raw-head and bloody-bones

English

Alternative forms

  • Raw-head and Bloody-bones

Proper noun

raw-head and bloody-bones

  1. A malicious bogeyman (or two bogeymen) formerly used to frighten children into good behaviour.
    • 1928, Lewis Spence, Mysteries of Britain, page vii. 169:
      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"[.]
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