October 16, 2023 • 24 mins
The custom of burying an animal under the foundations of a house is not only very widespread, found in Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, Finland and beyond, but is also very old, dating back to the Indo-Europeans of the Bronze Age Europe. It even spread as far away as America and India! In this video I trace the customs origins and dispersal and explain the magical function of the animal and human sacrifices underneath the home.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, welcome to survive the jive. What would you do if you found
a dead animal under your house?A friend of mine, while renovating his
house, encountered an old burlap sack, and when he looked inside, it
contained the petrified body of a deadcat. And he told me about this,
(00:20):
knowing that I know all about thissort of folky practices, and I
informed him that this is quite acommon occurrence in Britain, where these dead
cats or sometimes horse skulls or bits, cow's heads or horse heads placed under
the house, or cat's bodies inthe walls, or cavities in the walls,
and these are apatropet, which meansthey are intended to ward off evil,
(00:43):
they protect the house. What Ididn't know is how widespread this custom
is and how ancient it is,so they I'm going to give you some
examples of this bizarre custom of buryingsacrificial animals under the house, some from
modern times, but many going backall the way to pagan times and right
(01:06):
into the furthest depths of prehistory tothe Indo Europeans. But first we're going
to look at the folklaw concerning thispractice, mainly from Ireland and Britain and
Scandinavia, and how even that spreadto America. So before you start digging
up your foundations to check if there'sa dead horse there, watch this video.
(01:30):
The modern folklore concerning this practice ofa so called building deposits or burying
a sacrificial animal or person under thefoundations of the house is today mostly associated
with the folklaw of Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, but also Lithuania, Latvia
and Germany. And also it's foundin America to a lesser extent, or
(01:55):
was until recently. But when we'relooking at the ancient examples in ourchaeology,
then it seems that it begins inthe Bronze Age. It didn't happen in
the Stone Age, and the BronzeAges a period when Europe was changing quite
a lot, and an introduction ofnew customs associated with the Indo Europeans were
being introduced at different parts of thecontinent. The custom becomes much more common
(02:22):
in the Iron Age. During theIron Age there seems to have been a
trend towards depositing only specific parts ofthe animal, whereas earlier there'd been the
entire animal and that could be usuallythe skull of a horse and its legs,
or perhaps also the tail. Inthe Iron Age, you often find
that these animal deposits are underneath thepost holes which you hold up the walls
(02:45):
of the house the edges, whereasmodern examples can be more placed on cornerstones
of a house or under thresholds ofa door. In both cases there seems
to be a concern with the borderof the property and securing the edges and
the borders of the property and strengtheningits spiritual defenses. Modern examples and the
(03:07):
explanations that people give in folk customsfor why they're doing this today would lead
us to apply those same explanations tothe ancient examples as well, and that
explanation is usually that there is somekind of protection from witchcraft. The horse
will protect you from witchcraft, butthe modern reasons can also include good luck
(03:29):
or appeasement of certain entities that liveand that on the land or in the
house that need to be plicated inorder to protect the people living in the
house from that entity. This customis actually very common across Britain and Ireland,
all the British isles. Sometimes thereare actually more than one skull,
but loads of skulls deposited together.For example, there are thirty to forty
(03:53):
horse skulls regularly arranged under the floorof an old house in Suffolk, and
that's in England, and this case, when it was found, is usually
argued to be a form of acousticsbenefits an acoustic deposit. So this is
a variant of this practice where forsome reason people believed in Britain and Ireland
that burying lots of horse skulls underthe house will make the acoustics better.
(04:16):
So obviously that not usually just ahouse. That usually only happens in a
communal building like a hotel or something. Another example of this is in Wales,
in a house that was rebuilt ineighteen seventy, they found forty horseheads
taken from the floor of what hadoriginally been a hotel. So therefore it's
possible that this was an acoustic deposit. I think that this acoustic explanation is
(04:42):
only applicable in some cases, andit's very much it's only in cases when
there's many skulls and it's in acommunal building like a dance hall or a
hotel. In the British Isles,in folklore, the horse is often associated
with good luck, and there's abelief that horses can bring luck to the
house. That's also manifested in thecustom of leaving horseshoes on your house,
which also has a separate explanation associatingwith iron being a ward against evil in
(05:09):
many cultures. The Brits brought thiscustom to the United States when they migrated
there. There was a horse skullfound under a house in South Deerfield and
Massachusetts, and in its eye socketwas a bit of paper with the names
of the family of Colonel David MasonBryant, who moved into that home in
eighteen forty eight, and Bryant wasfrom an English family, and that shows
(05:31):
that in the nineteenth century, Englishpeople were bringing this custom into America.
The earliest historical examples we have recordedin the British ours concern medieval stories.
One of them is a medieval Scottishstory of Oran of Iona, which also
has some overlap with Irish folklore.So of Iona was the brother, or
(05:54):
the son or the companion of SaintColumba who lived in the sixth century,
and it said he was the firstChristian buried at the Pagan Viking burial ground
on the island of Iona. Oneversion of his myth, which is very
popular in Scotland, concerns the monasticchurch on Iona apparently couldn't be built because
(06:15):
it kept collapsing, and a voicetold Saint Columba that a human sacrifice was
required, and so Orn his sonor whatever brother or whatever he is,
volunteered to be buried alive in apit beneath the foundations of the house.
And in other versions of the story, the chapel could not be built because
of an evil spirit until a humanwas sacrificed and buried under the foundation,
(06:40):
whether Orn or someone else, andafter that the chapel stood firm. So
you can see some clear parallels withthe modern custom of burying horse under that
foundation, and of course the ancientBronze Age and Iron Age Celtic practices of
doing the same thing. Romanians havea very similar story to the medieval Scottish
story. It's a Romanian folk storyconcerning someone called the master builder Manula.
(07:08):
I can't sorry if I mispronounced theRomanian name. Manalee was the chief architect
of the Courtier de Arges monastery inVallachia. However, you pronounced that that's
in Romania. So, according tothe legend, Manilat has a dream that
they must sacrifice the next person whovisits the building site or the building will
(07:30):
not stand. The monastery will collapseas soon as it's built. So the
next morning, the first visitor is, much to Manala's dismay, his own
beautiful young wife, and he triesto pray to God to say, don't
let her come. Send winds andrains to stop her coming, which God
does, But the determined and dedicatedyoung wife comes anyway to the building site,
(07:51):
wanting to bring sandwiches and food forher husband. And when she gets
there, of course Manalei has tohonor his promise and he has his own
wife buried alive in the walls ofthe monastery or the foundations of the monastery.
It's a very sad story. It'sprobably not true, so that's good,
(08:11):
but it does reflect a real beliefof the sacrifice of a human or
an animal being essential for maintaining theintegrity of the structure of a new building.
Going further back into the Bronze Age, now I said that this Northern
European custom begins in Bronze Age examples, but it wasn't limited to Bronze Age
Europe because high cast Indians and Iranianstoday descend from a late Bronze Age people
(08:41):
who lived in Central Asia that areknown as the Arians, and they had
their origin in early Bronze Age NorthernEurope the Corded Whare culture, and they
migrated from Northeastern Europe into the CentralAsian step where they they are identified first
(09:01):
with the Sintashtar culture of the SouthUrals and later with the Andronovo culture of
Central Asia. And it's these peoplewho migrated later into India and Iran and
brought the languages and cultures associated withthe so called Indo Aryan languages of India
and the Iranic languages of the steppeand of Iran. One custom we can
(09:22):
see archaeologically did exist among Sintashtar andAndronovo is this burying under the foundations.
Here's a quote on the matter fromthe archaeologist Krismina in her book Origins of
the Indo Iranians. There are alsoexamples of human sacrifice, often of small
children buried under the floor or ina special annex, that are known from
(09:45):
the Andronova culture. This right canbe explained in terms of the early Indians
belief that the universe was comprised ofthe parts of the body of the first
man Purusha. The whole house isthen a microcosm a model of the universe
in miniature means that the construction ofa house requires the same type of sacrifice.
The vedic Aryans in India rejected thisbloody rite. They simply drew a
(10:07):
parusha on the place of the futurehouse. But the right of ritual killing
was preserved for the construction of templesand royal palaces in some parts of South
Asia up to the twentieth century.So I suppose it did then exist in
parts of India. But as forcintash Dar, it says here here were
(10:28):
numerous ritual burials of children, dog, cattle, sheep and goat, especially
kids meaning young goats, not humanchildren. But they did have human children
as sacrifices. Vessels are found indefensive ditches. Traces of massive fires and
destruction, apparently caught by warfare anddemanding the rebuilding of the settlement, have
(10:50):
been found on many sites. Whatthat shows is that there's a continuity of
the culture of the Late Bronze AgeIndo Europeans in Central Asia of their early
Bronze Age ancestors in Europe. Andit's from those early Bronze Age Indo Europeans
that this custom, whether it's foundin Asia or in Europe, always derives.
(11:11):
And by the way, the Andronovolive about four thousand years ago,
whereas their ancestors in the corded workculture we're talking five thousand years ago or
more. So that's a really oldcustom to survived so well in so many
different countries India, Romania, Scotland, Ireland. But there's more. I'm
going to tell you about some moreexamples. Now, Ireland has one of
(11:33):
the richest traditions of burying animals underthe house foundations that survives to the modern
day. All throughout old homes inIreland, horses heads with copper coins are
found buried under the hearth. Oldfolks claimed it was for acoustics and song
and dance, but there's another explanationthat it was for luck and protection.
(11:58):
So this practice only started fading outin the early twentieth century. It's not
common now. It's not common forbuilders in Ireland to do this anymore,
but it's very common when you're renovatingours to find evidence that it was done,
because it was done for hundreds andhundreds of years, thousands of years
up until the early twentieth century.And of course the Iris brought this custom
(12:18):
to America too. The British andthe Irish both brought this custom to America,
so you can find examples in Americaand also in Australia, by the
way, especially the cat cats Imentioned earlier. The British brought that custom
to some Australian houses, so youoccasionally find a petrified cat preserved in the
walls of an Australian house. Butin Ireland it seems to have be a
way to consecrate one's home, andother animals can sometimes be used in Ireland,
(12:43):
including hares, which also are asort of magical animal in Celtic folklore.
Sean mcmathomer of County Clare stated,I used to hear the old people
say that it was put there forthe purpose of giving a fine, herty
hearty echo to house when people wouldbe talking or walking inside the house,
but particularly they put their head withthe coppers in the floor so that they're
(13:07):
dancing would sound better for the oldpeople who were all for sport. That's
an interesting idea. It corresponds towhat's in Britain with the acoustic theory was
popular among folklorists in Ireland, butI can't possibly explain all of it,
especially the ancient examples. But they'reputting the Irish coins inside the skull to
make the acoustics even more. Youknow, there's a soundbox beneath the floor
(13:31):
basically of a skull with a cavityinside with coins. It's possible that would
increase the acoustics, but I'm notreally sure. I have enough trouble trying
to get the acoustics right in thisroom. Perhaps I need to get some
horse skulls in here. The retiredkeeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum
of Ireland, Amon Kelly Rode anarchaeology Island that horses have been credited with
(13:52):
the ability to see ghosts and otherevil spirits, and this may account for
the practice of placing a horse skullor skull beneath a flagstone next to the
hearth. In Scandinavia. There arealso many many customs associated like this,
so it certainly is not limited toCeltic countries. Burying the skulls of horses
and cattle under houses and barns isattested from at least the late eleven hundreds.
(14:16):
In historical sources, putting a horseskull in the bonfire on Saint John's
Eve, which is basically Midsummer theMidsummer celebration supposedly prevented witches from flying over
the bonfire. They had to walkinto it instead of it be killed.
So the association there of horses asa ward against witches, as we've seen
in Britain, is also present inScandinavia. There are Viking Age examples of
(14:39):
this practice too. A pig's headwas deposited beneath one of the gates at
Agasbori in Scandinavia. Some folklorists havealso recorded an explanation among people for why
they do this, as the acousticexplanation. You know that they used to
put them under the threshing floors inorder to improve the echo and let the
(15:01):
sound of solid threshing be heard bythe neighbors. Don't really know why threshing
it is necessary for threatening to beheard by your neighbors, but that must
be some Scandinavian custom where that wasconsidered important. But the widespread explanation of
threshing and so many different locals whenScandinavians Ireland probably means that it does have
an ancient providence. But yeah,I'm not convinced that it's always the reason,
(15:24):
because there's always this sort of wardagainst evil explanation which is very old
too. Scandinavians also used to usethese kind of animals to influence the weather.
There's an example of using animals thathave been struck by lightning to protect
a house from lightning. In Noordarup, a little north of Riba, a
(15:45):
modern family moved into an older farmwhich they took over in two thousand and
three, and while you know,going over the house, they discovered the
dried remains of a calf in theattic, which I'll you'll see a picture
of it on screen now. Theformer owners of the house said that the
calf was once struck by lightning outin the field, and because it was
(16:07):
believed that lightning could not strike inthe same place twice, they moved the
dead calf up into the attic sothat future lightning strikes would never hurt the
house. I love that it's basicallylike a focused version of troll physics.
You know, lightning can't strike twicein one place. Put a lightning struck
cow in the attic problem. It'snot known how long the calf had been
(16:30):
lying there, could have been hundredsof years, but yeah, they left
it there because they didn't see anyreason to move it. In Scandinavia,
the horse's head is said to bea symbol of power, and the horse
in general has symbolized power and vitality, and it's also been a symbol of
the sun. Now I've talked aboutthis in two different videos, the ancient
solar significance of the horse and thechariot. One is my video on the
(16:55):
Shivik Tomb of Bronze Age Sweden,which you can see a lot about horses
the significance of the horse covings there. But also I've got entire video about
horse sacrifices in across Europe and ancienttimes and modern and that has a large
section on Scandinavian customs involving horse fightingand horse sacrifices. So the very very
(17:15):
important role of the horse in Germanicpagan religion, Nordic pagan religion is well
attested. Even the Romans made noteof the fact that the Germanic people were
using horses for telling the future,and they were used in divination basically,
and the ritual customs associated with horsesfor ensuring fertility survived into the modern era
(17:37):
and were common at in different partsof Norway and Sweden until very recently.
This aspect may have something to dowith the magical properties of horse skulls when
used in building deposits as well.The magic power of a horse's skull is
so widely known and it brings luckand also expels evil. So yeah,
(18:00):
I'm not happy when people try andsay that the horse gull must be there
for acoustic reasons every time, becausethere's so many magical explanations that are also
used in different contexts. In theIron Age, Germanic people such as Scandinavians
used to sacrifice horses to bogs andwetland areas, and the bog all watery
(18:25):
places are liminal spaces between one world, our world, and the next world,
and so it could be seen thatthe transfer of the horse sacrifice deposit
from a bog into the foundations ofa house is because the house, particularly
the doorway, and as I said, they're often found under the doorways the
(18:47):
house and the doorway can also bea liminal space, particularly doorways you transition
from one place to the next.It was actually common to bury horses under
the foundations in southern Scandinavia until recenttimes, just as it was in Britain,
whereas the specifically acoustic example of horseskull depositions in Scandinavia seems to be
(19:07):
more associated with churches. You'll findthem under the churches, also with threshing
barns, as I mentioned previously.So I think a good way to tell
the difference between the magical function andthe acoustic function is when if it's in
a communal building like a church,or if it's in and if there's many
skulls, then it's acoustic. Butif there's just one animal and it's in
a private home, it's probably amagical horse deposition intended to protect the house.
(19:33):
Very similar customs as you find inScandinavia are also found in Finland,
which some people even cause Scandinavia,but it's not technically Scandinavia. It's a
separate to that peninsula. But inFinland there's some difference in practices, so
they often deposit the rib bones withthe horse gull, and in one example
from eastern Finland, it specifies thefot custom requires that the lady of the
(19:56):
house has to secretly conceal a horsegull under the floor of a new building,
which is unique to Finland as faras I'm aware. Deposited horse gulls
and even whole skeletons of horses aresometimes found in the hearth constructs of old
houses. Until recently, in thegeographical area now known as Ostrobothnia, which
is actually mostly a Swedish part ofFinland, was occupied a lot by Swedes.
(20:18):
So you might assume therefore that thiscustom was brought to Finland by Swedes,
except that there are also lots ofexamples further east in Finland as well.
In Ostrobothnia you've got an entire horsewas found under a house in the
nineteen fifties, but you can seeeven as far away as Helsinki there are
(20:40):
also examples, so I don't thinkit's just Swedes doing it. The Finns
also have a unique local variant calledthe older horse, and in this case
they make a horse out of thewood from the older tree, and then
they have to paint eyes on itwith the blood of a woman who's recently
given earth, and then it becomesa magical kind of a horse. Wise
(21:03):
they can use to bless or cursehorses depending on how it's buried in the
stable. So if you bury itupside down in the stable, it can
curse the horses. I think youcan bury it the right way up,
then it can bless the horses.So that's uniquely finished. And it does
seem very similar to the other customs, so I think it's derived from the
same original tradition. So just inrecap if you live in Britain, Ireland,
(21:29):
Scandinavia or America, there's a goodchance that there is a horse sacrifice
underneath your home. Now. Thepeople are doing this in the early twentieth
century, you know, in nineteentwenty or whatever, didn't know that they
were doing something pagan. They probablydidn't have any idea. And I mean
the fact that it goes all theway back to the Bronze Age is only
(21:52):
recently being realized. This is anIndo European custom that has survived for five
thousand years up until recently. Ithas now died out. But I don't
see why it has to stay diedout. I tried to get the builder
when this office was being built intwenty twenty one. I tried to get
the builder to let me put askull under or something, but he wasn't
(22:14):
too keen on it. And anyway, the local farmer didn't have any spare
horse heads or cow heads that wecould use. But maybe the acoustics would
have been better if not. Ifyou don't like the acoustics of this video,
I do apologize if you can blamethe builder and the farmer for not
giving me a horse skull. Thishas been survived the jive. I hope
you found this edifying and interesting,and that you'll consider subscribing and following this
(22:38):
channel for more information about folklore andancient history and pagan customs survive into the
present day. There are so manyactually examples like this. One video I
highly recommend if you enjoyed this.One is called holy holes, and I
document the widespread practice of using holesin trees and holes in stones for various
(23:00):
magical practices that survives even today invarious parts of Britain and Scandinavia. But
this clearly has an ancient origin,probably going all the way back to the
Indo Europeans, because similar practices arefound in India as well. I just
find that absolutely astounding. That's suchthe perseverance and of these enduring customs that
(23:22):
not only survive Christianity but also surviveindustrialization and the modern world. It's only
with the twentieth century that they startto die out. And isn't that terrible.
That's more the more reason for usto bring them back. So yeah,
if you want to know more,subscribe watch some of my other videos.
Consider becoming a patron, because ifyou are a patron, you'll get
(23:45):
access to really special content and you'llget to talk to me personally if you're
a high teered patron in my voicechats that I do on Telegram. Thanks
a lot for watching. This hasbeen survived the Jive
Hello, welcome to survive the jive. What would you do if you found
a dead animal under your house?A friend of mine, while renovating his
house, encountered an old burlap sack, and when he looked inside, it
contained the petrified body of a deadcat. And he told me about this,
(00:20):
knowing that I know all about thissort of folky practices, and I
informed him that this is quite acommon occurrence in Britain, where these dead
cats or sometimes horse skulls or bits, cow's heads or horse heads placed under
the house, or cat's bodies inthe walls, or cavities in the walls,
and these are apatropet, which meansthey are intended to ward off evil,
(00:43):
they protect the house. What Ididn't know is how widespread this custom
is and how ancient it is,so they I'm going to give you some
examples of this bizarre custom of buryingsacrificial animals under the house, some from
modern times, but many going backall the way to pagan times and right
(01:06):
into the furthest depths of prehistory tothe Indo Europeans. But first we're going
to look at the folklaw concerning thispractice, mainly from Ireland and Britain and
Scandinavia, and how even that spreadto America. So before you start digging
up your foundations to check if there'sa dead horse there, watch this video.
(01:30):
The modern folklore concerning this practice ofa so called building deposits or burying
a sacrificial animal or person under thefoundations of the house is today mostly associated
with the folklaw of Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, but also Lithuania, Latvia
and Germany. And also it's foundin America to a lesser extent, or
(01:55):
was until recently. But when we'relooking at the ancient examples in ourchaeology,
then it seems that it begins inthe Bronze Age. It didn't happen in
the Stone Age, and the BronzeAges a period when Europe was changing quite
a lot, and an introduction ofnew customs associated with the Indo Europeans were
being introduced at different parts of thecontinent. The custom becomes much more common
(02:22):
in the Iron Age. During theIron Age there seems to have been a
trend towards depositing only specific parts ofthe animal, whereas earlier there'd been the
entire animal and that could be usuallythe skull of a horse and its legs,
or perhaps also the tail. Inthe Iron Age, you often find
that these animal deposits are underneath thepost holes which you hold up the walls
(02:45):
of the house the edges, whereasmodern examples can be more placed on cornerstones
of a house or under thresholds ofa door. In both cases there seems
to be a concern with the borderof the property and securing the edges and
the borders of the property and strengtheningits spiritual defenses. Modern examples and the
(03:07):
explanations that people give in folk customsfor why they're doing this today would lead
us to apply those same explanations tothe ancient examples as well, and that
explanation is usually that there is somekind of protection from witchcraft. The horse
will protect you from witchcraft, butthe modern reasons can also include good luck
(03:29):
or appeasement of certain entities that liveand that on the land or in the
house that need to be plicated inorder to protect the people living in the
house from that entity. This customis actually very common across Britain and Ireland,
all the British isles. Sometimes thereare actually more than one skull,
but loads of skulls deposited together.For example, there are thirty to forty
(03:53):
horse skulls regularly arranged under the floorof an old house in Suffolk, and
that's in England, and this case, when it was found, is usually
argued to be a form of acousticsbenefits an acoustic deposit. So this is
a variant of this practice where forsome reason people believed in Britain and Ireland
that burying lots of horse skulls underthe house will make the acoustics better.
(04:16):
So obviously that not usually just ahouse. That usually only happens in a
communal building like a hotel or something. Another example of this is in Wales,
in a house that was rebuilt ineighteen seventy, they found forty horseheads
taken from the floor of what hadoriginally been a hotel. So therefore it's
possible that this was an acoustic deposit. I think that this acoustic explanation is
(04:42):
only applicable in some cases, andit's very much it's only in cases when
there's many skulls and it's in acommunal building like a dance hall or a
hotel. In the British Isles,in folklore, the horse is often associated
with good luck, and there's abelief that horses can bring luck to the
house. That's also manifested in thecustom of leaving horseshoes on your house,
which also has a separate explanation associatingwith iron being a ward against evil in
(05:09):
many cultures. The Brits brought thiscustom to the United States when they migrated
there. There was a horse skullfound under a house in South Deerfield and
Massachusetts, and in its eye socketwas a bit of paper with the names
of the family of Colonel David MasonBryant, who moved into that home in
eighteen forty eight, and Bryant wasfrom an English family, and that shows
(05:31):
that in the nineteenth century, Englishpeople were bringing this custom into America.
The earliest historical examples we have recordedin the British ours concern medieval stories.
One of them is a medieval Scottishstory of Oran of Iona, which also
has some overlap with Irish folklore.So of Iona was the brother, or
(05:54):
the son or the companion of SaintColumba who lived in the sixth century,
and it said he was the firstChristian buried at the Pagan Viking burial ground
on the island of Iona. Oneversion of his myth, which is very
popular in Scotland, concerns the monasticchurch on Iona apparently couldn't be built because
(06:15):
it kept collapsing, and a voicetold Saint Columba that a human sacrifice was
required, and so Orn his sonor whatever brother or whatever he is,
volunteered to be buried alive in apit beneath the foundations of the house.
And in other versions of the story, the chapel could not be built because
of an evil spirit until a humanwas sacrificed and buried under the foundation,
(06:40):
whether Orn or someone else, andafter that the chapel stood firm. So
you can see some clear parallels withthe modern custom of burying horse under that
foundation, and of course the ancientBronze Age and Iron Age Celtic practices of
doing the same thing. Romanians havea very similar story to the medieval Scottish
story. It's a Romanian folk storyconcerning someone called the master builder Manula.
(07:08):
I can't sorry if I mispronounced theRomanian name. Manalee was the chief architect
of the Courtier de Arges monastery inVallachia. However, you pronounced that that's
in Romania. So, according tothe legend, Manilat has a dream that
they must sacrifice the next person whovisits the building site or the building will
(07:30):
not stand. The monastery will collapseas soon as it's built. So the
next morning, the first visitor is, much to Manala's dismay, his own
beautiful young wife, and he triesto pray to God to say, don't
let her come. Send winds andrains to stop her coming, which God
does, But the determined and dedicatedyoung wife comes anyway to the building site,
(07:51):
wanting to bring sandwiches and food forher husband. And when she gets
there, of course Manalei has tohonor his promise and he has his own
wife buried alive in the walls ofthe monastery or the foundations of the monastery.
It's a very sad story. It'sprobably not true, so that's good,
(08:11):
but it does reflect a real beliefof the sacrifice of a human or
an animal being essential for maintaining theintegrity of the structure of a new building.
Going further back into the Bronze Age, now I said that this Northern
European custom begins in Bronze Age examples, but it wasn't limited to Bronze Age
Europe because high cast Indians and Iranianstoday descend from a late Bronze Age people
(08:41):
who lived in Central Asia that areknown as the Arians, and they had
their origin in early Bronze Age NorthernEurope the Corded Whare culture, and they
migrated from Northeastern Europe into the CentralAsian step where they they are identified first
(09:01):
with the Sintashtar culture of the SouthUrals and later with the Andronovo culture of
Central Asia. And it's these peoplewho migrated later into India and Iran and
brought the languages and cultures associated withthe so called Indo Aryan languages of India
and the Iranic languages of the steppeand of Iran. One custom we can
(09:22):
see archaeologically did exist among Sintashtar andAndronovo is this burying under the foundations.
Here's a quote on the matter fromthe archaeologist Krismina in her book Origins of
the Indo Iranians. There are alsoexamples of human sacrifice, often of small
children buried under the floor or ina special annex, that are known from
(09:45):
the Andronova culture. This right canbe explained in terms of the early Indians
belief that the universe was comprised ofthe parts of the body of the first
man Purusha. The whole house isthen a microcosm a model of the universe
in miniature means that the construction ofa house requires the same type of sacrifice.
The vedic Aryans in India rejected thisbloody rite. They simply drew a
(10:07):
parusha on the place of the futurehouse. But the right of ritual killing
was preserved for the construction of templesand royal palaces in some parts of South
Asia up to the twentieth century.So I suppose it did then exist in
parts of India. But as forcintash Dar, it says here here were
(10:28):
numerous ritual burials of children, dog, cattle, sheep and goat, especially
kids meaning young goats, not humanchildren. But they did have human children
as sacrifices. Vessels are found indefensive ditches. Traces of massive fires and
destruction, apparently caught by warfare anddemanding the rebuilding of the settlement, have
(10:50):
been found on many sites. Whatthat shows is that there's a continuity of
the culture of the Late Bronze AgeIndo Europeans in Central Asia of their early
Bronze Age ancestors in Europe. Andit's from those early Bronze Age Indo Europeans
that this custom, whether it's foundin Asia or in Europe, always derives.
(11:11):
And by the way, the Andronovolive about four thousand years ago,
whereas their ancestors in the corded workculture we're talking five thousand years ago or
more. So that's a really oldcustom to survived so well in so many
different countries India, Romania, Scotland, Ireland. But there's more. I'm
going to tell you about some moreexamples. Now, Ireland has one of
(11:33):
the richest traditions of burying animals underthe house foundations that survives to the modern
day. All throughout old homes inIreland, horses heads with copper coins are
found buried under the hearth. Oldfolks claimed it was for acoustics and song
and dance, but there's another explanationthat it was for luck and protection.
(11:58):
So this practice only started fading outin the early twentieth century. It's not
common now. It's not common forbuilders in Ireland to do this anymore,
but it's very common when you're renovatingours to find evidence that it was done,
because it was done for hundreds andhundreds of years, thousands of years
up until the early twentieth century.And of course the Iris brought this custom
(12:18):
to America too. The British andthe Irish both brought this custom to America,
so you can find examples in Americaand also in Australia, by the
way, especially the cat cats Imentioned earlier. The British brought that custom
to some Australian houses, so youoccasionally find a petrified cat preserved in the
walls of an Australian house. Butin Ireland it seems to have be a
way to consecrate one's home, andother animals can sometimes be used in Ireland,
(12:43):
including hares, which also are asort of magical animal in Celtic folklore.
Sean mcmathomer of County Clare stated,I used to hear the old people
say that it was put there forthe purpose of giving a fine, herty
hearty echo to house when people wouldbe talking or walking inside the house,
but particularly they put their head withthe coppers in the floor so that they're
(13:07):
dancing would sound better for the oldpeople who were all for sport. That's
an interesting idea. It corresponds towhat's in Britain with the acoustic theory was
popular among folklorists in Ireland, butI can't possibly explain all of it,
especially the ancient examples. But they'reputting the Irish coins inside the skull to
make the acoustics even more. Youknow, there's a soundbox beneath the floor
(13:31):
basically of a skull with a cavityinside with coins. It's possible that would
increase the acoustics, but I'm notreally sure. I have enough trouble trying
to get the acoustics right in thisroom. Perhaps I need to get some
horse skulls in here. The retiredkeeper of Irish Antiquities at the National Museum
of Ireland, Amon Kelly Rode anarchaeology Island that horses have been credited with
(13:52):
the ability to see ghosts and otherevil spirits, and this may account for
the practice of placing a horse skullor skull beneath a flagstone next to the
hearth. In Scandinavia. There arealso many many customs associated like this,
so it certainly is not limited toCeltic countries. Burying the skulls of horses
and cattle under houses and barns isattested from at least the late eleven hundreds.
(14:16):
In historical sources, putting a horseskull in the bonfire on Saint John's
Eve, which is basically Midsummer theMidsummer celebration supposedly prevented witches from flying over
the bonfire. They had to walkinto it instead of it be killed.
So the association there of horses asa ward against witches, as we've seen
in Britain, is also present inScandinavia. There are Viking Age examples of
(14:39):
this practice too. A pig's headwas deposited beneath one of the gates at
Agasbori in Scandinavia. Some folklorists havealso recorded an explanation among people for why
they do this, as the acousticexplanation. You know that they used to
put them under the threshing floors inorder to improve the echo and let the
(15:01):
sound of solid threshing be heard bythe neighbors. Don't really know why threshing
it is necessary for threatening to beheard by your neighbors, but that must
be some Scandinavian custom where that wasconsidered important. But the widespread explanation of
threshing and so many different locals whenScandinavians Ireland probably means that it does have
an ancient providence. But yeah,I'm not convinced that it's always the reason,
(15:24):
because there's always this sort of wardagainst evil explanation which is very old
too. Scandinavians also used to usethese kind of animals to influence the weather.
There's an example of using animals thathave been struck by lightning to protect
a house from lightning. In Noordarup, a little north of Riba, a
(15:45):
modern family moved into an older farmwhich they took over in two thousand and
three, and while you know,going over the house, they discovered the
dried remains of a calf in theattic, which I'll you'll see a picture
of it on screen now. Theformer owners of the house said that the
calf was once struck by lightning outin the field, and because it was
(16:07):
believed that lightning could not strike inthe same place twice, they moved the
dead calf up into the attic sothat future lightning strikes would never hurt the
house. I love that it's basicallylike a focused version of troll physics.
You know, lightning can't strike twicein one place. Put a lightning struck
cow in the attic problem. It'snot known how long the calf had been
(16:30):
lying there, could have been hundredsof years, but yeah, they left
it there because they didn't see anyreason to move it. In Scandinavia,
the horse's head is said to bea symbol of power, and the horse
in general has symbolized power and vitality, and it's also been a symbol of
the sun. Now I've talked aboutthis in two different videos, the ancient
solar significance of the horse and thechariot. One is my video on the
(16:55):
Shivik Tomb of Bronze Age Sweden,which you can see a lot about horses
the significance of the horse covings there. But also I've got entire video about
horse sacrifices in across Europe and ancienttimes and modern and that has a large
section on Scandinavian customs involving horse fightingand horse sacrifices. So the very very
(17:15):
important role of the horse in Germanicpagan religion, Nordic pagan religion is well
attested. Even the Romans made noteof the fact that the Germanic people were
using horses for telling the future,and they were used in divination basically,
and the ritual customs associated with horsesfor ensuring fertility survived into the modern era
(17:37):
and were common at in different partsof Norway and Sweden until very recently.
This aspect may have something to dowith the magical properties of horse skulls when
used in building deposits as well.The magic power of a horse's skull is
so widely known and it brings luckand also expels evil. So yeah,
(18:00):
I'm not happy when people try andsay that the horse gull must be there
for acoustic reasons every time, becausethere's so many magical explanations that are also
used in different contexts. In theIron Age, Germanic people such as Scandinavians
used to sacrifice horses to bogs andwetland areas, and the bog all watery
(18:25):
places are liminal spaces between one world, our world, and the next world,
and so it could be seen thatthe transfer of the horse sacrifice deposit
from a bog into the foundations ofa house is because the house, particularly
the doorway, and as I said, they're often found under the doorways the
(18:47):
house and the doorway can also bea liminal space, particularly doorways you transition
from one place to the next.It was actually common to bury horses under
the foundations in southern Scandinavia until recenttimes, just as it was in Britain,
whereas the specifically acoustic example of horseskull depositions in Scandinavia seems to be
(19:07):
more associated with churches. You'll findthem under the churches, also with threshing
barns, as I mentioned previously.So I think a good way to tell
the difference between the magical function andthe acoustic function is when if it's in
a communal building like a church,or if it's in and if there's many
skulls, then it's acoustic. Butif there's just one animal and it's in
a private home, it's probably amagical horse deposition intended to protect the house.
(19:33):
Very similar customs as you find inScandinavia are also found in Finland,
which some people even cause Scandinavia,but it's not technically Scandinavia. It's a
separate to that peninsula. But inFinland there's some difference in practices, so
they often deposit the rib bones withthe horse gull, and in one example
from eastern Finland, it specifies thefot custom requires that the lady of the
(19:56):
house has to secretly conceal a horsegull under the floor of a new building,
which is unique to Finland as faras I'm aware. Deposited horse gulls
and even whole skeletons of horses aresometimes found in the hearth constructs of old
houses. Until recently, in thegeographical area now known as Ostrobothnia, which
is actually mostly a Swedish part ofFinland, was occupied a lot by Swedes.
(20:18):
So you might assume therefore that thiscustom was brought to Finland by Swedes,
except that there are also lots ofexamples further east in Finland as well.
In Ostrobothnia you've got an entire horsewas found under a house in the
nineteen fifties, but you can seeeven as far away as Helsinki there are
(20:40):
also examples, so I don't thinkit's just Swedes doing it. The Finns
also have a unique local variant calledthe older horse, and in this case
they make a horse out of thewood from the older tree, and then
they have to paint eyes on itwith the blood of a woman who's recently
given earth, and then it becomesa magical kind of a horse. Wise
(21:03):
they can use to bless or cursehorses depending on how it's buried in the
stable. So if you bury itupside down in the stable, it can
curse the horses. I think youcan bury it the right way up,
then it can bless the horses.So that's uniquely finished. And it does
seem very similar to the other customs, so I think it's derived from the
same original tradition. So just inrecap if you live in Britain, Ireland,
(21:29):
Scandinavia or America, there's a goodchance that there is a horse sacrifice
underneath your home. Now. Thepeople are doing this in the early twentieth
century, you know, in nineteentwenty or whatever, didn't know that they
were doing something pagan. They probablydidn't have any idea. And I mean
the fact that it goes all theway back to the Bronze Age is only
(21:52):
recently being realized. This is anIndo European custom that has survived for five
thousand years up until recently. Ithas now died out. But I don't
see why it has to stay diedout. I tried to get the builder
when this office was being built intwenty twenty one. I tried to get
the builder to let me put askull under or something, but he wasn't
(22:14):
too keen on it. And anyway, the local farmer didn't have any spare
horse heads or cow heads that wecould use. But maybe the acoustics would
have been better if not. Ifyou don't like the acoustics of this video,
I do apologize if you can blamethe builder and the farmer for not
giving me a horse skull. Thishas been survived the jive. I hope
you found this edifying and interesting,and that you'll consider subscribing and following this
(22:38):
channel for more information about folklore andancient history and pagan customs survive into the
present day. There are so manyactually examples like this. One video I
highly recommend if you enjoyed this.One is called holy holes, and I
document the widespread practice of using holesin trees and holes in stones for various
(23:00):
magical practices that survives even today invarious parts of Britain and Scandinavia. But
this clearly has an ancient origin,probably going all the way back to the
Indo Europeans, because similar practices arefound in India as well. I just
find that absolutely astounding. That's suchthe perseverance and of these enduring customs that
(23:22):
not only survive Christianity but also surviveindustrialization and the modern world. It's only
with the twentieth century that they startto die out. And isn't that terrible.
That's more the more reason for usto bring them back. So yeah,
if you want to know more,subscribe watch some of my other videos.
Consider becoming a patron, because ifyou are a patron, you'll get
(23:45):
access to really special content and you'llget to talk to me personally if you're
a high teered patron in my voicechats that I do on Telegram. Thanks
a lot for watching. This hasbeen survived the Jive
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