Behave or the monsters will get you! Moira Butterfield
I don’t want to worry you, but if you’re in Spain there’s a giant hairy hand under your bed, waiting to grab you if you don’t go to sleep. In Iceland there’s a child-eating giantess who will be able to hear you if you’re naughty. Meanwhile there’s a horrible shape-shifter out to grab Inuit children in the snow up north and a formless terror lurking in Portugal – so scary it can’t be described.
In the course of researching mythical characters who help children I’ve found myself waylaid by monsters that have been used by parents around the world to scare their children into behaving. It’s a cast of terrifying beasts, I can tell you, all used in the past to stop children wandering into the dangerous countryside, staying out in the dark or just being plain naughty.
There are shadow creatures, child-eaters and a number of weird characters with sacks. The one I find particularly scary-sounding is Bonhomme Sept-Heures– Mr Seven O’clock. He’s said to lurk around Quebec with his sack, waiting to grab children who haven’t gone indoors by seven. It’s his very specific name that sounds so chilling to me!
Alright! I'll come indoors!
There’s sometimes a religious connection, too. A friend’s father had interesting experiences of Krampus, a nasty sidekick of St. Nicholas who turns up in Austria at Christmastime to punish naughty kids, while St. Nicholas rewards the good ones. As a boy my friend’s father would watch the town parade on December 6th, and while St. Nicholas threw treats, young men of the town dressed as Krampus, carrying large sticks and chains to threaten the onlooking children. The young boy’s father, meanwhile, would wait until his son was in bed and then scrape snow chains up and down the stairs to terrify him into thinking Krampus was about. Tough parenting or what? Apparently it was all connected to the fierce-sounding Catholicism of the area. It was deemed vital that children were suitably terrified of behaving badly so they wouldn’t go to Hell.
Having asked around I only found one person under the age of 70 who remembered any of these bogeymen and women being used on them, so it seems we’ve moved on in my neck of the woods, thank goodness. But friend and multi-talented children’s illustrator Estelle Cork had imaginative parents who cooked up their own version, declaring that some local grain silos were the ‘Monster’s Home’ and Estelle had better behave or she’d be sent there. Terrified whenever she passed them on the horizon, she imagined the monsters inside in the exact shape of their silo containers, as per this sketch (she may have done this for her therapist but I didn't like to ask).
Look away, Estelle!
I’m glad we’ve consigned these bogeymen and women to the past, but in some cases we’ve gone to the other extreme. A recent survey suggested that a third of parents surveyed would not read a story to their child if it had a bad character in it. I even read a recent blog where a parent urged people to self-censor picture books as they read them – giving examples of how to do it which basically rendered the books nonsense. Of course you wouldn’t read a story that freaked your child out, but surely those parents should have more faith in their child’s intelligence. Reading a story with a baddie in it, getting his or her comeuppance, teaches good values. Reading a story together in a safe environment gives your child the opportunity to regulate their anxieties - with your help and the help of the author who is going to make things come out right at the end.
I’m not suggesting that parents specifically go out and look for books with villains in them. I’m suggesting that it’s OK to relax a little about content. Trust the author and trust your child. Don’t start censoring their books.
Anyway, I'd love to hear if you were scared by bogeymen/women/things when you were a child, to keep you on the straight and narrow. And if so, did it work?
Moira Butterfield www.moirabutterfield.com@moiraworld Currently writing a book which is top-secret until 2018. If I told you I’d have to send Krampus round!
PS: If you’d like to read more about some of the weird child-catching bogeymen and women of yesteryear, here’s a great site on European monsters. Definitely don’t share it with your kids, though. https://europeisnotdead.com/video/images-of-europe/european-monsters/
In the course of researching mythical characters who help children I’ve found myself waylaid by monsters that have been used by parents around the world to scare their children into behaving. It’s a cast of terrifying beasts, I can tell you, all used in the past to stop children wandering into the dangerous countryside, staying out in the dark or just being plain naughty.
There are shadow creatures, child-eaters and a number of weird characters with sacks. The one I find particularly scary-sounding is Bonhomme Sept-Heures– Mr Seven O’clock. He’s said to lurk around Quebec with his sack, waiting to grab children who haven’t gone indoors by seven. It’s his very specific name that sounds so chilling to me!
Alright! I'll come indoors! There’s sometimes a religious connection, too. A friend’s father had interesting experiences of Krampus, a nasty sidekick of St. Nicholas who turns up in Austria at Christmastime to punish naughty kids, while St. Nicholas rewards the good ones. As a boy my friend’s father would watch the town parade on December 6th, and while St. Nicholas threw treats, young men of the town dressed as Krampus, carrying large sticks and chains to threaten the onlooking children. The young boy’s father, meanwhile, would wait until his son was in bed and then scrape snow chains up and down the stairs to terrify him into thinking Krampus was about. Tough parenting or what? Apparently it was all connected to the fierce-sounding Catholicism of the area. It was deemed vital that children were suitably terrified of behaving badly so they wouldn’t go to Hell.
Having asked around I only found one person under the age of 70 who remembered any of these bogeymen and women being used on them, so it seems we’ve moved on in my neck of the woods, thank goodness. But friend and multi-talented children’s illustrator Estelle Cork had imaginative parents who cooked up their own version, declaring that some local grain silos were the ‘Monster’s Home’ and Estelle had better behave or she’d be sent there. Terrified whenever she passed them on the horizon, she imagined the monsters inside in the exact shape of their silo containers, as per this sketch (she may have done this for her therapist but I didn't like to ask).
Look away, Estelle! I’m glad we’ve consigned these bogeymen and women to the past, but in some cases we’ve gone to the other extreme. A recent survey suggested that a third of parents surveyed would not read a story to their child if it had a bad character in it. I even read a recent blog where a parent urged people to self-censor picture books as they read them – giving examples of how to do it which basically rendered the books nonsense. Of course you wouldn’t read a story that freaked your child out, but surely those parents should have more faith in their child’s intelligence. Reading a story with a baddie in it, getting his or her comeuppance, teaches good values. Reading a story together in a safe environment gives your child the opportunity to regulate their anxieties - with your help and the help of the author who is going to make things come out right at the end.
I’m not suggesting that parents specifically go out and look for books with villains in them. I’m suggesting that it’s OK to relax a little about content. Trust the author and trust your child. Don’t start censoring their books.
Anyway, I'd love to hear if you were scared by bogeymen/women/things when you were a child, to keep you on the straight and narrow. And if so, did it work?
Moira Butterfield www.moirabutterfield.com@moiraworld Currently writing a book which is top-secret until 2018. If I told you I’d have to send Krampus round!
PS: If you’d like to read more about some of the weird child-catching bogeymen and women of yesteryear, here’s a great site on European monsters. Definitely don’t share it with your kids, though. https://europeisnotdead.com/video/images-of-europe/european-monsters/
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