By warning of bogeymen that preyed on naughty youngsters, parents and servants, critics alleged, played upon children’s worst fears to compel obedience. “As soon as one tries to still a child,” complained the Dutch author Jacob Cats, “one introduces a variety of bizarre features: a ghost, a bogeyman, a lifeless spirit.” Some parents, as punishment, confined children to dark closets or impersonated evil spirits. A Dutch father, Constantijn Huygens, used a doll dressed in black to threaten his infant daughter. The father of Philippe de Strozzi in sixteenth-century France knocked on his chamber
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