Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
raw-head and bloody-bones en · PROPN
Meanings
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A malicious bogeyman (or two bogeymen) formerly used to frighten children into good behaviour.
In his New View of London (1708), Hatton assures us that hackney coachmen in the City were wont to swear "by Gog and Magog" [...] Some apprentices, he tells us, were as "frighted at the names of Gog and Magog as little children are at the terrible sound of Raw-head and Bloody-bones"[.]
1928, Lewis Spence, Mysteries of Britain, page vii. 169:
Forms