Bugbear

Use in the book

In the digression on imagination, the question “what strange formes of Bugbears” asks what a fearful person will conceive in darkness. Burton connects the shapes with the emotions: he attributes to Lavater the claim that fear is the greatest cause of apparitions and to Weyer the claim that fear produces especially strong imagination. The preceding account also admits the devil’s illusions, so this is not a general declaration that every apparition is merely imaginary. In the subsequent chapter on fear, Cardan supplies a reported case of lifelong melancholy following the sight of a bugbear. That case follows the explanation that people imagine what they fear; the nearby example of Augustus needing company in darkness puts an emperor beside the gendered generalization about women and children.

The education passage gives the frightening figure a human user. Parents and carers scare crying or unruly children “with beggars, bugbears, and hobgoblins.” The beggar is a person pressed into the threatening list, not another imaginary creature. Burton censures the adults and invokes Lavater for the claim that fear produces illness, cries during sleep and enduring harm. His final prescription is qualified: such things ought not to be done at all, or only sparingly and upon just occasion. The passage belongs to a larger criticism of excessive severity in upbringing and schooling, not an isolated catalogue of ghosts.

Among symptoms, the apparently external presence is distinguished from the sufferer’s certainty. He imagines visions “which to his thinking he certainly sees,” including bugbears, ghosts and goblins. Burton changes from plural sufferers to an illustrative singular; he does not himself certify the creatures’ presence. The next contrasting example loves darkness and avoids light, so even the fear of darkness is not a universal trait of every person described as melancholy.

The whole-body melancholy discussion supplies a bodily explanation and a literary amplification. Fumes from corrupted blood are said to disturb the mind; if the illness is far advanced, Apuleius’s curse becomes a description of the sufferer’s thoughts and sights. Burton’s body paraphrase calls these “all the bugbears of the night.” The margin makes sufferers heap spectres before their own eyes and imagine them. The supplied editor identifies an adaptation of Apuleius, Apologia 64.1–2: the curse against an enemy has been altered in person and syntax, while bones and fairy-babes in Burton’s body are absent from the quoted Latin. A borrowed curse is thus made to illustrate a historical symptom account, not presented as a verified report that spirits pursue the patient.

A sharply different use occurs in the attack on atheism. Heaven, hell, resurrection and a future world are regarded as “Poets tales, Bugbears” by the people Burton attacks. The comparison reduces doctrines to bogeys that frighten the credulous. The governing “they esteem” matters: this is an attributed dismissive judgement, not Burton’s own rejection of the afterlife. His surrounding language is openly polemical, and the Horatian phrase about Apella invokes an anti-Jewish stereotype; neither the classification nor that stereotype should become the article’s neutral voice.

The final consolation returns to sights and sounds felt as outward disturbances. Devils, bugbears and Mormeluches “may” arise from inward causes: a brain disturbed by lack of sleep or nourishment can display shapes suggested by fear and disordered imagination. The mirror comparison describes an appearance before the senses, not an external object independently established. The continuation retains another possibility, demonic interference permitted and bounded by God, and then argues for mixed remedies where causes are mixed. Possible natural origin, limited demonic agency and the sufferer’s experience must remain distinct.

Related entries

Daemon and genius; Demonic apparitions; Imagination; Fear; Form. Form’s form · formes · local use 4 already explains the imagined formes, and Fear’s fright explains fright, including Burton’s qualification. These shared passages acquire a bugbear-focused route here, not a claim to newly discovered occurrences.

Places to read

1. Subsection 2. The Power of Imagination · paragraphs 12–16fearful imagination, attributed causes and imagined shapes.
2. Subsection 5. Fear as a Cause · paragraphs 23–27fear’s effects and Cardan’s reported bugbear case; the supplied page qualification is retained.
3. Subsection 2 Education as a Cause of Melancholy · paragraphs 38–43upbringing, deliberate frightening and the qualification on its use; sequence and printed page numbers differ.
4. Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraphs 35–41the sufferer’s conviction, imagined appearances and a contrasting preference for darkness.
5. Subsection 3 Symptoms of Melancholy Abounding Throughout the Body · paragraphs 23–26whole-body melancholy, the Apuleius adaptation and its original margin.
6. Member 2 Subsection 1 Religious Melancholy From Deficiency: Those Affected—Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, the Worldly and Complacent, Carnalists, All Impious People, Impenitent Sinners, and Others · paragraphs 29–35Bugbears as a reported dismissal of religious doctrines.
7. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 1–4inward causes, Mormeluches, bounded demonic power and mixed remedies.

In this edition

The same English noun receives several context-sensitive renderings: Bugbears becomes “bogeys” in the imagination question; “a bugbear” becomes “a frightening apparition” in Cardan’s example; bugbears becomes “bogeymen” in the warning about frightening children, but “terrifying apparitions” among perceived symptoms. The night’s bugbears become “the night’s bogeys”. In the attack on atheism “bogeys” preserves the dismissive attribution, while the closing “bogeymen and spectres” translates the distinct nouns bugbears and Mormeluches.

An accompanying note explains the apparent repetition in the education paragraph: the modern text translates Lavater’s Latin and then retains Burton’s own English restatement. Those are separate textual acts. Likewise the accompanying note contains an original marginal Latin quotation, its editorial translation and an editorial statement about adaptation; a Burton label on the composite note does not make its English translation Burton’s wording. An accompanying note supplies the precise Apuleius comparison. An accompanying note explains the symptom passage’s shift of number and its contextual rendering of “black men” as “dark figures.” These editorial explanations clarify the supplied text; they do not independently authenticate the historical anecdotes.

bugbear

A frightening bogey or apparition, imagined, invoked to frighten, or believed to be seen.

Grammar: English count noun; singular bugbear and plural bugbears, including capitalized Bugbears.

Original text: “what strange formes of Bugbears, Devils, Witches, Goblins?” In the modern column: “What strange shapes of bogeys, devils, witches and goblins!” The objects imagined by a frightened person in darkness. Lavater and Weyer supply attributed explanations; the prior passage also retains demonic illusion. Bugbears alone aligns with bogeys; the whole rhetorical question becomes an exclamation.

Original text: “by sight of a bugbear”. In the modern column: “by the sight of a frightening apparition”. A frightening appearance in Cardan’s reported example of ensuing lifelong melancholy. Burton reports Cardan, not an independently verified diagnosis; the causal account follows feared things imagined. The indefinite noun phrase becomes a frightening apparition, not a modern annoyance.

Original text: “Some fright their children with beggars, bugbears, and hobgoblins”. In the modern column: “Some frighten their children with beggars, bogeymen and hobgoblins”. Bogeys used by adults as instruments for frightening children. Some adults are agents, children recipients; the conclusion allows no use or sparing use upon just occasion. Bugbears aligns with bogeymen; fright separately becomes frighten.

Original text: “which to his thinking he certainly sees, bugbears”. In the modern column: “which he is convinced he actually sees, terrifying apparitions”. Frightening figures believed to be seen among imagined visions. The illustrative sufferer believes the sights; the narrator does not verify their external existence. Bugbears becomes terrifying apparitions; the preceding clause preserves subjective conviction.

Original text: “all the bugbears of the night, and terrors”. In the modern column: “all the night’s bogeys and terrors”. Frightening nocturnal appearances in Burton’s adapted curse and symptom description. The application is conditional on being far gone; the humoral cause and Apuleius attribution remain historical claims. Bugbears becomes bogeys; of the night is recast as a possessive.

Original text: “divels, bugbears, and Mormeluches”. In the modern column: “devils, bogeymen and spectres”. Bogeys among appearances experienced as outward disturbances. May arise from inward causes is a possibility, followed by bounded demonic agency and mixed remedies. Bugbears corresponds to bogeymen; Mormeluches separately corresponds to spectres.

Bugbears (dismissed beliefs)

Supposed frightening fictions: a disparaging name applied to religious doctrines by the sceptics Burton attacks.

Grammar: English plural count noun used figuratively as a complement of esteem.

Original text: “they esteem them as so many Poets tales, Bugbears”. In the modern column: “they regard these as so many poets’ tales and bogeys”. Religious claims are dismissed as imaginary scare stories. The people accused of atheism make this judgement; Burton opposes them. The neighbouring Apella formula is an anti-Jewish stereotype. Bugbears corresponds to bogeys inside a comparison attributed to they.

Mormeluches

Frightening spectres or bogeys, listed beside devils and bugbears.

Grammar: Plural noun in an English list, borrowed from classical apparition vocabulary.

Original text: “divels, bugbears, and Mormeluches”. In the modern column: “devils, bogeymen and spectres”. The third name in a list of terrifying perceived beings. The possible inward cause is followed by a distinct permitted supernatural explanation. Only spectres corresponds to Mormeluches; the whole list is not a single-word meaning.

occursacula

Apparitions or frightening things encountered; here the apparitions of the night.

Grammar: Latin neuter plural noun, accusative in omnia noctium occursacula after fingunt; noctium is genitive plural.

Component sense: occursacula. Apparitions or frightening encounters, not the full sentence about imagining them.. Explanatory access term: apparitions.

Original margin: “sibi fingunt omnia noctium occursacula”. Supplied note translation or expansion: “they picture to themselves all the apparitions of the night”. The adapted margin makes sufferers imagine the nocturnal apparitions. The original margin adapts Apuleius; its supplied English translation and adaptation note are editorial layers. Occursacula supplies apparitions; omnia supplies all, noctium of the night, and sibi fingunt the reflexive imagining construction.