Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Highland bog body of Loughries (1824) and the Scrabo elk's head (1832)

A trawl through the local newspapers of 1824 might give more detail than this short excerpt. Drowning in a bog sounds like a very unpleasant way to go. I wonder what happened to the costume? Finding an elk's head sounds a bit grisly too - like a scene from The Godfather! Both very interesting artefacts though - and surely culturally significant that the elk head ended up in Glasgow Museum. Click to enlarge:

1 comments:

Jenny said...

eeeg..ick!

I've started to wonder if the bog bodies we see brought up in Britain are related to the descriptions of Tacitus from Germania of practices there -

In the assembly it is allowed to present accusations, and to prosecute capital offences. Punishments vary according to the quality of the crime. Traitors and deserters they hang upon trees. Cowards, and sluggards, and unnatural prostitutes they smother in mud and bogs under an heap of hurdles. Such diversity in their executions has this view, that in punishing of glaring iniquities, it behooves likewise to display them to sight; but effeminacy and pollution must be buried and concealed...

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2995/2995-h/2995-h.htm