The Left Leg
I'd like to start the new year with a true ghost story that has been passed down in my family for generations, and of which I was reminded this morning for some reason. Thinking about it again, I realised that it was not so much a ghost story, more a story about entity creation.
Several generations of my ancestors were parsons in a small village just east of the river Oder, in what is now Poland. The village, Kohlow, consisted mostly of independent farmers (not peasants freed from serfdom a scant two generations earlier and still beholden to the squire in many ways, as was usual elsewhere), but it did have a manor house with a large estate where a noble family lived whose male members served as officers in the Prussian army, as was customary in that class. The parson and the squire considered themselves the only educated men in the village and were something like friends, down the generations.
Shortly before my great-great-grandfather took over the parsonage, during the war between Austria and Prussia over Denmark in 1866, the squire, old Major von Kaphengst, had a wounded officer as a house guest; he must have been a distant relative of the Old Major or his wife. While he was there, the officer's condition grew much worse, and the local doctor had no choice but to amputate his left leg.
The Old Major had that leg buried in the park that belonged to the manor house and then carefully germinated a rumour in the village that this Left leg was haunting the park at dusk - with the express purpose of keeping the boys from the village out of his cherry trees.
Of course, the farmers had their own cherry trees, but to the boys, the orchard in the park was much more attractive: having to scale the park wall and then facing the potential wrath of the reeve or even the squire himself gave them an incomparable sense of adventure which was hard to come by otherwise in that sleepy village. The Old Major cynically and consciously calculated that the ghost of that left leg (despite the fact that its former owner cheerfully went on living for many more years) might keep the boys out of his trees.
Of course it didn't, really; but it might have sent them away earlier and with less cherries eaten, as every so often when they were raiding the park near dusk in late summer, the lookout would claim to have seen the Left Leg, and they would scramble.
Those von Kaphengsts and their parsons, my own ancestors, considering themselves rational men, poked fun at the superstitious villagers who were so easily frightened by a story which they knew the Old Major had invented on purpose. To their great hilarity, people actually claimed to have seen the Left Leg at dusk in the park's cherry orchard, again and again, down the years until the village was given up in 1945
The great irony of all this, I thought this morning, is the fact that the Old Major instinctively created his entity almost by the book, as it is written these days (by teriel): he housed the ghost in the left leg that was actually buried there, he gave it a purpose (guarding the cherry trees), named it, assigned it a shape and a trigger that would call it up (village boys trying to get at the cherries) and then made sure people knew about it.
He used a technique that was both much older and far, far more modern than the ideas the squires and their parsons adhered to themselves; were I to explain to them what they'd actually done, they'd consider my take on the events despicably superstitious.
Despite the fact it all worked very well.
Several generations of my ancestors were parsons in a small village just east of the river Oder, in what is now Poland. The village, Kohlow, consisted mostly of independent farmers (not peasants freed from serfdom a scant two generations earlier and still beholden to the squire in many ways, as was usual elsewhere), but it did have a manor house with a large estate where a noble family lived whose male members served as officers in the Prussian army, as was customary in that class. The parson and the squire considered themselves the only educated men in the village and were something like friends, down the generations.
Shortly before my great-great-grandfather took over the parsonage, during the war between Austria and Prussia over Denmark in 1866, the squire, old Major von Kaphengst, had a wounded officer as a house guest; he must have been a distant relative of the Old Major or his wife. While he was there, the officer's condition grew much worse, and the local doctor had no choice but to amputate his left leg.
The Old Major had that leg buried in the park that belonged to the manor house and then carefully germinated a rumour in the village that this Left leg was haunting the park at dusk - with the express purpose of keeping the boys from the village out of his cherry trees.
Of course, the farmers had their own cherry trees, but to the boys, the orchard in the park was much more attractive: having to scale the park wall and then facing the potential wrath of the reeve or even the squire himself gave them an incomparable sense of adventure which was hard to come by otherwise in that sleepy village. The Old Major cynically and consciously calculated that the ghost of that left leg (despite the fact that its former owner cheerfully went on living for many more years) might keep the boys out of his trees.
Of course it didn't, really; but it might have sent them away earlier and with less cherries eaten, as every so often when they were raiding the park near dusk in late summer, the lookout would claim to have seen the Left Leg, and they would scramble.
Those von Kaphengsts and their parsons, my own ancestors, considering themselves rational men, poked fun at the superstitious villagers who were so easily frightened by a story which they knew the Old Major had invented on purpose. To their great hilarity, people actually claimed to have seen the Left Leg at dusk in the park's cherry orchard, again and again, down the years until the village was given up in 1945
The great irony of all this, I thought this morning, is the fact that the Old Major instinctively created his entity almost by the book, as it is written these days (by teriel): he housed the ghost in the left leg that was actually buried there, he gave it a purpose (guarding the cherry trees), named it, assigned it a shape and a trigger that would call it up (village boys trying to get at the cherries) and then made sure people knew about it.
He used a technique that was both much older and far, far more modern than the ideas the squires and their parsons adhered to themselves; were I to explain to them what they'd actually done, they'd consider my take on the events despicably superstitious.
Despite the fact it all worked very well.