that broke the spell, and I’ve never believed in ghosts ever since.

And yet and yet and yet… put me is a dark house on a dark night and all the fantastic ideas will resurrect themselves. Down that dark corridor, behind that closed door, there would be some ghostly thing waiting for me. My reason would say otherwise, but my instincts would  dissent.  Of course I reason that a fear of darkness is something that has been built into human beings since primeval times – in the darkness, we lose one of our essential senses, sight, and hence there is the possibility that we get hurt by falling in the dark, bumping into something or [from very ancient times] not seeing some voracious animal that would be happy to eat us.

There is another matter to consider. Ghost stories are very entertaining, and the best writers of ghost stories can send tremors up my spine. Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. James, Edgar Allen Poe and other masters were (and are) often enjoyable light reading for me. Even if I know they’re fantasies, they can still trigger a unique type of unease. Delightful. And may I add that supernatural stories can also cause a delightful frisson. Horror films too, though not the crass ones that rely on blood and guts. Give me the early (1930s) films that gave us Boris Karloff  blundering around as Frankenstein’s monster,  Bela Lugosi as a creepy Dracula and various other films in the 1940s as The Uninvited and the English film Dead of Night. Creepy but not disgusting.

Now, you ask, why am I writing about all this?

It is because of something I recently heard - through my ear plugs -  a podcast while taking my longish morning walk. It was about the “Devil’s Bible”. This was (and is) a late medieval Bible, hand-written by monks in what is now Chechia (formerly Czechoslovakia). The Bible is a thoroughly orthodox Bible written in Latin – the standard text of the Bible for the Catholic Church before the Protestant Reformation came along. It is famous for its size, the large bound book standing about four feet tall. It is also famous for its lavish illustrations of the text. Two of these large illustrations face each other – on one side, an image of heaven; on the other side an image of the Devil. It is this image of the Devil that has caused the book to be called the Devil’s Bible.

So far, so clear. But now comes the funny stuff. Apparently this Bible was so precious that it was often coveted by wealthy people. During the Thirty Years War it was stolen and at one point it was taken by Christina, Queen of Sweden – but eventually it was returned to Prague. This is history, but alongside it, there is legend and superstition. Apparently many believed that this particular Bible had occult powers. There were curses related to it. It could never be touched by the impious. And all this was caused by the ferocious image of the Devil with his horns and claws and his two tongues because he was, after all, the father of lies. And, as I listened to the podcast, I heard some of the commentators using such giveaway phrases as “some people believe that” and “it has been seen that” – phrases which always tell us that we are listening to made-up tales. Mercifully there was also one steady-headed chap in the podcast who said that stories of curses were probably made up by the monks who wanted to deter thieves from taking their precious book.

So after hearing all this, I looked up on line what this fearful image of the Devil looked like. And, like my dear old mum, I laughed. See what you think.