Drinking Horn

A drinking horn is the horn of a bovid used as a drinking vessel. Drinking horns are known from Classical Antiquity especially in Thrace and the Balkans, and remained in use for ceremonial purposes throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period in some parts of Europe, notably in Germanic Europe, and also in traditions of the Caucasus. Drinking horns remain an important accessory in the culture of ritual toasting in Georgia in particular, where they are known as khantsi.

Drinking vessels made from glass, ceramics or metal styled in the shape of drinking horns are also known from antiquity, in Greek known as rhyton.

Classical Antiquity

While it may be that drinking from horns was already common in Bronze Age Mycenaean Greece, the horns had been replaced by vessels of clay or metal at an early time, possibly still called keras “horn” for some time, but known as rhyton in classical times. Rhyta were also known in Achaemenid Persia, typically made from precious metal. A Late Archaic (ca. 480 BC) Attic red-figure vase shows Dionysus and a satyr each holding a drinking horn.

During Classical Antiquity, it was the Thracians and Scythians in particular who were known for their custom of drinking from horns (archaeologically, the Iron Age “Thraco-Cimmerian” horizon). Xenophon’s account of his dealings with the Thracian leader Seuthes suggests that drinking horns were integral part of the drinking kata ton Thrakion nomon (“after the Thracian fashion”). Diodorus gives an account of a feast prepared by the Getic chief Dromichaites for Lysimachus and selected captives, and the Getians’ use of drinking vessels made from horn and wood is explicitly stated. The Scythian elite did also use horn-shaped rhyta made entirely from precious metal. A notable example is the 5th century BC gold-and-silver rhython in the shape of a Pegasus which was found in 1982 in Ulyap, Adygea, now at the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow.

Krauße (1996) examines the spread of the “fashion” of drinking horns (Trinkhornmode) in prehistoric Europe, assuming it reached the eastern Balkans from Scythia around 500 BC. It is more difficult to assess the role of plain animal horns as everyday drinking vessels, because these decay without a trace, while the metal fittings of the ceremonial drinking horns of the elite are preserved archaeologically.

The drinking horn reaches “barbarian” Central Europe with the Iron Age, and a number of Celtic specimens are known, notably the remains of a huge gold-banded horn found at the Hochdorf burial.

Julius Caesar has a description of Gaulish use of aurochs drinking horns (cornu urii) in De bello gallico 6.28:

„Amplitudo cornuum et figura et species multum a nostrorum boum cornibus differt. Haec studiose conquisita ab labris argento circumcludunt atque in amplissimis epulis pro poculis utuntur.“

“The [Gaulish] horns in size, shape, and kind are very different from those of our cattle. They are much sought-after, their rim fited with silver, and they are used at great feasts as drinking vessels.”

Tacitus describes how the 1st century Germani trapped and killed aurochs and then made drinking horns which they decorated with silver mounts.

Migration period

The Germanic peoples of the Migration period imitated glass drinking horns from Roman models. One fine 5th century Merovingian example found at Bingerbrück, Rhineland-Palatinate made from olive green glass is kept at the British Museum Some of the skills of the Roman glass-makers survived in Lombardic Italy, exemplified by a blue glass drinking-horn from Sutri, also in The British Museum. The two Gallehus Horns (early 5th century), made from some 3 kg of gold and electrum each, are usually interpreted as drinking horns, although some scholars point out that it cannot be ruled out that they may have been intended as blowing horns. After the discovery of the first of these horns in 1639, Christian IV of Denmark by 1641 did refurbish it into a usable drinking horn, adding a rim, extending its narrow end and closing it up with a screw-on pommel. These horns are the most spectacular known specimens of Germanic Iron Age drinking horns, but they were sadly lost in 1802 and are now only known from 17th to 18th century drawings.

Some notable examples of drinking horns of Dark Ages Europe were made of the horns of the urus or European buffalo, extinct in the 17th century. These horns were carefully dressed up and their edges lipped all round with silver. The remains of a notable example were recovered from the Sutton Hoo burial.

The British Museum also has a fine pair of 6th century Anglo-Saxon drinking horns, made from Aurochs horns with silver-gilt mounts, recovered from the princely burial at Taplow, Buckinghamshire.

Numerous pieces of elaborate drinking equipment have been found in female graves in all pagan Germanic societies, beginning in the Germanic Roman Iron Age and spanning a full millennium, into the Viking Age.

Viking Age

The Bullion Stone, a Pictish image stone depicting a warrior drinking from a large horn while on horseback (discovered in 1933, now kept in the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh) Drinking horns are attested from Viking Age Scandinavia. In the Prose Edda, Thor drank from a horn that unbeknownst to him contained all the seas, and in the process he scared Útgarða-Loki and his kin by managing to drink a conspicuous part of its content. They also feature in Beowulf, and fittings for drinking horns were also found at the Sutton Hoo burial site. Carved horns are mentioned in Guðrúnarkviða II, a poem composed about 1000 AD and preserved in the Poetic Edda:

Váru í hornihvers kyns stafir ristnir ok roðnir, – ráða ek né máttak, – lyngfiskr langr, lands Haddingja ax óskorit, innleið dyra.

On the horn’s face were thereAll the kin of letters Cut aright and reddened, How should I rede them rightly? The ling-fish long Of the land of Hadding, Wheat-ears unshorn, And wild things inwards.

Beowulf (493ff.) describes the serving of mead in carved horns.

Horn fragments of Viking Age drinking horns are only rarely preserved, showing that both cattle and goat horns were in use, but the number of decorative metal horn terminals and horn mounts recovered archaeologically show that the drinking horn was much more widespread than the small number of preserved horns would otherwise indicate. Most Viking Age drinking horns were probably from domestic cattle, holding rather less than half a litre. The significantly larger aurochs horns of the Sutton Hoo burial would have been the exception.

Medieval to Early Modern period

Drinking horns were the ceremonial drinking vessel for those of high status all through the medieval period References to drinking horns in medieval literature include the Arthurian tale of Caradoc and the Middle English romance of King Horn. The Bayeux Tapestry (1070s) shows a scene of feasting before Harold Godwinson embarks for Normandy. Five figures are depicted as sitting at a table in the upper story of a building, three of them holding drinking horns.

Most Norwegian drinking horns preserved from the Middle Ages have ornamented metal mountings, while the horns themselves are smooth and unornamented. Carvings in the horns themselves are also known, but these appear relatively late, and are of a comparative simplicity that classifies them as folk art.

The Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University has a large drinking horn, allegedly predating the College’s foundation in the 14th century, which is still drunk from at College feasts.

The “Oldenburg horn” was made in 1479 by German artisans for Christian I of Denmark when he visited Cologne to reconcile Charles the Bold of Burgundy. It is made of silver and gilt, richly ornamented with the coats of arms of Burgundy and Denmark. The horn has its name from being kept in the Oldenburg family castle for two centuries before being moved to its present location in Copenhagen. It became associated in legend with count Otto I of Oldenburg, who was supposed to have received it from a fairy woman in 980.

Drinking horns remained in use for ceremonial purposes throughout the Early Modern period. A magnificent drinking horn was made for the showpiece of the Amsterdam Guild of Arquebusiers by Amsterdam jeweller Arent Coster in 1547, now kept in the Rijksmuseum.

In 17th to 18th century Scotland, a distinct type of drinking horn develops. One aurochs drinking horn still preserved in Dunvegan Castle on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It was only produced before guests, and the drinker in using it, twisted his arms round its spines, and turning his mouth towards the right shoulder, was expected to drain it off.

German Renaissance and Baroque horns often were lavishly decorated with silverwork. One such example is depicted in a 1653 painting by Willem Kalf, known as Still Life with Drinking Horn.

Modern period

Lavishly decorated drinking horns in the Baroque style, some imitating cornucopia, some made from ivory, including gold, silver and enamel decorations continued to be produced as luxury items in 19th to early 20th century imperial Austria and Germany.

Also in the 19th century, drinking horns inspired by the Romantic Viking revival were made for German student corps for ritual drinking. Also in the context of Romanticism, a ceremonial drinking horn with decorations depicting the story of the Mead of Poetry was given to Swedish poet Erik Gustaf Geijer by his students in 1817, now in the Private Collection of Johan Paues, Stockholm.

Ram or goat drinking horns, known as khantsi, remain an important accessoire in the culture of ritual toasting in Georgia. During a formal dinner (supra) Georgians propose a toast, led by a toastmaster (tamada) who sets the topic of each round of toasting. Georgians will toast parents first, as they value them above all else. Armenians, who toast in a similar way, toast their parents last. Georgians think that they care more for their families. Armenians think that Georgians are scared to get drunk and forget their parents. Toasts are made with either wine or brandy, toasting with beer is considered an insult.

In Swiss culture, a large drinking horn together with a wreath of oak leaves is the traditional prize for the winning team of a Hornussen tournament.

Modern-day Asatru adherents use drinking horns for Blóts and sumbels.

The drinking horn also bears some resemblance to the modern yard glass.

Pascal’s Wager

Pascal’s Wager is the application by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) of decision theory to the belief in God. The Wager posits that it is a better “bet” to believe that God exists than to assert that God dies not exist, because the expected value of believing (which Pascal assessed as infinite) is always greater than the expected value of not believing. Indeed, in Pascal’s assessment, it is inexcusable not to investigate this issue:

“Before entering into the proofs of the Christian religion, I find it necessary to point out the sinfulness of those men who live in indifference to the search for truth in a matter which is so important to them, and which touches them so nearly.”

Pascal set out his argument in the Pensées, a posthumous collection of notes towards his unfinished treatise on Christian apologetics. However, various antecedents of his argument can be found in other philosophical texts such as the Buddhist Kalama Sutta, for example. Thus, Pascal’s Wager has some cross-cultural resonances though strong arguments have been advanced that raise questions about the selfish nature and motivation of the believer who accepts God solely on Pascal’s argument.

Explanation

The Wager is described by Pascal in the Pensées this way:

“God either exists or He doesn’t. Based on the testimony, both general revelation (nature) and special revelation (Scriptures/Bible), it is safe to assume that God does in fact exist. It is abundantly fair to conceive, that there is at least 50 percent chance that the Christian Creator God does in fact exist. Therefore, since we stand to gain eternity, and thus infinity, the wise and safe choice is to live as though God does exist. If we are right, we gain everything, and lose nothing. If we are wrong, we lose nothing and gain nothing. Therefore, based on simple mathematics, only the fool would choose to live a Godless life. Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have nothing to lose. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”

In his Wager, Pascal attempts to provide an analytical process for a person to evaluate options regarding belief in God. This is often misinterpreted as simply believing in God or not. As Pascal sets it out, the options are two: live as if God exists, or live as if God does not exist. There is no third possibility.

Therefore, we are faced with the following possibilities:

• You live as though God exists.
• If God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
• If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.

• You live as though God does not exist.
• If God exists, you go to hell: your loss is infinite.
• If God does not exist, you gain nothing and lose nothing.

With these possibilities, and the principles of statistics, Pascal attempted to demonstrate that the only prudent course of action is to live as if God exists. It is a simple application of game theory (to which Pascal had made important contributions).

Pascal hoped that if the wager did not convince unbelievers to become Christians, then it would at least show them, especially the “happy agnostics,” the meaning, value, and probable necessity of considering the question of the existence of God.

In his other works, Pascal hoped to prove that the Christian faith (and not, for example, Judaism or Paganism, which Pascal himself mentions in his Pensées) is correct. The criticism below works for the most part only when the wager is removed from its original context and considered separately, as many thinkers have done before the original plan of Pascal’s apologia was discovered.

Rebuttals

Pascal’s argument has been severely criticized by many thinkers, including Voltaire (1694-1778). The incompleteness of his argument is the origin of the term Pascal’s Flaw. Some of these criticisms are summarized below:

Assumes God rewards belief

Writers such as Richard Dawkins suggest that the wager does not account for the possibility that there is a God (or gods) who, rather than behaving as stated in certain parts of the Bible, instead rewards skepticism and punishes blind faith, or rewards honest reasoning and punishes feigned faith. Richard Carrier elucidates this point in the following way:

“Suppose there is a god who is watching us and choosing which souls of the deceased to bring to heaven, and this god really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven—unless god wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy.”

Assumes Christianity is the only religion that makes such a claim

The wager assumes that Christianity is the only religion that claims that a person will be judged, condemned, and punished by God if that person does not believe. However, Christianity is not the only religion that makes such a claim. Other religions that also claim God will judge, condemn, and punish people who do not believe in him and their religion include Islam and some denominations of Hinduism. Moreover, the beliefs and claims of many separate religions have mutual exclusivity to each other. This means that they cannot both be true, or at least not both be the “one true religion.” Complicating matters further, the belief systems of monotheistic religions require exclusive belief in the god of that religion, so the Wager is invalid when applied to such religions. This is the basis of the argument from inconsistent revelations. Yet another problem is that Pascal’s Wager also encompasses any possible monotheistic religions rather than just current ones giving any possible monotheistic religion an equally tiny chance of being correct without extra evidence to back it up.

The Jewish faith expects a Gentile only to obey the Noahide Laws in order to receive reward in afterlife. In addition, some religions, including Buddhism, do not require a focus on a deity. A “many-gods” version of Pascal’s Wager is reported by the 10th century Persian chronicler Ibn Rustah to have been taken by a king in the Caucasus, who observed Muslim, Jewish, and Christian rites equally, declaring that “I have decided to hedge my bets.”

This argument modifies Pascal’s wager as follows:

• You believe in a god.
• If your god exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite.
• If you believe in the wrong god and the actual god is monotheistic, your loss may be infinite.

Does not constitute a true belief

Another common argument against the wager is that if a person is uncertain whether a particular religion is true and the god of that religion is real, but that person still “believes” in them because of the expectation of a reward and the fear of punishment, then that belief is not a true valid belief or a true faith in that religion and its god.

William James, in The Will to Believe, summarized this argument:

“Surely Pascal’s own personal belief in masses and holy water had far other springs; and this celebrated page of his is but an argument for others, a last desperate snatch at a weapon against the hardness of the unbelieving heart. We feel that a faith in masses and holy water adopted willfully after such a mechanical calculation would lack the inner soul of faith’s reality; and if we were ourselves in the place of the Deity, we should probably take particular pleasure in cutting off believers of this pattern from their infinite reward.”

In modern times, this criticism is often leveled against evangelistic Christianity, especially those who try to incite fear by portraying such events as the Rapture in popular media. Such a belief is sometimes called “afterlife insurance,” “Hell avoidance insurance,” or “Heaven insurance.”

Assumes one can choose belief

This criticism is similar to the last one. The wager says that if one is uncertain whether Christianity is true, then one should still believe in it just in case it is true. However, this argument is problematic because to believe something is to claim to know that it is true. Yet, if we can know that it is true, then it is unnecessary to resort to the wager, a precautionary principle, as a reason to decide why we should believe in it. Compare St. Augustine’s statement, “I understand in order to believe.”

However, some individuals such as Kierkegaard considered that a faith one has never doubted is of little value, and that doubt and faith are inseparable.

Another point related to this critique is that some Christians, such as Calvinists, believe that the human will is so affected by sin that God alone can bring about belief. However, they would still affirm that God can use rational arguments as one of his means to this end.

Pascal acknowledged that there would be some difficulty for an atheist intellectual persuaded by this argument, in putting it into effect. Belief may not come. However, in such a case, he said, one could begin by acting as if it had come, hear a mass, and take holy water. Belief might then follow.

There is also the argument that one could “game” the wager in a scenario where the deathbed conversion is possible, as is the case in some streams of Christianity. The person who converts on their deathbed could have failed to have been dutiful in fulfilling their doctrinal obligations, and still gain the happiness associated with the Christian concept of “heaven.” The danger here is well known to most Christians, as this is a common theme of sermons in a variety of denominations. The risk of taking this gamble only to die suddenly and unexpectedly or to experience the tribulation within one’s own lifetime is often portrayed as a risk too great to take. Some others consider that one cannot fool God, and that such deathbed conversions could very well be dishonest.

Measure theory

The wager assumes that God is possible, and hence there is a positive probability of God existing. However, it is not clear what is meant when “probability” or “chance” is said in the context of something possibly existing, but probability cannot be used as defined in mathematics to justify the wager as is, since God being possible does not mean that God’s existence has positive probability.

For instance, in a measure theory conception of probability, one can have infinitely and uncountably many possibilities, each of which has a probability of zero (or “one out of infinity”). This means that, choosing a random real number between 0 and 1, all numbers cannot have positive probability or the probabilities sum up to more than 1.

Assumes divine rewards and punishments are infinite

The wager assumes that Christianity does in fact claim that if one is not a Christian, then one will lose the benefits of Heaven and end up in Hell, and, secondly, if one is a Christian, then one will gain eternal life in Heaven.

However, that is not always the case. Some Christians, such as Calvinism & Arminianism, have argued that the utility of salvation cannot be infinite. Some Christian groups are either strict finitists or believe that an infinite utility could only be finitely enjoyed by finite humans.

Others believe that the divine punishment in the afterlife for unbelief is not always infinite either, even though the Bible makes that claim. They state that there is a finite existence to everything, opposing the doctrine of perpetuality.

Ignores benefits/losses while alive

Pascal here takes what may be called an “eternal perspective.” That is, his wager is not concerned with the lifetime of the person before death. At the very least, it assumes that belief and non-belief are of equal value before death. This ignores the time, money, and effort spent upon worship required to establish belief that could be redirected to other, more beneficial pursuits. Thus, a life spent on belief when there is no god results in a loss while a life spent on non-belief when there is no god results in a gain. For example, If there is no god, life ends at death. This means that the only gain possible is during life, and before death. If one lives as if there is a god when there is in actuality not a god, then one’s life before death (the only life one has) is wasted.

Atheist’s wager

The Atheist’s Wager is an atheistic response to Pascal’s Wager. While Pascal suggested that it is better to take the chance of believing in a God that might not exist rather than to risk losing infinite happiness by disbelieving in a god that does, the Atheist’s Wager suggests that:

“You should live your life and try to make the world a better place for your being in it, whether or not you believe in God. If there is no God, you have lost nothing and will be remembered fondly by those you left behind. If there is a benevolent God, he may judge you on your merits coupled with your commitments, and not just on whether or not you believed in him.”

A god may exist who will reward disbelief or punish belief. In the absence of clear knowledge of what if anything will benefit us hereafter it is better to concentrate on improving conditions here. The conditions we live in could be, or could not be, generated by us. However, we are still left to affect them any way we can. The Atheist here must then exclude any probability in a mathematical possibility of an external agent affecting their condition.

Variations

Many-way tie

Given that the choice of wagering has an infinite return, then under a mixed strategy the return is also infinite. Flipping a coin and taking the wager based on the result would then have an infinite return, as would the chance that after rejecting the wager you end up taking it after all. The choice would then not be between zero reward (or negative infinite) and infinite reward, but rather between different infinite rewards.

Appearances elsewhere

Other Christian thinkers

The basic premise of the argument is reflected in a passage from C.S. Lewis: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

Another appearance of this argument was in the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by the pastor Jonathan Edwards in 1741 in New England.

In the Evangelical Christian apologetics book Understanding Christian Theology, contributing author J. Carl Laney, Jr. states regarding Pascal’s Wager:

“Blaise Pascal … proposed that we “wager” on the possibility of God’s existence. If our gamble for God is right, we will win everything – happiness and eternal life. But nothing is lost if we turn out to be wrong. In other words it is better to live as if God exists and discover that He doesn’t, than to live as if He doesn’t exist and discover that He does!”

Buddhism

The decision-theoretic approach to Pascal’s Wager appears explicitly in the sixth Century B.C.E. Buddhist Kalama Sutta, in which the Buddha argues that regardless of whether the concepts of reincarnation and karma are valid, acting as if they are brings tangible rewards here and now. However, it is possible to see how this is not an exact application of Pascal’s wager, nor is it an argument to become Buddhist nor to follow Buddhist thought, but just to see the good in it.

 

Jack Sheppard

Jack Sheppard (4 March 1702 – 16 November 1724) was a notorious English robber, burglar and thief of early 18th-century London. Born into a poor family, he was apprenticed as a carpenter but took to theft and burglary in 1723, with little more than a year of his training to complete. He was arrested and imprisoned five times in 1724 but escaped four times, making him a notorious public figure, and wildly popular with the poorer classes. Ultimately, he was caught, convicted, and hanged at Tyburn, ending his brief criminal career after less than two years. The inability of the notorious “Thief-Taker General” Jonathan Wild to control Sheppard, and injuries suffered by Wild at the hands of Sheppard’s colleague, Joseph “Blueskin” Blake, led to Wild’s downfall.

Sheppard was as renowned for his attempts to escape imprisonment as he was for his crimes. An autobiographical “Narrative”, thought to have been ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe, was sold at his execution, quickly followed by popular plays. The character of Macheath in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) was based on Sheppard, keeping him in the limelight for over 100 years. He returned to the public consciousness around 1840, when William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel entitled Jack Sheppard, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The popularity of his tale, and the fear that others would be drawn to emulate his behaviour, led the authorities to refuse to license any plays in London with “Jack Sheppard” in the title for forty years.

Early life

Sheppard was born in White’s Row, in London’s Spitalfields. During the first two decades of the 18th century, Spitalfields was notorious for the presence of highwaymen and for being a tremendously economically depressed area, and so it is clear that his family was impoverished. He was baptised on 5 March, the day after he was born, at St Dunstan’s, Stepney, suggesting a fear of infant mortality by his parents, perhaps because the newborn was weak or sickly. His parents named him after an older brother, John, who had died before his birth. In life, he was better known as Jack, or even “Gentleman Jack” or “Jack the Lad”. He had a second brother, Thomas, and a younger sister, Mary. Their father, a carpenter, died while Sheppard was young, and his sister died two years later.

Unable to support her family without her husband’s income, Jack’s mother sent him to Mr Garrett’s School, a workhouse near St Helen’s Bishopsgate, when he was six years old. Sheppard was sent out as a parish apprentice to a cane-chair maker, taking a settlement of 20 shillings, but his new master soon died. He was sent out to a second cane-chair maker, but Sheppard was treated badly. Finally, when Sheppard was 10, he went to work as a shop-boy for William Kneebone, a wool draper with a shop on the Strand. Sheppard’s mother had been working for Kneebone since her husband’s death. Kneebone taught Sheppard to read and write and apprenticed him to a carpenter, Owen Wood, in Wych Street, off Drury Lane in Covent Garden. Sheppard signed his seven-year indenture on 2 April 1717.

By 1722, Sheppard was showing great promise as a carpenter. Aged 20, he was a small man, only 5’4″ (1.63 m) and lightly built, but deceptively strong. He had a pale face with large, dark eyes, a wide mouth and a quick smile. Despite a slight stutter, his wit made him popular in the taverns of Drury Lane. He served five unblemished years of his apprenticeship but then began to be led into crime.

Joseph Hayne, a button-moulder who owned a shop nearby, also ran a tavern named the Black Lion off Drury Lane, which he encouraged the local apprentices to frequent. The Black Lion was visited by criminals such as Joseph “Blueskin” Blake, Sheppard’s future partner in crime, and self-proclaimed “Thief-Taker General” Jonathan Wild, secretly the linchpin of a criminal empire across London and later Sheppard’s implacable enemy.

According to Sheppard’s “autobiography”, he had been an innocent until going to Hayne’s tavern, but there began an attachment to strong drink and the affections of Elizabeth Lyon, a prostitute also known as Edgworth Bess (or Edgeworth Bess) from her place of birth at Edgeworth in Middlesex. In his History, Defoe records that Bess was “a main lodestone in attracting of him up to this Eminence of Guilt.” Such, Sheppard claimed, was the source of his later ruin. Peter Linebaugh offers a different view: that Sheppard’s sudden transformation was a liberation from the dull drudgery of indentured labour and that he progressed from pious servitude to self-confident rebellion and Levelling.

Criminal career

Sheppard threw himself into a hedonistic whirl of drinking and whoring. Inevitably, his carpentry suffered, and he became disobedient to his master. With Lyon’s encouragement, Sheppard took to crime in order to compliment his legitimate wages. His first recorded theft was in Spring 1723, when he engaged in petty shoplifting, stealing two silver spoons while on an errand for his master to Rummer Tavern in Charing Cross. Sheppard’s misdeeds went undetected, and he moved on to larger crimes, often stealing goods from the houses where he was working. Finally, he quit the employ of his master on 2 August 1723, with less than 2 years of his apprenticeship left, although he continued to work as a journeyman carpenter. He was not suspected of the crimes, and progressed to burglary, falling in with criminals in Jonathan Wild’s gang.

He moved to Fulham, living as man and wife with Lyon at Parsons Green, before moving to Piccadilly. When Lyon was arrested and imprisoned at St Giles’s Roundhouse, the beadle, a Mr Brown, refused to let Sheppard visit, so he broke in and took her away.

Arrested and escaped twice

Sheppard was first arrested after a burglary he committed with his brother, Tom, and his mistress, Lyon, in Clare Market on 5 February 1724. Tom, also a carpenter, had already been convicted once for stealing tools from his master the previous autumn and burned in the hand. Tom was arrested again on 24 April 1724. Afraid that he would be hanged this time, Tom informed on Jack, and a warrant was issued for Jack’s arrest.

Jonathan Wild was aware of Sheppard’s thefts, as Sheppard had fenced some stolen goods through one of Wild’s men, William Field. Wild asked another of his men, James Sykes (known as “Hell and Fury”) to challenge Sheppard to a game of skittles at Redgate’s public house near Seven Dials. Sykes betrayed Sheppard to a Mr Price, a constable from the parish of St Giles, to gather the usual £40 reward for giving information leading to the conviction of a felon. The magistrate, Justice Parry, had Sheppard imprisoned overnight on the top floor of St Giles’s Roundhouse pending further questioning, but Sheppard escaped within three hours by breaking through the timber ceiling and lowering himself to the ground with a rope fashioned from bedclothes. Still wearing irons, Sheppard coolly joined the crowd that had been attracted by the sounds of him breaking out. He distracted their attention by pointing to the shadows on the roof and shouting that he could see the escapee, and then swiftly departed.

On 19 May 1724, Sheppard was arrested for a second time, caught in the act of picking a pocket in Leicester Fields (near present-day Leicester Square). He was detained overnight in St Ann’s Roundhouse in Soho and visited there the next day by Lyon; she was recognised as his wife and locked in a cell with him. They appeared before Justice Walters, who sent them to the New Prison in Clerkenwell, but they escaped from their cell, known as the Newgate Ward, within a matter of days. By 25 May, Whitsun Monday, Sheppard and Lyon had filed through their manacles; they removed a bar from the window and used their knotted bed-clothes to descend to ground level. Finding themselves in the yard of the neighbouring bridewell, they clambered over the 22-foot-high (6.7 m) prison gate to freedom. This feat was widely publicised, not least because Sheppard was only a small man, and Lyon was a large, buxom woman.

Third arrest, trial, and third escape

Sheppard’s thieving abilities were admired by Jonathan Wild. Wild demanded that Sheppard surrender his stolen goods for Wild to fence, and so take the greater profits, but Sheppard refused. He began to work with Joseph “Blueskin” Blake, and they burgled Sheppard’s former master, William Kneebone, on Sunday 12 July 1724. Wild could not permit Sheppard to continue outside his control and began to seek Sheppard’s arrest.Unfortunately for Sheppard, his fence, William Field, was one of Wild’s men. After Sheppard had a brief foray with Blueskin as highwaymen on the Hampstead Road on Sunday 19 July and Monday 20 July, Field informed on Sheppard to Wild. Wild believed Lyon would know Sheppard’s whereabouts, so he plied her with drinks at a brandy shop near Temple Bar until she betrayed him. Sheppard was arrested a third time at Blueskin’s mother’s brandy shop in Rosemary Lane, east of the Tower of London (later renamed Royal Mint Street), on 23 July by Wild’s henchman, Quilt Arnold.

Sheppard was imprisoned in Newgate Prison pending his trial at the next Assize of oyer and terminer. He was prosecuted on three charges of theft at the Old Bailey, but was acquitted on the first two due to lack of evidence. Kneebone, Wild and Field gave evidence against him on the third charge, the burglary of Kneebone’s house. He was convicted on 12 August, the case “being plainly prov’d”, and sentenced to death. On Monday 31 August, the very day when the death warrant arrived from the court in Windsor setting Friday 4 September as the date for his execution, Sheppard escaped. Having loosened an iron bar in a window used when talking to visitors, he was visited by Lyon and Poll Maggott, who distracted the guards while he removed the bar. His slight build enabled him to climb through the resulting gap in the grille, and he was smuggled out of Newgate in women’s clothing that his visitors had brought him. He took a coach to Blackfriars Stairs, a boat up the River Thames to the horse ferry in Westminster, near the warehouse where he hid his stolen goods, and made good his escape.

Fourth arrest and final escape

By this point, Sheppard was a working class hero (being a cockney, non-violent, and handsome, and seemingly able to escape punishment for his crimes at will). He spent a few days out of London, visiting a friend’s family in Chipping Warden in Northamptonshire, but was soon back in town. He evaded capture by Wild and his men but was arrested again on 9 September by a posse from Newgate as he hid out on Finchley Common, and returned to the condemned cell at Newgate. His fame had increased with each escape, and he was visited in prison by the great, the good and the curious. His plans to escape in September were thwarted twice when the guards found files and other tools in his cell, and he was transferred to a strong-room in Newgate known as the “Castle”, clapped in leg irons, and chained to two metal staples in the floor to prevent further escape attempts. After demonstrating to his gaolers that these measures were insufficient, by showing them how he could use a small nail to unlock the horse padlock at will, he was bound more tightly and handcuffed. In his History, Defoe reports that Sheppard made light of his predicament, joking that “I am the Sheppard, and all the Gaolers in the Town are my Flock, and I cannot stir into the Country, but they are all at my Heels Baughing after me”.

Meanwhile, “Blueskin” Blake was arrested by Wild and his men on Friday 9 October, and Tom, Jack’s brother, was transported for robbery on Saturday 10 October 1724. New court sessions began on Wednesday 14 October, and Blueskin was tried on Thursday 15 October, with Field and Wild again giving evidence. Their accounts were not consistent with the evidence that they gave at Sheppard’s trial, but Blueskin was convicted anyway. Enraged, Blueskin attacked Wild in the courtroom, slashing his throat with a pocket-knife and causing an uproar. Wild was lucky to survive, and his grip over his criminal empire started to slip while he recuperated.

Taking advantage of the disturbance, which spread to Newgate Prison next door and continued into the night, Sheppard escaped for the fourth time. He unlocked his handcuffs and removed the chains. Still encumbered by his leg irons, he attempted to climb up the chimney, but his path was blocked by an iron bar set into the brickwork. He removed the bar and used it to break through the ceiling into the “Red Room” above the “Castle”, a room which had last been used some seven years before to confine aristocratic Jacobite prisoners after the Battle of Preston. Still wearing his leg irons as night fell, he then broke through six barred doors into the prison chapel, then to the roof of Newgate, 60 feet (20 m) above the ground. He went back down to his cell to get a blanket, then back to the roof of the prison, and used the blanket to reach the roof of an adjacent house, owned by William Bird, a turner. He broke into Bird’s house, and went down the stairs and out into the street at around midnight without disturbing the occupants. Escaping through the streets to the north and west, Sheppard hid in a cowshed in Tottenham (near modern Tottenham Court Road). Spotted by the barn’s owner, Sheppard told him that he had escaped from Bridewell Prison, having been imprisoned there for failing to support a (nonexistent) bastard son. His leg irons remained in place for several days until he persuaded a passing shoemaker to accept the considerable sum of 20 shillings to bring a blacksmith’s tools and help him remove them, telling him the same tale. His manacles and leg irons were later recovered in the rooms of Kate Cook, one of Sheppard’s mistresses. This escape astonished everyone. Daniel Defoe, working as a journalist, wrote an account for John Applebee, The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard. In his History, Defoe reports the belief in Newgate that the Devil came in person to assist Sheppard’s escape.

Final capture

Sheppard’s final period of liberty lasted just two weeks. He disguised himself as a beggar and returned to the city. He broke into the Rawlins brothers’ pawnbroker’s shop in Drury Lane on the night of 29 October 1724, taking a black silk suit, a silver sword, rings, watches, a wig, and other items. He dressed himself as a dandy gentleman and used the proceeds to spend a day and the following evening on the tiles with two mistresses. He was arrested a final time in the early morning on 1 November, blind drunk, “in a handsome Suit of Black, with a Diamond Ring and a Cornelian ring on his Finger, and a fine Light Tye Peruke”.

This time, Sheppard was placed in the Middle Stone Room, in the centre of Newgate next to the “Castle”, where he could be observed at all times. He was also loaded with three hundred pounds of iron weights. He was so celebrated that the gaolers charged high society visitors four shillings to see him, and the King’s painter James Thornhill painted his portrait. Several prominent people sent a petition to King George I, begging for his sentence of death to be commuted to transportation. “The Concourse of People of tolerable Fashion to see him was exceeding Great, he was always Chearful and Pleasant to a Degree, as turning almost everything as was said onto a Jest and Banter.” To a Reverend Wagstaffe who visited him, he said, according to Defoe, “One file’s worth all the Bibles in the World”.

Sheppard came before Mr Justice Powis in the Court of King’s Bench at Westminster Hall on 10 November. He was offered the chance to have his sentence reduced by informing on his associates, but he scorned the offer, and the death sentence was confirmed. The next day, Blueskin was hanged, and Sheppard was moved to the condemned cell.

Execution

The following Monday, 16 November, Sheppard was taken to the gallows at Tyburn to be hanged. He planned one more escape, but his pen-knife, intended to cut the ropes binding him on the way to the gallows, was found by a prison warder shortly before he left Newgate for the last time.

A joyous procession passed through the streets of London, with Sheppard’s cart drawn along Holborn and Oxford Street accompanied by a mounted City Marshal and liveried Javelin Men. The occasion was as much as anything a celebration of Sheppard’s life, attended by crowds of up to 200,000 (one third of London’s population). The procession halted at the City of Oxford tavern on Oxford Street, where Sheppard drank a pint of sack. A carnival atmosphere pervaded Tyburn, where his “official” autobiography, published by Applebee and probably ghostwritten by Defoe, was on sale. Sheppard handed “a paper to someone as he mounted the scaffold”, perhaps as a symbolic endorsement of the account in the “Narrative”. His slight build had aided his previous prison escapes, but it condemned him to a slow death by strangulation by the hangman’s noose. After hanging for the prescribed 15 minutes, his body was cut down. The crowd pressed forward to stop his body from being removed, fearing dissection; their actions inadvertently prevented Sheppard’s friends from implementing a plan to take his body to a doctor in an attempt to revive him. His badly mauled remains were recovered later and buried in the churchyard of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields that evening.

Legacy

There was a spectacular public reaction to Sheppard’s deeds. He was even cited (favourably) as an example in newspapers, pamphlets, broadsheets, and ballads were all devoted to his amazing exploits, and his story was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Harlequin Sheppard, a pantomime by one John Thurmond (subtitled “A night scene in grotesque characters”), opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Saturday 28 November, only two weeks after Sheppard’s hanging. In a famous contemporary sermon, a London preacher drew on Sheppard’s popular escapes as a way of holding his congregation’s attention:

“

Let me exhort ye, then, to open the locks of your hearts with the nail of repentance! Burst asunder the fetters of your beloved lusts! – mount the chimney of hope! – take from thence the bar of good resolution! – break through the stone wall of despair!

”

The account of his life remained well-known through the Newgate Calendar, and a three-act farce was published but never produced, but, mixed with songs, it became The Quaker’s Opera, later performed at Bartholomew Fair. An imagined dialogue between Jack Sheppard and Julius Caesar was published in the British Journal on 4 December 1724, in which Sheppard favourably compares his virtues and exploits to those of Caesar.

Perhaps the most prominent play based on Sheppard’s life is John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728). Sheppard was the inspiration for the figure of Macheath; his nemesis, Peachum, is based on Jonathan Wild. The play was spectacularly popular, restoring the fortune that Gay had lost in the South Sea Bubble, and was produced regularly for over 100 years. An unperformed but published play The Prison-Breaker was turned into The Quaker’s Opera (in imitation of The Beggar’s Opera) and performed at Bartholomew Fair in 1725 and 1728. Two centuries later The Beggar’s Opera was the basis for The Threepenny Opera of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (1928).

Sheppard’s tale may have been an inspiration for William Hogarth’s 1747 series of 12 engravings, Industry and Idleness, which shows the parallel descent of an apprentice, Tom Idle, into crime and eventually to the gallows, beside the rise of his fellow apprentice, Francis Goodchild, who marries his master’s daughter and takes over his business, becoming wealthy as a result, eventually emulating Dick Whittington to become Lord Mayor of London.

 

Sheppard’s tale was revived in the first half of the 19th century. A melodrama, Jack Sheppard, The Housebreaker, or London in 1724, by W.T. Moncrieff was published in 1825. More successful was William Harrison Ainsworth’s third novel, entitled Jack Sheppard, which was originally published in Bentley’s Miscellany from January 1839 with illustrations by George Cruikshank, overlapping with the final episodes of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist. An archetypal Newgate novel, it generally remains close to the facts of Sheppard’s life, but portrays him as a swashbuckling hero. Like Hogarth’s prints, the novel pairs the descent of the “idle” apprentice into crime with the rise of a typical melodramatic character, Thames Darrell, a foundling of aristocratic birth who defeats his evil uncle to recover his fortune. Cruikshank’s images perfectly complemented Ainsworth’s tale—Thackeray wrote that “…Mr Cruickshank really created the tale, and that Mr Ainsworth, as it were, only put words to it.” The novel quickly became very popular: it was published in book form later that year, before the serialised version was completed, and even outsold early editions of Oliver Twist. Ainsworth’s novel was adapted into a successful play by John Buckstone in October 1839 at the Adelphi Theatre starring (strangely enough) Mary Anne Keeley; indeed, it seems likely that Cruikshank’s illustrations were deliberately created in a form that were informed by, and would be easy to repeat as, tableaux on stage. It has been described as the “exemplary climax” of “the pictorial novel dramatized pictorially”.

The story generated a form of cultural mania, embellished by pamphlets, prints, cartoons, plays and souvenirs, not repeated until George du Maurier’s Trilby in 1895. By early 1840, a cant song from Buckstone’s play, “Nix My Dolly, Pals, Fake Away” was reported to be “deafening us in the streets”. Public alarm at the possibility that young people would emulate Sheppard’s behaviour led the Lord Chamberlain to ban, at least in London, the licensing of any plays with “Jack Sheppard” in the title for forty years. The fear may not have been entirely unfounded: Courvousier, the valet of Lord William Russell, claimed in one of his several confessions that the book had inspired him to murder his master. Frank and Jesse James wrote letters to the Kansas City Star signed “Jack Sheppard”. Nevertheless, a number of burlesques of the story were written after the ban was lifted, including a popular Gaiety Theatre, London piece called Little Jack Sheppard (1885-86) by Henry Pottinger Stephens and W. Yardley, with music by Meyer Lutz and others.

The Sheppard story has been revived several times in the 20th century, including two silent movies, The Hairbreadth Escape of Jack Sheppard (1900) and Jack Sheppard (1923); a book, The Road to Tyburn, by Christopher Hibbert (1957); a British costume drama, Where’s Jack?, directed by James Clavell, with Tommy Steele in the title role (1969); an unrealised film project of FilmFour Productions in 2000, Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, for which Benjamin Ross, who would have been director, co-wrote the screenplay with John Preston, with Tobey Maguire and Harvey Keitel slated for the main parts; a 2002 television drama, Invitation to a Hanging; and a series of novels by Neal Stephenson collectively known as, The Baroque Cycle (2003, 2004), in which the character Jack Shaftoe was partly inspired by events from the life of Jack Sheppard.

Bram Stoker references Jack Sheppard in “Dracula” when referring to the patient, Renfield.

“

He is safe now, at any rate. Jack Sheppard himself couldn’t get free from the strait waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he’s chained to the wall in the padded room.”

”

The reasons for the lasting legacy of Jack Sheppard’s exploits in the popular imagination have been addressed by Peter Linebaugh, who suggests that Sheppard’s legend was rooted in the prospect of excarceration, of escape from what Michel Foucault in Folie et déraison called the grand renfermement (Great Confinement), in which “unreasonable” members of the population were locked away and institutionalised. The laws levelled at Sheppard and similar working class criminals were a means of disciplining a potentially rebellious multitude into accepting increasingly harsh property laws. A nineteenth-century view on the Jack Sheppard phenomenon was offered by Charles Mackay in Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

“

Whether it be that the multitude, feeling the pangs of poverty, sympathise with the daring and ingenious depredators who take away the rich man’s superfluity, or whether it be the interest that mankind in general feel for the records of perilous adventure, it is certain that the populace of all countries look with admiration upon great and successful thieves.

 

Castor and Pollux

Castor and Pollux were two elephants kept at the zoo Jardin des Plantes in Paris. They were killed and eaten, along with many other animals from the zoo, in late 1870 during the siege of Paris. The two elephants may have been siblings, and had been popular before the siege for giving rides on their backs around the park, but the food shortages caused by the German blockade of the city eventually drove the citizens of Paris to kill them for their meat.

On 19 September 1870, Prussian forces encircled Paris. Rather than bombarding the city into surrender the German high command decided to blockade the city to force a quick surrender. The Parisians managed to hold out until 28 January 1871 (when they surrendered after three days of shelling ordered by Otto von Bismarck who had tired of the ineffective tactics of the high command). During the siege food became scarce and the populace were forced to turn to unusual sources for their meat.

When vegetables, butter, milk, cheese and the regularly consumed meats began to run out, the Parisians turned first to horse meat. Horse meat had been introduced by the butchers of Paris four years earlier as a cheap alternative source of meat for the poor, but under siege conditions it quickly became a luxury item. Though there were large numbers of horses in Paris (estimates suggested between 65,000 and 70,000 were butchered and eaten during the siege) the supplies were ultimately limited. Champion racehorses were not spared (even two horses presented to Napoleon III by Alexander II of Russia were slaughtered) but the meat soon became scarce. Cats, dogs and rats were the next selection for the menu. There was no control over rationing until late in the siege, so while the poor struggled, the wealthy Parisians ate comparatively well; the Jockey Club offered a fine selection of gourmet dishes of the unusual meats including Salmis de rats à la Robert. There were considerably fewer cats and dogs in the city than there had been horses, and the unpalatable rats were difficult to prepare, so, by the end of 1870, the butchers turned their attentions to the animals of the zoos. The large herbivores, such as the antelope, camels, yaks and zebra were first to be killed. Some animals survived: the monkeys were thought to be too akin to humans to be killed, the lions and tigers were too dangerous, and the hippopotamus of the Jardin des Plantes also escaped because the price of 80,000 francs demanded for it was beyond the reach of any of the butchers. Menus began to offer exotic dishes such as Cuissot de Loup, Sauce Chevreuil (Haunch of Wolf with a Deer Sauce), Terrine d’Antilope aux truffes (Terrine of Antelope with truffles), Civet de Kangourou (Kangaroo Stew) and Chameau rôti à l’anglaise (Camel roasted à l’anglaise)

The demise of the elephants was recorded in the Lettre-Journal de Paris (commonly known as the Gazette des Absents), a twice-weekly periodical published during the siege by Damase Jouaust and delivered, along with the mail, by balloon to avoid the encircling Prussian forces. The Gazette des Absents reported that Castor had been killed on 29 December 1870 and Pollux the following day, both by explosive steel-tipped bullets fired from a range of 10 m by M. Devisme, but a menu from 25 December was already offering Consommé d’Eléphant so it is likely that the dates are wrong. The elephants were bought by M. Deboos of the Boucherie Anglaise in Boulevard Hausmann for 27,000 francs for the pair. M.Deboos did well out of the purchase: the trunks sold as a delicacy for 40 or 45 francs a pound, the other parts for about 10 to 14 francs a pound. By all accounts, elephant was not tasty. Thomas Gibson Bowles, who was in Paris during the siege, wrote that he had eaten camel, antelope, dog, donkey, mule and elephant and of those he liked elephant the least. Henry Labouchère recorded:

Yesterday, I had a slice of Pollux for dinner. Pollux and his brother Castor are two elephants, which have been killed. It was tough, coarse, and oily, and I do not recommend English families to eat elephant as long as they can get beef or mutton.

 

Lucretia

Lucretia is a legendary figure in the history of the Roman Republic. According to the story, told mainly by the Roman historian Livy and the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus (who lived in Rome at the time of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus), her rape by the king’s son and consequent suicide were the immediate cause of the revolution that overthrew the monarchy and established the Roman Republic. The incident kindled the flames of dissatisfaction over the tyrannical methods of the last king of Rome, Lucius Tarquinius Superbus. As a result, the prominent families instituted a republic, drove the extensive Tarquin family from Rome, and successfully defended the republic against attempted Etruscan and Latin intervention. The rape has been a major theme in European art and literature.

The beginning of the republic is marked by the first appearance of the two consuls elected on a yearly basis. The Romans recorded events by consular year, keeping an official list in various forms called the fasti, utilized by Roman historians. The list and its events are authentic as far as can be known although debatable problems with many parts of it do exist. This list proves, as far as can be proved, that there was a Roman republic, that it began at the beginning of the fasti, and that it supplanted a monarchy. One of the first two consuls is Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, husband of Lucretia. All the numerous sources on the beginning of the republic reiterate these basic events. Lucretia and the monarchy cannot therefore be total myth or an elaborate literary hoax to deceive and entertain the Roman people about an early history that can’t be known. The evidence points to the historical existence of a woman named Lucretia and a historical incident playing a critical part in the real downfall of a real monarchy. Many of the specific details are debatable. Later uses of the legend, however, are typically totally mythical, being of artistic rather than historical merit.

As the events of the story move rapidly, the date of the incident is probably the same year as the first of the fasti. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a major source, sets this year “at the beginning of the sixty-eighth Olympiad … Isagoras being the annual archon at Athens;”that is, 508/507 BC (the ancient calendars split years over modern ones). Lucretia therefore died in 508 BC. The other historical sources tend to support this date, but the year is debatable within a range of about five years.

The incident

Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, last king of Rome, being engaged in the siege of Ardea, sent his son, Sextus Tarquinius, on a military errand to Collatia. Sextus was received with great hospitality at the governor’s mansion, home of Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, son of the king’s nephew, Egerius Tarquinius Collatinus, former governor of Collatia and first of the Tarquinii Collatini. Lucius’ wife, Lucretia, daughter of Spurius Lucretius, prefect of Rome, “a man of distinction”, made sure that the king’s son was treated as became his rank, although her husband was away at the siege. In a variant of the story, Sextus and Lucius, at a wine party on furlough, were debating the virtues of wives when Lucius volunteered to settle the debate by their all riding to his home to see what Lucretia was doing. She was weaving with her maids. The party awarded her the palm of victory and Lucius invited them to visit, but for the time being they returned to camp.

At night Sextus entered her bedroom by stealth, quietly going around the slaves who were sleeping at her door. She awakened, he identified himself and offered her two choices: she could submit to his sexual advances and become his wife and future queen, or he would kill her and one of her slaves and placing the bodies together claim he had caught her having adulterous sex (in flagrante delicto). In the alternative story, he returned from camp a few days later with one companion to take Collatinus up on his invitation to visit and was lodged in a guest bedroom. He entered Lucretia’s room while she lay naked in her bed and started to wash her belly with water, which woke her up.

The consequences

Sextus returned to camp. The next day Lucretia dressed in black, went to her father’s house in Rome and cast herself down in the suppliant’s position (embracing the knees), weeping. Asked to explain herself she insisted on first summoning witnesses and after disclosing the rape called on him and them for vengeance, a plea that could not be ignored, as she was speaking to the chief magistrate of Rome. While they were debating she drew a concealed dagger and stabbed herself in the heart. She died in her father’s arms, with the women present keening and lamenting. “This dreadful scene struck the Romans who were present with so much horror and compassion that they all cried out with one voice that they would rather die a thousand deaths in defence of their liberty than suffer such outrages to be committed by the tyrants.”

In the alternative version she did not go to Rome but sent to it for her father and to Ardea for her husband asking them to bring one friend each. Those selected were Publius Valerius Publicola from Rome and Lucius Junius Brutus from the camp at Ardea. They found Lucretia in her room. She explained what happened and after exacting an oath of vengeance: “Pledge me your solemn word that the adulterer shall not go unpunished,” while they were discussing the matter drew the poignard and stabbed herself, again in the heart.

In either version Collatinus and Brutus were encountered returning to Rome unaware, were briefed and were brought to the death scene. Brutus happened to be a politically motivated participant. By kinship he was a Tarquin on his mother’s side, the son of Tarquinia, daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, the third king before last. He was a candidate for the throne if anything should happen to Superbus. By law, however, as he was a Junius on his father’s side, he was not a Tarquin and therefore could later propose the exile of the Tarquins without fear for himself. He acquired the cognomen Brutus, “Dullard”, by playing the pleasant fool so as not to attract the king’s onus. Superbus had taken his inheritance and left him a pittance, keeping him at court for the entertainment of it.

Collatinus, seeing his wife dead, became distraught. He held her, kissed her, called her name and spoke to her. Seeing the hand of Destiny in these events his friend Brutus called the grieving party to order, explained that his simplicity had been a sham, and proposed that they drive the Tarquins from Rome. Grasping the bloody dagger,

he swore by Mars and all the other gods that he would do everything in his power to overthrow the dominion of the Tarquinii and that he would neither be reconciled to the tyrants himself nor tolerate any who should be reconciled to them, but would look upon every man who thought otherwise as an enemy and till his death would pursue with unrelenting hatred both the tyranny and its abettors; and if he should violate his oath, he prayed that he and his children might meet with the same end as Lucretia.

He passed the dagger around and each mourner swore the same oath by it. The two stories agree on this point: Livy’s version is:

By this blood – most pure before the outrage wrought by the king’s son – I swear, and you, O gods, I call to witness that I will drive hence Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, together with his cursed wife and his whole blood, with fire and sword and every means in my power, and I will not suffer them or any one else to reign in Rome.

The revolution

The newly sworn revolutionary committee paraded the bloody corpse to the Roman Forum and arriving there heard grievances against the Tarquins and began to enlist an army. Brutus “urged them to act as men and Romans and take up arms against their insolent foes.” The gates of Rome were blockaded by the new revolutionary soldiers and more were sent to guard Collatia. By now a crowd had gathered in the forum, The presence of the magistrates among the revolutionaries kept them in good order. Brutus happened to be Tribune of the Celeres, a minor office of some religious duties, but one which as a magistracy gave him the theoretical power to summon the curiae, an organization of patrician families used mainly to ratify the decrees of the king. Summoning them on the spot he transformed the crowd into an authoritative legislative assembly and began to harangue them in one of the more noted and effective speeches of ancient Rome.

He began by revealing that his pose as fool was a sham designed to protect him against an evil king. He leveled a number of charges against the king and his family: the outrage against Lucretia, whom everyone could see on the dais, the king’s tyranny, the forced labor of the plebeians in the ditches and sewers of Rome. He pointed out that Superbus had come to rule by the murder of Servius Tullius, his wife’s father, next-to-the-last king of Rome. He “solemnly invoked the gods as the avengers of murdered parents.” The king’s wife, Tullia, was in fact in Rome and probably was a witness to the proceedings from her palace near the forum. Seeing herself the target of so much animosity she fled from the palace in fear of her life and proceeded to the camp at Ardea.

Brutus opened a debate on the form of government Rome ought to have; there were many speakers (all patricians). In summation he proposed the banishment of the Tarquins from all the territories of Rome and appointment of an interrex to nominate new magistrates and conduct an election of ratification. They had decided on a republican form of government with two consuls in place of a king executing the will of a patrician senate. This was a temporary measure until they could consider the details more carefully. Brutus renounced all right to the throne. In subsequent years the powers of the king were divided among various elected magistracies.

A final vote of the curiae carried the interim constitution. Spurius Lucretius was swiftly elected interrex; he was prefect of the city anyway. He proposed Brutus and Collatinus as the first two consuls and that choice was ratified by the curiae. Needing to acquire the assent of the population as a whole they paraded Lucretia through the streets summoning the plebeians to legal assembly in the forum. Once there they heard a constitutional speech by Brutus not unlike many speeches and documents of western civilization subsequently. It began:

Inasmuch as Tarquinius neither obtained the sovereignty in accordance with our ancestral customs and laws, nor, since he obtained it — in whatever manner he got it — has he been exercising it in an honourable or kingly manner, but has surpassed in insolence and lawlessness all the tyrants the world ever saw, we patricians met together and resolved to deprive him of his power, a thing we ought to have done long ago, but are doing now when a favourable opportunity has offered. And we have called you together, plebeians, in order to declare our own decision and then ask for your assistance in achieving liberty for our country ….

A general election was held. The vote was for the republic. The monarchy was at an end, even while Lucretia was still displayed in the forum.

The constitutional consequences of this event were, formally at least, to reverberate for more than two thousand years. Rome would never again have a hereditary “king”, even if later emperors were absolute rulers in all but name. This constitutional tradition prevented both Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus from accepting a crown; instead they had to devise a confluence of several republican offices onto their persons in order to secure absolute power. Their successors both in Rome and in Constantinople adhered to this tradition in form if not in essence, and even the office of German Holy Roman Emperor remained typically elective rather than hereditary – up to its abolition in the Napoleonic Wars, 2314 years later.

Aftermath

Hearing of the doings at Rome the king, his sons and a party of retainers rode posthaste for the city, leaving Titus Herminius and Marcus Horatius in command of the troops at Ardea. The gates of Rome being barred and armed men on the wall, they returned to camp. Meanwhile letters had arrived from the revolutionary committee and were read to the troops by Herminius and Horatius. The men were assembled by unit for a vote, by which the revolution was confirmed. In one story the Tarquins escaped to Gabii. A 15-year truce was made with Ardea. The troops returned to Rome.

Superbus was not long in Gabii. He had to retire with his men to Tarquinii, where he raised the standard of intervention among the Etruscans. In an alternative story he went directly to Tarquinii with two of his sons; the third, Sextus, attempted to resume control of Gabii, but was assassinated. The Romans had to face one intervention by the Etruscans (Horatius Cocles) and another by the Latin League (Battle of Lake Regillus). Sentiment ran high against the Tarquins. Collatinus was asked to resign over constitutional issues. He complied and was replaced by Publius Valerius Publicola.

The theme in literature and music

St. Augustine made use of the figure of Lucretia in The City of God to defend the honour of Christian women who had been raped in the sack of Rome and had not committed suicide.

Megadeth, (Band), made a song about Lucretia in which her ghost lives in Lead singer/Guitarist Dave Mustaine’s attic.

The story of Lucretia was a popular moral tale in the later Middle Ages. The story has been recounted in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Book VII), and John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. Lucrece is also featured in William Shakespeare’s 1594 long poem The Rape of Lucrece; he also mentioned her in Titus Andronicus, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night (Malvolio authenticates his fateful letter by spotting Olivia’s Lucrece seal).

She is also mentioned in the poem Appius and Virginia by John Webster and Thomas Heywood, which includes the following lines:

Two ladies fair, but most unfortunate

Have in their ruins rais’d declining Rome,

Lucretia and Virginia, both renowned

For chastity

 

Thomas Heywood’s play The Rape of Lucrece dates from 1607. The subject also enjoyed a revival in the mid twentieth century; André Obey’s 1931 play Le Viol de Lucrèce was adapted into a 1946 opera by Benjamin Britten. Ernst Krenek set Emmet Lavery’s libretto Tarquin (1940), a version in a contemporary setting.

Lucretia appears to Dante in the section of Limbo reserved to the nobles of Rome and other “virtuous pagans” in Canto IV of the Inferno. Christine de Pizan used Lucretia just as St. Augustine of Hippo did in her City of Ladies, defending a woman’s sanctity.

In Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela, Mr. B. cites the story of Lucretia as a reason why Pamela ought not fear for her reputation, should he rape her. Pamela quickly sets him straight with a better reading of the story. Colonial Mexican poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz also mentions “Lucrecia” in her poem Redondillas, a commentary on prostitution and who is to blame.

 

Nuckelavee

Of all the supernatural beings once believed to roam Orkney, none was as feared as the creature known as the Nuckelavee.

The Nuckelavee was a creature of abject terror, and spoken of with bated breath until comparatively recent times.

Although many folklore creatures had a dualistic nature, the Nuckelavee was a creature of sheer evil. His sole purpose was to plague the islanders – a task from which he rarely rested.

According to the old Orcadians, who lived in constant fear of the Nuckelavee, only the power of the Mither o’ the Sea kept the beast in check. Were it not for the fact that she restrained him in the summer, and that his terror of fresh rainwater kept him hiding in the winter, they were sure that the Nuckelavee would have driven mankind from the Northern Isles long ago.

Despite the fact that his home was considered to be the sea, the Nuckelavee was known to wander freely on land. It was during these landward excursions that he was most often encountered by mortals – usually seen riding a steed as monstrous as himself.

Grotesque hybrid

The surviving accounts vary, with some storytellers merging the two monsters so that rider and horse become one – a vile hybrid of man and beast that, they swore, was Nuckelavee’s true shape.

From the few recorded descriptions of the Nuckelavee, we learn that his head was similar to that of a man only “ten times larger”. He had an incredibly wide mouth that jutted out like a pig’s snout and a single red eye that burned with a red flame.

Hairless, his body was also skinless, its entire surface appearing like raw and living flesh. It was said that his thick, black blood could be seen coursing through his veins, as his sinewy muscles writhed with every movement he made. His long ape-like arms hung down to the ground and from his gaping mouth spewed a foul, black reek.

All in all, not a pleasant sight to encounter on some lonely stretch of coastline.

Nuckelavee’s blight

The Nuckelavee was often blamed for numerous disasters that were known to afflict the hardworking folk of Orkney:

“If crops were blighted by sea-gust or mildew, if livestock fell over high rocks that skirt the shores, or if an epidemic raged among men, or among the lower animals, Nuckelavee was the cause of all. His breath was venom, falling like blight on vegetable, and with deadly disease on animal life.”

Were this catalogue of misery not enough, the Nuckelavee was also blamed for any droughts that could seriously ruin a harvest.

From this, we are left in no doubt that the old Orcadians regarded the Nuckelavee an incredibly powerful and dangerous creature – perhaps more powerful than the surviving accounts would indicate. How else could an earthbound entity affect the weather to such an extent?

Mortasheen – Nuckelavee’s legacy

The old practice of burning gathered seaweed to make kelp was said to cause terrible offense to Nuckelavee.

The creature could not stand the smell of the pungent smoke and it drove him into an extreme and diabolical rage. In this state he would vent his wrath by smitting all the horses on the island of Stronsay – the island where kelp was first burned in Orkney – with a deadly disease known as “Mortasheen”.

Once propagated, Mortasheen would soon spread throughout the islands where kelp was burned. Nuckelavee’s revenge was terrible and complete.

The Orkney folklorist Walter Traill Dennison, who lived in Sanday in the nineteenth century, claimed to know of a man who had actually encountered Nuckelavee and lived to tell the tale.

According to Dennison, the man was very reticent to talk on the subject and only after much “higgling and persuasion” was a narrative forthcoming.

Until fairly recent times, the Nuckelavee was extremely feared and, like many other creature of Orcadian folklore, it was generally thought unsafe to mention the monster’s name for fear of attracting his attention.

As you may have already read, the following is an allegedly true account of an encounter with Nuckelavee recorded by the Orkney Folklorist Walter Traill Dennison:

“Tammas, like his namesake Tam o’ Shanter, was out late one night. It was, though moonless, a fine starlit night. Tammas’s road lay close by the seashore, and as he entered a part of the road that was hemmed in on one side by the sea, and on the other by a deep freshwater loch, he saw some huge object in front of, and moving towards him.

What was he to do?

He was sure it was no earthly thing that was steadily coming towards him. He could not go to either side, and to turn his back to an evil thing, he had heard, was the most dangerous position of all; so Tammie said to himself, “The Lord be aboot me, an tak care o me, as I am oot on no evil intent this night!” Tammie was always regarded as rough and foolhardy.

Anyway, he determined, as the best of two evils, to face the foe, and so walked resolutely yet slowly forward. He soon discovered to his horror that the gruesome creature approaching him was no other than the dreaded Nuckelavee – the most cruel and malignant of all uncanny beings that trouble mankind.

The lower part of this terrible monster, as seen by Tammie, was like a great horse, with flappers like fins about his legs, with a mouth as wide as a whales, from which came breath like steam from a brewing-kettle. He had but one eye, and that as red as fire.

On him sat, or rather seemed to grow from his back, a huge man with no legs, and arms that reached nearly to the ground. His head was as big as a clue of simmons*, and this huge head kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it meant to tumble off.

But what to Tammie appeared most horrible of all, was that the monster was skinless; this utter want of skin adding much to the terrific appearance of the creatures naked body.

The whole surface of it showing only red, raw flesh, in which Tammie saw blood, black as tar, running through yellow veins, and great white sinews, thick as horse tethers, twisting, stretching, and contracting, as the monster moved. Tammie went slowly on in mortal terror, his hair on end, a cold sensation like a film of ice between his scalp and his skull, and a cold sweat bursting from every pore.

But he knew it was useless to flee, and he said, if he had to die, he would rather see who killed him than die with his back to the foe.

In all his terror Tammie remembered what he had heard of Nuckelavee’s dislike of fresh water, and, therefore, took that side of the road nearest to the loch. The awful moment came when the lower head of the monster got abreast of Tammie.

The mouth of the monster yawned like a bottomless pit.

Tammie found its hot breath like fire on his face; the long arms were stretched out to seize the unhappy man. To avoid, if possible, the monsters clutch Tammie swerved as near as he could to the loch; in doing so one of his feet went into the loch, splashing up some water on the foreleg of the monster, whereat the horse gave a snort like thunder and shied over to the other side of the road, and Tammie felt the wind of Nuckelavee’s clutches as he narrowly escaped the monsters grip.

Tammie saw his opportunity, and ran with all his might; and sore need had he to run, for Nuckelavee had turned and was galloping after him, and bellowing with a sound like the roaring of the sea.

In front of Tammie lay a rivulet, through which the surplus water of the loch found its way to the sea, and Tammie knew, if he could only cross the running water, he was safe; so he strained every nerve.

As he reached the near bank another clutch was made at him by the long arms. Tammie made a desperate spring and reached the other side, leaving his bonnet in the monsters clutches.

Nuckelavee gave a wild unearthly yell of disappointed rage as Tammie fell senseless on the safe side of the water.”

Sheela na gigs

Sheela na gigs are figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are found on churches, castles and other buildings, particularly in Ireland and Britain, sometimes together with male figures. One of the best examples may be found in the Round Tower at Rattoo, in County Kerry, Ireland. A replica is located in the County Museum in Tralee town. Another well-known example can be seen at Kilpeck in Herefordshire, England.

Ireland has the greatest number of known sheela na gig carvings, McMahon and Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland and a further 45 examples in Britain. Such carvings are said to ward off death and evil. Other grotesques such as gargoyles and hunky punks are frequently found on churches all over Europe and it is commonly said that they are there to keep evil spirits away. They are often positioned over doors or windows, presumably to protect these openings.

Origin

There is disagreement about the source of the figures. One perspective, by James Jerman and Anthony Weir, is that the sheela na gigs were first carved in France and Spain in the 11th century; the motif eventually reached Britain and then Ireland in the 12th century. Jerman and Weir’s work was a continuation of the research started by Andersen, who wrote The Witch on the Wall, the first serious book on sheela na gigs in 1977. Eamonn Kelly, Keeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, draws attention to the distribution of sheela na gigs in Ireland to support Weir and Jerman’s theory; almost all of the surviving in situ sheela na gigs are found in areas of Anglo-Norman conquest (12th century), while the areas which remained “native Irish” boast only a few sheela na gigs  Weir and Jerman also that their location on churches, and their ugliness by mediæval standards, suggests that they were used to represent female lust as hideous and sinfully corrupting.

Another theory, espoused by Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or mother goddess religion. They point to what they claim are differences in materials and styles of some sheela na gigs from their surrounding structures, and that some are turned on their side, to support the idea that they were incorporated from previous structures into early Christian buildings. There are differences between typical continental exhibitionist figures and Irish sheela na gigs, including the scarcity of male figures in Ireland and the UK, while the continental carvings are more likely to involve male figures, and the more contortionist postures of continental figures.

Etymology

The name was first published in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1840-44, as a local name for a carving once present on a church gable wall in Rochestown, County Tipperary, Ireland; the name was also recorded in 1840 by John O’Donovan, an official of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, referring to a figure on a church in Kiltinane, County Tipperary. There is disagreement about the origin and meaning of the name, as the name is not directly translatable into Irish. Alternative spellings of “Sheela” may sometimes be encountered; they include Sheila, Síle and Síla. The name “Seán-na-Gig” was coined by Jack Roberts for the ithyphallic male counterpart of the Sheela which is fairly rare in Ireland but is much more common on the continent.

Jørgen Andersen writes that the name is an Irish phrase, originally either Sighle na gCíoch, meaning “the old hag of the breasts”, or Síle ina Giob, meaning “Sheila (from the Irish Síle the Irish form of the Anglo-Norman name Cecile or Cecilia) on her hunkers”. Dinneen also gives Síle na gCíoċ, stating it is “a stone fetish representing a woman, supposed to give fertility, gnly[sic – abbreviation of generally] thought to have been introduced by the Normans”. Other researchers have questioned these interpretations; few sheela na gigs are shown with breasts, and there are doubts about the linguistic connection between ina Giob and na Gig. The phrase “sheela na gig” was also said to be a term for a hag or old woman.

Barbara Freitag devotes a chapter to the etymology of the name in her book Sheela-Na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma, and comes up with some earlier references than 1840, including a ship called Sheela Na Gig in the Royal Navy and a dance called the Sheela na gig from the 18th century. An Irish slip jig, first published as The Irish Pot Stick (c.1758), appears as Shilling a Gig in Brysson’s A Curious Collection of Favourite Tunes (1791) and Sheela na Gigg in Hime’s 48 Original Irish Dances (c.1795). These are the oldest recorded references to the name, but do not apply to the figures. The name is explained in the Royal Navy’s records as an “Irish female sprite”. Freitag also discovered that “gig” was a Northern English slang word for a woman’s genitals. A similar word in modern Irish slang “Gigh” (pronounced [ɡʲiː]) also exists, further confusing the possible origin of the name.

Weir and Jerman use the name sheela, but only as it had entered popular usage; they also call figures of both sexes “exhibitionist”. They cite Andersen’s second chapter as a good discussion of the name. Andersen states in that chapter that there is no evidence that “sheela na gig” was ever a popular name for the figures and that it came out of a period (i.e. the mid-19th century) “where popular understanding of the characteristics of a sheela were vague and people were wary of its apparent rudeness”. An earlier reference to the dubious nature of the name is made by HC Lawlor in Man Vol.31, Jan 1931 (Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland) where he says “The term “sheela-na-gig” has no etymological meaning and is an absurd name”. Andersen, Weir and Jerman and Freitag all dismiss the name as being modern and somewhat arbitrary.

The oldest recorded name for one of the figures is “The Idol” which relates to the Binstead figure on the Isle of Wight. This name was mentioned in 1781 in The History of the Isle of Wight by R. Worsley and mentioned again in 1795 by J. Albin in A New, Correct and Much-improved History of the Isle of Wight (Andersen page 11). The name “The Idol” was also applied to a now lost figure in Lusk, Ireland and was recorded as being in use around 1783.

Theories

Much of the disagreement about the figures is based on determining exactly what they are meant to represent, but no theory explains all the figures and each has problems.

Survival of a pagan goddess

The idea that sheela na gigs represent a pagan goddess is a most popular theory with the public; it is, however, not generally accepted by academics.The goddess in question is usually identified as Celtic, the hag-like Cailleach figure of Irish and Scottish mythology. This theory was originally put forward by Margaret Murray, and also by Anne Ross, who, in her essay entitled “The Divine Hag of the Pagan Celts”, wrote “I would like to suggest that in their earliest iconographic form they do in fact portray the territorial or war-goddess in her hag-like aspect…”

Most recently the goddess theory has been put forward in the book The Sacred Whore: Sheela Goddess of the Celts by Maureen Concannon who associates the figures with the “mother goddess”.

The Encyclopedia of Religion (ed. Mircea Eliade, published 1993 by Macmillan for the University of Chicago) draws parallels between the sheela na gig and the ancient Irish myth of the goddess who granted kingship. She would appear as a lustful hag, and most men would refuse her advances, except for one man who accepted. When he slept with her, she was transformed into a beautiful maiden who would confer royalty onto him and bless his reign. There are additional variants of this common Northern European motif .

Andersen devotes a chapter to this theory, entitled “Pagan or Medieval”, and while he suggests possible pagan influences on Irish sheela na gigs, he firmly places them in a medieval context. Of Dr. Ross’s assertion above, he says about possible pagan origins “What can be said against it, is that it is less easily proved and can be less easily illustrated than the possible continental, French origin for the motif discussed in earlier chapters….”.

Weir and Jerman explore the possible influence of the Baubo figurine on the motif but admit that the link is tenuous, writing “It makes for very interesting speculation, but the amount of evidence is not large”.

Freitag explores possible Celtic pagan origins but again finds little to suggest a link “…in particular the notion of the divine hag being a portrayal of the Ur-Sheela has to be firmly dismissed as wayward conjecture.”. Despite the rejection of a pagan origin by academics, this theory is still widely held and sometimes even vociferously defended by its supporters.

Fertility figure

This theory is usually used in conjunction with the above “goddess” explanation for the figures. Barbara Freitag puts forward the theory that figures were used in a fertility context and associates them with “birthing stones”. There is folkloric evidence of at least some of the sheela na gigs being used in this manner, with the figures being loaned out to women in labour. Other figures have wedding traditions associated with them. According to Margaret Murray, the figure in Oxford at the church of St Michael at the North Gate has the tradition of being shown to brides on their wedding day. This theory however does not cover all the figures: some are thin with their ribs showing and thin breasts evident; however, others are plump and are shown in a sexual context with a partner (Whittlesford). A recent discovery of an exhibitionist pair at Devizes by Dr. Theresa Oakley and Dr. Alex Woodcock also lends weight to this theory. The faces of some figures are striated, indicating scarring or tattoos. So, while this seems the most obvious interpretation, a closer look at the figures reveals features which sit uneasily with a fertility function.

Warning against lust

The theory that sheela na gigs warn against lust was put forward by Weir and Jerman. It explains the figures as a religious warning against sins of the flesh. Exhibitionist figures of all types—male, female, and bestial—are frequently found in the company of images of beasts devouring people and other “hellish” images. These images, they argue, were used as a means of religious instruction to a largely illiterate populace. As part of this interpretation, they explore a continental origin for the figures. Andersen first suggested this origin, and Weir and Jerman continued and expanded this line of inquiry. They argue that the motif migrated from the continent via the pilgrim routes to and from Santiago de Compostella. (Freitag argues against this.) Pilgrim sculptors took notes of what they had seen on the route and ended up carving their own interpretations of the motifs they had seen. Eventually, the exhibitionist motif migrated to Ireland and Britain. This theory seems to fit well with a lot of the religious figures but sits less easily on some of the secular ones. Images which appear on castles would not seem to be serving a religious purpose. The figure at Haddon Hall resides on a stables (although this may have been moved from elsewhere). So while this theory does seem to have some credibility, it again does not cover all the figures.

Protection against evil

This theory is discussed by Andersen  and Weir and Jerman. It seems unlikely that figures on castles would be serving a religious purpose. The suggested theory is that they serve an apotropaic function and are designed to ward off evil. This is further borne out by the name “The Evil Eye Stones” given to some of the figures in Ireland. There is also some folkloric evidence that devils could be repelled by the sight of a woman’s sex. Andersen reproduces a plate from La Fontaine’s Nouveaux Contes (1674) where a demon is repulsed by the sight of a woman lifting her skirt. Weir and Jerman also relate a story from The Irish Times (23 September 1977) where a potentially violent incident involving several men was averted by a woman exposing her genitals to the attackers. However, they also cast some doubt on the veracity of this tale. Weir and Jerman go on to suggest that the apotropaic function seems to have been gradually ascribed to the figures over time. While this theory seems to fit most of the secular and some of the religious figures, again, it does not seem to apply to all of them.

Distribution

As noted above, Ireland has the greatest number of known sheela na gigs (so much so that they are often mistakenly thought of as a uniquely Irish phenomenon). However, it became increasingly obvious that the sheela na gig motif, far from being insular, could in fact be found all over Europe. Accurate numbers of figures are hard to come by as the interpretation of what is and is not a sheela na gig will vary from writer to writer, for example Freitag omits the Rochester figure from her list while Weir and Jerman include it. Concannon includes some worn figures that so far only she has identified as sheela na gigs. Previously unknown figures are still being identified.

So far the following countries are known to have (or have had) churches with female exhibitionist figures on them:

• Ireland
• France
• Spain
• Britain

• England
• Wales
• Scotland

• Norway
• Switzerland
• Czech Republic
• Slovak Republic

A significant number of the figures are found in Romanesque contexts especially in France, Spain, Britain and Norway. In Ireland figures are commonly found in areas of Norman influence.

Parallels

The Encyclopedia of Religion, in its article on yoni, notes the similarity between the positioning of many sheela na gigs above doorways or windows and the wooden female figures carved over the doorways of chiefs’ houses (bai) in the Palauan archipelago. Called dilukai (or dilugai), they are typically shown with legs splayed, revealing a large, black, triangular pubic area; the hands rest upon the thighs. The writers of the encyclopedia article say:

“

These female figures protect the villagers’ health and ward off all evil spirits as well. They are constructed by ritual specialists according to strict rules, which if broken would result in the specialist’s as well as the chief’s death. It is not coincidental that each example of signs representing the female genitalia used as apotropaic devices are found on gates. The vulva is the primordial gate, the mysterious divide between nonlife and life.”

 

Phoolan Devi

Phoolan Devi  (10 August 1963 – 25 July 2001), popularly known as “The Bandit Queen”, was an Indian dacoit and later a politician. She was notorious across India during her time as a bandit.

As a dacoit

In 1979, a gang of dacoits abducted Phoolan. The gang leader, Baboo Gujjar, who was an upper-caste Gujjar, wanted to rape her. However, she was protected by Vikram, the deputy leader of the gang who belonged to Phoolan’s caste, Mallah. One night when Baboo attempted to rape Phoolan, Vikram killed him and assumed the gang leadership. Phoolan became Vikram’s second wife. The gang ransacked the village where Phoolan’s husband lived. Phoolan stabbed her estranged husband, and dragged him in front of the villagers. The gang left him lying almost dead by the road, with a note as a warning for older men who marry young girls.

Phoolan Devi learned how to use a rifle from Vikram, and participated in the gang’s activities, which consisted of ransacking high-caste villages and kidnapping upper-caste landowners for ransom. After every crime, Phoolan Devi would visit a Durga temple and thank the goddess for her protection. The gang hid out in the Chambal ravine.

Later, Shri Ram got out of jail and claimed the leadership of the gang. He belonged to the Thakur caste, and would make sexual advances towards Phoolan. This led to tensions between Shri Ram and Vikram, who made him apologize to Phoolan. When the gang would ransack a village, Shri Ram would beat and insult the Mallahs. This displeased the Mallahs in the gang, many of whom left the gang. When Shri Ram got a dozen Thakurs to join the gang, Vikram suggested the gang be divided into two, but Shri Ram refused. Shortly afterwards, Shri Ram and other Thakur members in the gang attempted to kill Phoolan and Vikram, who managed to escape. However, later they successfully killed Vikram Mallah, abducted Phoolan and locked her up in the Behmai village. Phoolan Devi was raped by many men in Behmai. After three weeks, she managed to escape with two other Mallahs from Vikram’s gang, helped by a lower-caste villager. She gathered a gang of Mallahs, that she led with Man Singh, a member of Vikram’s former gang. The gang carried out a series of violent robberies in north and central India, mainly targeting upper-caste people. Some say that Phoolan Devi targeted only the upper-caste people and shared the loot with the lower-caste people, but the Indian authorities insist this is a myth.

Seventeen months after her escape from Behmai, Phoolan returned to the village, to take her revenge. On 14 February 1981, Phoolan and her gang marched into the Behmai village, dressed as police officers. The Thakurs in the village were preparing for a wedding. The gang demanded that her kidnappers be produced, along with all the valuables in the village. Details of what exactly happened are not available, but Phoolan is said to have recognized two men who earlier had sexually assaulted her and murdered her lover. When Phoolan’s gang failed to find all the kidnappers after an exhaustive search, she ordered her gang members to line up all the Thakur men in the village and shoot them. The dacoits opened fire and killed twenty-two Thakur men, most of whom were not involved in her kidnapping or rape. Later, Phoolan Devi claimed that she herself didn’t kill anybody in Behmai – all the killings were carried out by her gang members.

The Behmai massacre was followed by a massive police manhunt that failed to locate Phoolan Devi. V. P. Singh, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, resigned in the wake of the Behmai killings. Phoolan Devi began to be called the Bandit Queen. Dolls of Phoolan Devi dressed as Hindu goddess Durga were sold in market towns in Uttar Pradesh. She was glorified by much of the Indian media.

Surrender and jail term

Two years after the Behmai massacre the police had still not captured Phoolan Devi. The Indira Gandhi Government decided to negotiate a surrender. By this time, Phoolan Devi was in poor health and most of her gang members were dead. In February 1983, she agreed to surrender to the authorities. However, she said that she didn’t trust the Uttar Pradesh police and insisted that she would only surrender to the Madhya Pradesh Police. She also insisted that she would lay down her arms only before Mahatma Gandhi’s picture and Goddess Durga, and not to the police. She also required the following conditions:

• She would not get the death penalty
• Her gang members should not get more than eight years in jail
• Her brother should be given a government job
• Her father should receive a plot of land
• Her entire family should be escorted by the police to her surrender ceremony

An unarmed police chief met her at a hiding place in the Chambal ravines. They walked their way to Bhind, where she laid her rifle before the portraits of Gandhi and Goddess Durga. The onlookers included a crowd of around 10,000 people and 300 police and the then chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Mr. Arjun Singh. The 300 police were waiting to arrest her and other members of her gang who surrendered at the same time.

Phoolan Devi was charged with 48 crimes, including 30 charges of dacoity (banditry) and kidnapping. Her trial was delayed for 11 years, which she served in the prison. During this period, she was operated on for ovarian cysts and ended up with an involuntary hysterectomy. She was finally released on parole in 1994. Then she launched Eklavya Sena, a group that was aimed at teaching lower-caste people the art of self-defense. She married Umaid Singh, her sister’s husband and a New Delhi business contractor.

Popular culture

Shekhar Kapur made a movie Bandit Queen (1994) about Phoolan Devi’s life up to her 1983 surrender. Although Phoolan Devi is a heroine in the film, she fiercely disputed its accuracy and fought to get it banned in India. She even threatened to immolate herself outside a theater if the film were not withdrawn. Eventually, she settled a suit against the filmmakers for about $60,000. The film brought her international recognition. At this time, she was re-indicted for murder and other charges.

Though she was illiterate, Phoolan composed her autobiography titled The Bandit Queen of India: An Indian Woman’s Amazing Journey From Peasant to International Legend, with help of two international authors, Marie-Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali.

Star Shakur has referred to herself as being a “Bandit Queen” once in a Youth Rebel Movement inspired and acknowledged by the movie and story of Phoolan Devi. Star Shakur’s alias and first EP Album entitled “The Bandit Queen” was named after this movie.

Phoolan Devi is the subject of the Boxcar Satan song Shoot Down The Sun from their 2003 album Upstanding and Indigent.

Political career

In 1996, Phoolan Devi contested for the 11th Lok Sabha from Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh as a Samajwadi Party candidate and was elected. She was re-elected to the 13th Lok Sabha in 1999. In a 1999 interview, she explained her political objectives, stating, “My main goal is that things that only the rich and privileged have enjoyed until now should also be given to the poor: for example, drinking water, electricity, schools and hospitals… I’d like there to be seats reserved for women in government posts. Women should be educated in schools. And people should not be forcing them to get married at a very young age…the most important thing is equality. So that people can get employment, they can get proper food and drink, and also to be educated. And especially women – now they are really treated very lowly, like shoes! They should be treated on an equal basis. And like other countries that have progressed and have comforts, I also want my country and people to progress that way.” During her election campaign, she was criticized by the women widowed in the Behmai massacre. Kshatriya Swabhimaan Andolan Samanvay Committee (KSASC), a Kshatriya organization, held a statewide campaign to protest against her.

Some people thought she proved ineffective as an MP. She got a train stopped at unscheduled stops to meet her acquaintances in Uttar Pradesh. The railway minister, Ram Vilas Paswan played down the train incident and ordered only a nominal enquiry. Once, she visited the Gwalior jail (where she was imprisoned) to meet her former inmates. When the jail officers didn’t let her in due to the visiting hours rules, she abused them. Later, a suspension order was issued against the jail officials involved in the incident, without any explanation.

In 1998, Phoolan Devi claimed she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by some members of the British Parliament. She lost a bid for reelection in 1998, but was returned to office the following year.

Assassination

On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was fatally shot as she got out of her car at the gate of her New Delhi residence. The assailants also wounded her bodyguard and escaped in an auto rickshaw.

Sher Singh Rana, Dheeraj Rana, and Rajbir were accused of the crime. Sher Singh Rana allegedly surrendered in Dehradun. He confessed to the murder, saying he was avenging the deaths of 22 Kshatriyas at Behmai. He escaped from Tihar Jail in 2004, but was captured in April 2006 from Kolkata and sent to Rohini Jail, Delhi. The same year, the KSASC decided to honor Rana for “upholding the dignity of the Kshatriya community” and “drying the tears of the widows of Behmai”.

On 19 January 2007, Balender Singh, Phoolan’s bodyguard who had been witness to the shooting, identified Dheeraj and Sher Singh as the people who had fired on him and Phoolan respectively. Balender Singh was cross-examined on 2 February 2007.

 

Sywald Skeid

Sywald Skeid (born Ciprian Skeid, and also known by various other names, including Philip Staufen, Georges Lecuit, Keith Ryan, Mike Jones, and Mr. Nobody) is a Romanian-born man who wandered into a hospital emergency department in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on November 28, 1999, seemingly the victim of an attack, and apparently suffering from amnesia. The name Philip Staufen, which he used during most of his time in Canada, is actually that of a medieval German king , and was given to Skeid by hospital staff because it was among the first words spoken by him during his hospitalization.

Before disappearing in 2004, Skeid undertook a campaign to gain Canadian citizenship that was ultimately denied by authorities. He suggested the birthdate June 7, 1975 for identification purposes. His real birthdate remains unknown, but in the June 2007 article in GQ Magazine in which his true identity and details of his early life were first revealed his age is given as 36.

There is no evidence he ever suffered amnesia.

Background and early life

Born in Timişoara, Romania, where he lived until the age of nineteen, Skeid, who studied the violin, was named for famous composer Ciprian Porumbescu. His mother (died 2000) worked in a bread factory and his father (died 2002), an alcoholic whom Skeid alleges physically abused his wife and son, worked at a meat processing plant. Skeid has one sibling, an older sister named Daniela.

At the age of eighteen, Skeid was conscripted into the army, which he has described as “a year of hell”. At nineteen, he went to live with a friend in Germany, where he worked as a cook in an Italian restaurant. At 22, following a brief return to Romania, Skeid moved to Paris, where a friend states Skeid had an affair with another man. Following periods in Hungary and Italy, he moved to London, which he eventually left with a plan of going to America.

Arrival at a Toronto hospital

On November 28, 1999, Skeid appeared at a Toronto hospital. Then probably in his mid-twenties, he appeared to have been the victim of a mugging. His nose was broken, and he was unable to walk. In addition, his wallet was missing, the tags had been removed from his clothing, and he carried no identification.

Skeid claimed to have no idea who he was, and was diagnosed with post-concussive global amnesia. He mentioned Australia, but linguistic experts said that he had a slight Yorkshire accent. He also spoke fluent French and Italian, and could read Latin. The media picked up on the story and began referring to him as “Mr. Nobody.”

After release

Skeid was released from hospital and stayed in a shelter for three weeks, then accepted an offer of lodging from an Ontario couple, and was able to collect welfare money. Soon his photograph and fingerprints were being circulated internationally and he was the subject of television shows in Canada, Britain, and Australia, yet no clues as to his true identity were discovered. Meanwhile, Skeid refused offers of free expert treatment for his amnesia. He moved into a Toronto lodging house, then briefly to Montreal.

In November 2000, Skeid moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where he met lawyer Manuel Azevedo and began lobbying to be granted Canadian citizenship and a Canadian birth certificate, ostensibly so that he could travel in order to discover his true identity. On May 28, 2001 a British Columbia court denied Skeid’s petition for a birth certificate, but on June 5, Minister Elinor Caplan offered him a “Minister’s Permit” to stay and work in Canada for eighteen months. Skeid refused.

Pornography claims

On June 15, 2001, Skeid signed a second affidavit and issued a press release announcing a hunger strike. About the same time, gay porn model Sean Spence claimed that Skeid was actually a pornographic model named Georges Lecuit, who had last worked in Britain. In July, Spence provided photographs of Georges Lecuit to Detective Stephen Bone of the Toronto Police Department, who had been working on the case. The photographs show a man bearing a striking similarity to Staufen, though with a different hairstyle (images of “Lecuit” and “Staufen” are available). Skeid refuses to confirm or deny these claims.

Name changes and legal troubles

In mid-July, Skeid married his lawyer’s daughter Nathalie Herve, who had dual Canadian and Portuguese citizenship, in Vancouver, and accepted the Minister’s Permit (backdated to July 5). Manuel Azevedo subsequently resigned as Skeid’s lawyer.

On August 29, 2001, Skeid’s appeal for a Canadian birth certificate was rejected. Immigration officials noted that Skeid appeared to have surgically altered his nose.

Skeid began to change his name frequently. He first changed his name to Keith Ryan on October 25, 2001. In early 2002, Skeid changed his name again, this time to Sywald Skeid. The following January, after Skeid’s permit had expired, he and his wife moved to Ottawa, then Montreal, and then Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In mid-February 2004, it emerged that a French man named Georges Lecuit had reported his passport stolen in 1998. Staufen was arrested and jailed, then released on condition that he report regularly to Immigration, which he last did on October 4, 2004, in Victoria, British Columbia. Skeid and Herve both subsequently disappeared.

The Piano Man

In April 2005, a man matching Skeid’s description was discovered wandering on a beach on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, wearing a dripping-wet suit and tie. The man did not speak, but was a skilled pianist, a fact discovered after the man was provided a piano when he drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano. It was later confirmed that this “Piano Man” (as he was dubbed by the media) was not Skeid, but rather a German named Andreas Grassl.

Move to Portugal

In March 2006, Skeid went to Lisbon to join his wife, who had gone ahead to make inquiries about obtaining Portuguese citizenship for Skeid. Skeid and Herve subsequently separated. As of 2007, Skeid was residing in Lisbon.

Revelation of true identity

Skeid’s true identity was revealed for the first time in the June, 2007 issue of GQ magazine.

According to Skeid: “I came from Romania, a place I loathe. I’d rather be a fake nobody than the real me. At first I tried not to be anyone at all. Then I tried to become someone – and then someone better.”

 

Roberto Cofresí

Roberto Cofresí (June 17, 1791 – March 29, 1825), better known as “El Pirata Cofresí”, was the most renowned pirate in Puerto Rico. He became interested in sailing at a young age. By the time he reached adulthood there were some political and economic difficulties in Puerto Rico, which at the time was a colony of Spain. Influenced by this situation he decided to become a pirate in 1818. Cofresí commanded several assaults against cargo vessels focusing on those that were responsible for exporting gold. During this time he focused his attention on ships from the United States and the local Spanish government ignored several of these actions. On March 5, 1825, Cofresí engaged in battle a float of ships led by John Slout. He eventually abandoned his ship and tried to escape by land before being captured. After being imprisoned he was sent to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where a brief military trial found him guilty and on March 29, 1825, he and other members of his crew were executed by a firing squad. After his death his life was used as inspiration for several stories and myths, which served as the basis for books and other media.

Early years

Cofresí was born Roberto Cofresí y Ramírez de Arellano in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico.His father was Franz Von Kupferschein (1751–1814), and of Austrian descent born in Trieste a free city of the Holy Roman Empire. According to Professor Ursula Acosta, a historian and member of the Puerto Rican Genealogy Society, the Kupferschein family immigrated from Austria to Trieste where Franz Von Kupferschein was known as Francisco Confersin. Immigrants were required by the Italian authorities to adopt Italian sounding names. When Francisco Confersin (Franz Von Kupferschein) immigrated to Puerto Rico, he went to live in the coastal town of Cabo Rojo and changed his name to Francisco Cofresí, which made it much easier for the Spanish authorities to pronounce.

Francisco Cofresí met and married María Germana Ramírez de Arellano, whose father was the cousin of Nicolás Ramírez de Arellano, the founder of Cabo Rojo. The couple had four children, a daughter by the name of Juana and three sons, Juan Francisco, Ignacio and their youngest Roberto. Roberto Cofresí was four years old when his mother died.

Cofresí and his siblings went to school in his hometown. Living in a coastal town the Cofresí brothers often came in to contact with visiting sailors. They were inspired to become seamen by the tales that they heard from the sailors who visited their town. Cofresí eventually purchased a small boat, which he christened El Mosquito (“The Mosquito”).

He met and married Juana Creitoff, a native of Curaçao, in the San Miguel Arcángel Parish of Cabo Rojo. They had two sons, both of whom died soon after birth. In 1822, Cofresí and Juana had a daughter, whom they named Maria Bernada.

Cofresí the pirate

In 1818, Cofresí decided to become a pirate and organized a crew composed of eight to ten men from his hometown. The men established a hideout in Mona Island, a small island located between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. It was a common practice then for the Spanish Crown to look the other way when pirates such as Cofresí attacked ships that did not carry the Spanish flag.

Cofresí ignored the ships that came from other nations including those from France, Holland and England and his attacks were mainly focused on ships from the United States. His dislike of American sailors originated when he was once caught eating sugar from an American cargo ship without paying and was injured by the ship’s captain. After this event Cofresí declared war on all of those that operated under the flag of the United States. He often displayed cruel behavior against hostages that were on these vessels, including reports that he ordered that his captives were to be nailed alive to El Mosquito’s deck.

Spain and the United States were having diplomatic and political differences, therefore the Spanish colonial government did not pursue Cofresí or his crew as long as he assaulted American ships. The government felt that Cofresí’s actions were patriotic. This situation changed because of various factors. Spain had lost most of her possessions in the New World and her last two possessions, Puerto Rico and Cuba were faced with economical problems and political unrest. Cofresí was influenced by the separatist faction which was supporting Puerto Rico’s independence from Spain.

Cofresí felt that the Spaniards were oppressing the Puerto Ricans in their “own home” and he began assaulting Spanish ships along with the American and English vessels that were being used to export the island’s resources, gold in particular. He did this in order to debilitate the Spanish economy, justifying it by saying that he “wouldn’t allow foreign hands to take a piece of the country that saw his birth”. On January 23, 1824, Lieutenant General Miguel Luciano De La Torre y Pando (1822–1837), the Spanish appointed governor of Puerto Rico, issued several anti-piracy measures based on the economic losses that the Spanish government was sustaining and the political pressure from the United States.

Imprisonment in the Dominican Republic

On one occasion Cofresí and his crew were captured after his ship arrived at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. They were sentenced to six years in prison and sent to Torre del Homenaje. Cofresí and his men escaped from prison, however they were captured once again and imprisoned. The group decided to escape once more, they broke the locks of their cell doors and climbed down the walls of the prison’s courtyard during a stormy night using a rope that was made of their clothes. The group reached the providence of San Pedro de Macorís and boarded a ship. They sailed to the island of Vieques where they established a new hideout and reorganized a new crew of fourteen men. Cofresí then selected six of them and traveled to the main island (Puerto Rico) where they hijacked a schooner named Ana forcing the crew to jump into the ocean, an incident which they survived. Cofresí renamed the captured ship El Mosquito. They then proceeded to steal a cannon from another ship that was under construction. The crew members of El Mosquito armed themselves, with the weapons found in the vessels that they boarded.

Final years

Cofresí set out once more to sea in his schooner, with his crew and continued to attack merchant ships in the Caribbean. Among the ships which they attacked was a cargo ship named Neptune. The Neptune’s cargo consisted of fabrics and provisions and was attacked while it was docked in Jobos Port, located in the vicinity of Fajardo, Puerto Rico. Cofresí then used the vessel as his pirate flagship. On February 1825, Cofresí and his crew attacked a second cargo ship owned by a company based on Saint Thomas and gained control of a load of imported merchandise. After the assault, the pirates left the ship abandoned in the ocean. Some time later they boarded another vessel owned by the same company and repeated the same action as before.

The people on the coasts of Puerto Rico are said to have protected him from the authorities and, according to the Puerto Rican historian Aurelio Tio, Cofresí shared his spoils with the needy, especially members of his family and his friends being regarded by many as the Puerto Rican version of Robin Hood.

Cofresí’s crew continued to assault several ships and on one occasion they attacked eight consecutive ships, including one from the United States. Cofresí’s last successful assault took place on March 5, 1825, when he commanded the hijacking of a boat property of Vicente Antoneti in Salinas, Puerto Rico.

Capture and execution

The Spanish government received many complaints from the nations whose ships were being attacked by “El Pirata Cofresí”, as he became to be known. The government felt compelled to have Cofresí pursued and captured. The Spanish government requested the service of three military vessels. These were San José, Las Animas which belonged to Spain and the Grampus which belonged to the United States. In 1825, Captain John D. Sloat, commander of the Schooner U.S. “Grampus”, engaged Cofresí in battle. There are two official accounts of this event, submitted by those involved in it.

Spanish government’s version

The Spanish government’s version states that on March 2, 1825, the commander of the island’s south military division requested the service of three military vessels. These were San José, Las Animas and the Grampus, which belonged to the United States. The mayor of the municipality of Ponce asked Capt. John D. Sloat to command a recon mission with the intention of capturing Cofresí. Three American officers and a doctor accompanied Sloat in this mission, they were: Garred S. Pedergrast, George A. Magrades and Francis Store plus a crew of twenty-three sailors were assigned to the mission. The sailors were heavily armed and a new cannon was mounted on the ship. On the afternoon of the third day one of the ships located Cofresí, near the port of Boca del Infierno.When the pirates spotted the American vessel they confused it with a merchant ship, and proceeded to attack it. Both vessels exchanged cannon fire. Cofresí commanded El Mosquito to go near land, but was forced to disembark in the coast and to retreat into a nearby forestal area.

The Grampus’ crew sent their sailors to look for the pirates by land, while the ships closed the access to the beach. Sloat estimated that Cofresí had lost a third of his crew in the previous exchange, based on the number of bodies on the water surrounding the boat. Later that day the mayor of the town of Los Jobos issued a statement which detailed the pirate’s entrance into the beach, and he subsequently notified the local authorities about the event. A search operation was launched and during the dusk hours six pirates were captured. The Spanish government then sent military personnel to block all the roads and plains surrounding the area. Two of the search groups believed that the pirates would have to pass through a certain road in order to escape and planned to ambush them there. The pirates reached the location at 10:30 p.m. and tried to escape, but were intercepted. Cofresí was injured in the confrontation, which facilitated their capture. His injuries were severe, but a doctor dictated that they were not lethal. The rest of the crew was captured by the police departments of Patillas and Guayama on March 7 and 8.

United States government version

The American version states that Commander Sloat solicited permission for the use of two small ships after becoming aware of Cofresí’s latest actions. The report claims that Sloat was aware of an evasion strategy that was used by the pirates to escape when using large ships, which consisted of traveling as close to the coast as possible and thereby avoid being followed. Therefore, he used the small ships in order to pursue them while attempting this strategy. Both vessels were armed and began working in a exploratory manner, traveling through several ports and coastal towns. On the third day while sailing near Ponce, the group located a ship in Boca del Infierno and identified it as El Mosquito (Ana). When Cofresí saw the American ship he confused it with a merchant vessel and began to attack it. When his vessel approached the ship, the ship opened fire. The subsequent exchange lasted forty-five minutes and ended when the pirates abandoned their ship and swam to the nearby beach. Vicente Antoneti who was traveling with Sloat, disembarked and notified the local Spanish military unit about the event. Two of the pirates died in the battle and six others, including Cofresí, were injured.

Aftermath

Cofresí was captured along with eleven members of his crew, and they were turned over to the Spanish government. They were jailed in El Castillo del Morro (Fort San Felipe del Morro) in San Juan. The crew was tried by a Spanish military court and found guilty. On March 29, 1825, Cofresí and his men were executed by a firing squad. According to legend, Cofresí “maldijo” (placed a curse on) Capt. Sloat and the USS Grampus before he died. In 1848, the USS Grampus was lost at sea with all hands aboard. Cofresí and his men were buried behind the cemetery on what is now a lush green hill that overlooks the cemetery wall. They were not buried in the Old San Juan Cemetery (Cementerio Antiguo de San Juan), as believed in the local lore, since they were executed as a criminals and therefore could not be laid to rest in this Catholic cemetery. His widow Juana died a year later.

Cofresí’s Cave is located in a sector of Cabo Rojo called “Barrio Pedernales” which is just south of Boqueron Bay. According to local legend, after Cofresí shared some of his treasure with his family and friends, he would hide what was left over in the cave. Throughout the years no one has found any treasure in the cave.

Legacy

Cofresí’s life and death have inspired several myths and stories. These included those depicting him as a generous figure, who used to share what he stole with the region’s poor population. In these myths he is generally described as a benevolent person, with authors writing about his supposed personality. These portray him as a noble gentleman who became a pirate out of necessity; as a generous man, claiming that on one occasion he went as far as saving the life of a baby in a confrontation and providing money for his upbringing and as a brave man, showing disregard for his life on several occasions. Other myths and stories describe Cofresí as an evil or demonic figure. Among them there are myths that claim that during his life he had sold his soul to the devil in order to “defeat men and be loved by women”.

Accounts of apparitions of his spirit include accounts claiming that when summoned in medium sections, the strength of Cofresí’s spirit was excessive, to the point of killing some of the hosts he possessed. A Fiat Lux, a magazine published in Cabo Rojo, notes that several persons in that municipality have said that they have witnessed the pirate’s spirit. In the Dominican Republic, folktales attribute magic abilities to Cofresí; these say that he was able to make his boat disappear when surrounded. This was based on a hideout that he had established in a cave located in a nearby beach.

Cofresí has been the subject of numerous biographical books which include the following:

• “El Marinero, Bandolero, Pirata y Contrabandista Roberto Cofresí“; (Spanish) by Walter R. Cardona Bonet
• “The Pirate of Puerto Rico” by Lee Cooper
• “El Mito de Cofresí en la Narrativa Antillana” (Spanish) by Robert Fernandez Valledor
• “Das Kurge Heldenhafte Leben Des Don Roberto Cofresí” (German) by Angelika Mectel and
• “Roberto Cofresí: “El Bravo Pirata de Puerto Rico” (Spanish) by Edwin Vazquez.

Other kinds of tributes have been made to commemorate Cofresí throughout the Caribbean. In Puerto Rico, a monument to Cofresí was built by Jose Buscaglia Guillermety in Boquerón Bay.