Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
The eve of Beltane is traditionally known in Germany is Walpurgisnacht, the time for the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Walpurgis (or Walpurga) in Eichstätt. Walpurgis was born in England, but came to Germany as a missionary. According to legend, the 8th-century Germans were still largely practicing their indigenous Norse religion, but I don’t know how historically accurate this is. Her tomb is said to exude a holy oil that cures sickness, the original reason for pilgrimages to her burial place.
The 8th-century abbess was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church on the date of the first of May. Her feast day is an excuse for a Halloween-like spring festival that often includes bonfires and/or fireworks and leaving out gift of bread spread with honey and butter for phantom hounds. The bonfires are said to ward off witches, the plague, whooping cough, and rabies. The 30th of April is considered to be a Hexennacht, or witches’ sabbath night.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote about Walpurgisnacht in Faust:
“Now to the Brocken the witches ride;
The stubble is gold and the corn is green;
There is the carnival crew to be seen,
And Squire Urianus will come to preside.” Brocken is the highest peak in the Harz mountain range.
In Bram Stoker’s short story “Dracula’s Guest,” the Englishman visiting Transylvania (not given a name in the short story, but Jonathan Harker in the novel) arrives on Walpurgisnacht. The villagers warn him not to be outside of his hotel after dark.
Other European countries that observe some version of Walpurgisnacht tradition are Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. In Europe, the first of May is typically the Labor Day holiday; the U.S. is the oddball for having its Labor Day at the end of the summer.
This is the latest preview of a work in progress tentatively titled Almanac of Bad Days. For the origin of the project, see this post. Past installments:
If you'd rather read something cheerful and literary rather than historical bummers, please visit my Ko-Fi feed.
April 8, 1994, South Bend: On my last real day of spring break, I woke up rather late in the morning, then had some leftover Taco Bell for breakfast. I took Maggie the dog for a walk without incident, which was a shame because I was hoping there would be incident. When I got back I turned on MTV and involuntarily learned that Kurt Cobain had been found dead at his home in Seattle. Very sad, not only that he left behind a wife and a very young daughter but also that Nirvana only had time to record four albums.
April 8, 1997: 49-year-old singer/songwriter Laura Nyro dies of ovarian cancer. Nyro’s mother Gilda Mirsky Nigro had also died of ovarian cancer at the age of 49.
April 10, 1931: Lebanese-American novelist Kahlil Gibran dies at age 48 of cirrhosis and tuberculosis.
April 10, 1962: Stu Sutcliffe, the 21-year-old Scottish musician and original Beatles bass player, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. This internal injury, a ruptured aneurysm, may have been related to a head injury Sutcliffe suffered in 1961 as a result of a street fight in which John Lennon also suffered minor injuries.
April 10, 2003: When the United States invades the Iraqi capital of Baghdad to depose Saddam Hussein, officials at the Iraqi National Library and Archives fear that its archives of papers related to Hussein and his Ba’athist Party will incriminate them. They hire local people, many of them poor and likely motivated by the money, to loot and set fire to the library. These acts destroy about 60% of the archives and 25% of the library materials, including one of the oldest known copies of the Koran.
April 12, 1204: Christian Crusaders turn on the Christian capital of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople, in three days of looting and burning. The rampage destroys the Library of Constantinople and other priceless works of art and ancient artifacts.
April 14, 1922: Shortly after she hears a radio program on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes his Spiritualist beliefs, a New Jersey woman named Maude Fancher decides she wants to live in the spirit world with her 2-year-old son Cecil. She kills Cecil, then attempts to kill herself by drinking a bottle of Lysol cleaning solution. Maude Fancher survives.
April 14, 1965: Perry Edward Smith and Dick Hickok are executed by hanging by the state of Kansas for the murders of the Clutter family on November 15, 1959.
April 15, 1888: English poet Matthew Arnold dies. He has suffered a heart attack while chasing after a streetcar.
April 16, 1689: Playwright Aphra Behn dies. She is 48 years old.
April 17, 1998: Linda McCartney dies of breast cancer that has spread to her liver. She’s 56 years old.
April 18, 1906: The Great San Francisco Earthquake strikes Northern California. About 80% of the city is destroyed. The collapse of so many buildings and subsequent fires are responsible for around 3,000 deaths. Fire chief Dennis T. Sullivan was among the victims of the earthquake, so the interim fire chief requested help from the U.S. military. Both psychologist Henry James and writer H.G. Wells (on his first visit to the United States) remarked on the positive attitude and general helpfulness of the survivors in the rebuilding effort.
April 18, 1966: A fire at the Jewish Theological Seminary library in Manhattan destroys 70,000 books. Fortunately, most of these were additional copies of books housed on the ground floor of the library, which was not damaged in the fire. The library’s collection of rare manuscripts is also unharmed.
April 19, 1824: George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron, dies of malaria while fighting in Greece for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. He is 36 years old.
April 21, 1910: Mark Twain dies in Redding, Connecticut, as Jill Badonsky writes in The Awe-manac, “just one day after Halley’s Comet’s perihelion.” The author born Samuel Langhorne Clemens is quoted as having said, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it.”
April 21, 1978: English folk-rock singer Sandy (Alexandria) Denny dies at age 31 from head injuries sustained from a fall down some stairs at her home. Denny, who had bipolar disorder, was known to use falls as a form of self-harm and had sustained a previous head injury from another fall down the stairs. Denny was being treated for headaches with a medication known to mix poorly with alcohol, so it’s unclear if Denny’s ultimate fall was an act of self-harm or an accident precipitated by mixing her medication with alcohol.
April 21, 2016: The musician who performs as Prince (Prince Rogers Nelson) is found dead in an elevator inside his home. He has apparently passed away from taking pills of the opioid medication hydrocodone, to which he was addicted, which were counterfeit and laced with fentanyl. He is 57 years old.
April 27, 1932: Poet Hart Crane, age 32, dies by suicide by drowning in the Gulf of Mexico. He jumps off the steam ship on which he’s traveling from Mexico to New York. Crane is believed to be heavily intoxicated when he jumps and had recently been badly beaten when he made advances on a male crew member. His body is never recovered.
April 27, 2000: Broadway actress and dance music singer Vicki Sue Robinson dies of cancer at the age of 45.
April 29, 1986: A fire at the Los Angeles Public Library’s Central Library destroys 400,000 books and other circulating materials.
