This is a figure of speech that has many meanings. In England, throughout the Middle Ages, the common saying, "There's a skeleton in every house," or, "Every man has a skeleton in his closet," was hardly a figure of speech. The stories of finding the skeletons of faithless monks and nuns walled up alive, seem to have sprung from a much earlier notion; and it is now well established that these are by no means myths, but very facts.
In North Devon, the parish church was restored in 1845. On taking down the south-west angle wall a skeleton was found imbedded in the stone and mortar. There was every appearance of the body having been buried alive, and hurriedly. A mass of mortar was over the mouth, and the stones were heaped and huddled about the corpse; the rest of the wall had been built properly.
Many similar accounts are given of finds of a like nature in various parts of Germany, and the superstition that walls would not stand without a human victim, existed among Celts, Slavs, Teutons and Northmen. Even so late as 1813 when a Government official went to repair a broken dam on the Elbe, an old peasant sneered at his efforts, and said: "You will never get the dyke to hold unless you first sink an innocent child under its foundations."
Posted By: Helen Lofton
Saturday, July 3rd 2010 at 11:18AM
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