Chilling Threat of Rawhead and Bloody Bones

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Granna Martha.

This is Connie from Morana, Arizona.

I love your show, and my question is the origin of bloody bones and rawhead when I was a child and had younger brothers and sisters, my mother and grandmother who were from rural Georgia used to basically terrorize us with bloody bones and rawhead if we went rambling any any closets or drawers and I just wondered where that came from.

Well Connie talk to us about what that terror rising is like.

So what’s the circumstances here?

What how is this threatening you?

What how did this come about?

My mom didn’t want us rambling in closets or whatever and I don’t know why she thought we’d do it.

We didn’t do it at home.

But anyway, I just remember as a little girl, you know, four or five years old being told that if we went into that area and opened the closets or went into Granny’s Hope Chest, Bloody Bones and Rawhat would get us.

And you know, when you’re a little kid, it’s scary.

And Yeah, and I had l little sister and little brother who are two and and then four years younger than me but when I was probably ten or eleven and we would visit I was afraid to go through those green curtains and if I got through the green curtains and they didn’t get me then, I wanted somebody to come into the bathroom and make sure they weren’t hiding behind the shower curtain.

Yes, well rawhead and bloody bones or bloody bones and rawhead, it has a lot of history behind it, Connie.

It’s really fascinating.

It goes all the way back to the mid-1500s in England, maybe even earlier than that.

But Rawhead or Tommy Rawhead was this boogeyman used in the same way that your family used it, you know, to scare little kids into into behaving.

And rawhead was the name of this ghastly creature whose skin had actually been ripped off his skull.

It’s it’s really Oh my god.

Yeah, I know, right?

That would scare a little kid, right?

And you see this as early as fifteen forty-eight, there was an anti-Catholic tract that was called The Will of the Devil.

And it’s where the devil dictates his last will and testament to his secretaries who are named Hobgoblin, Rawhead, and Bloody Bone.

And then we see the characters named Rawhead or Tommy Rawhead or Rawhead and Bloody Bones in a lot of care in a lot of folklore after that.

And sometimes the name is applied to just one monster, Rawhead and Bloody Bones, because this poor guy is in terrible shape.

Or sometimes it’s two separate creatures.

But the bottom line is that Rawhead and Bloody Bones was this creepy guy with a flayed head, and it’s it’s one of those monsters that parents would use to keep kids in line, like Jenny Green Teeth, who was supposed to But Connie, something I notice in the folklore is there are echoes of exactly what you experienced where kids are being kept away from dangerous places or places their parents don’t want them by this mythology, by these fictional characters.

Like Martha said, like keeping them away from a pond, because kids can drown in ponds.

Or keeping them away from mining pits was another one.

You might have these random holes in the ground from centuries of mining and you just don’t want the kids messing about there.

So you’ll say, Oh well yeah if you go over there Tommy Rawhead’s gonna get ya.

Oh.

Rather than just saying it could be dangerous.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dangerous isn’t isn’t nearly as as frightening as Tommy Rawhead.

I think right.

Dangerous sounds exciting when you’re a kid.

So your family was participating in a very old tradition.

Well, Connie, thank you so much for sharing your memories with us.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

It was lovely talking to you both.

Take care.

Okay.

Take care.

Okay.

Bye.

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