Bloody Mary (person)
From The Book of THoTH (Leaves of Wisdom)
Mary I, the queen of England from 1553 to 1558 became known as "Bloody Mary" during the reign of her successor, Elizabeth on account of the perceived ferocity of her religious persecutions; she has borne the epithet ever since. "Bloody Mary" is also a name for a ghost or witch who appears in children's folklore; other very similar tales use different names.
Several fictional characters are also called Bloody Mary.
In history
Queen Mary I of England is called Bloody Mary because of her persecution of Protestants. The Protestant Reformation, started fitfully in England by King Henry VIII, became established policy under the brief reign of Edward VI. Mary, like her mother Catherine of Aragon, whom Henry VIII had spurned, was a devout Roman Catholic. She contracted an unpopular marriage to the equally devout Philip II of Spain. The pair, with the assistance of conservative churchmen such as Edward "Bloody" Bonner and Stephen Gardiner, sought to reimpose Roman Catholicism upon the religiously divided country.
During her brief reign of just over five years, Mary had almost three hundred people burnt at the stake for heresy. Her persecutions were notable also for the prominence of their victims; the first person to die was the Protestant John Rogers, who had completed and published Tyndale's work as Matthew's Bible. While heresy trials and executions occurred both before and after her reign, she executed more than twice as many as had been executed for this crime over the preceding century and a half.
In folklore
In folklore and children's street culture, "Bloody Mary" is the name of a children's game in which a ghost or witch of the same name (or sometimes other names, such as Mary Worth) is said to appear in a mirror when summoned. One of the more common ways participants attempt to make her appear is to stand before a mirror in the dark and repeat her name three times, though there are many variations. Some include chanting a hundred times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, or rubbing one's eyes. Most of these are meant to disorient people. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say "Bloody Mary, I killed your son!" (or "I killed your baby"). In these variants, Bloody Mary is often believed to be the spirit of a mother (often a widow) who murdered her children, or a woman who was murdered shortly before or after her wedding. In stories where Mary is supposed to have been wrongly accused of killing her children, the querent might say "I believe in Mary Worth." This is similar to another game involving the summoning of The Bell Witch in a mirror at midnight. Similar rituals are also used to summon spirits in the movies Beetlejuice (1988) and Candyman (1992). The game is often a test of courage, as it is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would murder the summoner, often in a quite violent way, such as gouging out his or her eyes. Other variations say that the querent must not look directly at her, but at her image in the mirror; she will then reveal the querent's future, particularly concerning marriage and children.
Bloody Mary Worth is typically described as a child-murderess who lived in the locality where the legend has taken root about a century ago. There is often a specific local graveyard or tombstone that becomes attached to the legend.
On the other hand, various people have surmised that the lore about taunting Bloody Mary about her baby may relate her tenuously to folklore about Queen Mary I. ([1], [2]) The queen's life was marked by a number of miscarriages or false pregnancies. Had Mary I successfully borne a child, this would have established a Roman Catholic succession and threatened the continuance of her religious persecutions after her death. Speculation exists that the miscarriages were deliberately induced. As a result, some retellings of the tale make Bloody Mary the queen driven to madness by the loss of her children. ([3]) It is likely, however, that Queen Mary I provided only her nickname to the Bloody Mary of folklore.
She is also confused in some tellings of the story with Mary Queen of Scots. Bloody Mary is sometimes said to have bathed in the blood of her child victims in order to retain a youthful complexion; this would appear to confound her with Elizabeth Báthory.
The mirror ritual by which Bloody Mary is summoned may also relate to a form of divination involving mirrors and darkness that was once performed on Halloween. While as with any sort of folklore the details may vary, this particular tale encouraged young women to walk up a flight of stairs backwards, holding a candle and a hand mirror, in a darkened house. As they gazed into the mirror, they were supposed to be able to catch a view of their future husband's face. There was, however, a chance that they would see the skull-face of the Grim Reaper instead; this meant, of course, that they were destined to die before they married.
In South Pacific
Bloody Mary is also the name of a major character in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. She is a native islander, a trader and a somewhat salty character in the play, but there is no known link between the ghost folklore and the musical. Juanita Hall originated the character on the stage, and also played her in the 1958 motion picture version.
A song about her makes U.S. Navy sailors sing, Bloody Mary is the girl I love, her skin is as tender as DiMaggio's glove, and that she chews betel nuts, and doesn't use Pepsodent, with the refrain Now ain't that too damn bad!
--Angel 06:23, 16 May 2006 (CDT)
