Sabine Baring-Gould

William Sabine Baring - Gould ( born January 28, 1834 † January 2, 1924 ) was a Victorian English priest, hagiographer, occultist, poet and writer and collector of folk songs.

Teens

Sabine Baring - Gould was born in southern England, the son of a manager of the East India Company. After retiring from the colonial trading group, the father went with his family to travel extensively throughout Europe. The young Baring - Gould attended schools in Germany and France and developed an extraordinary talent for languages ​​and mastered at the end of his studies at the University of Cambridge six foreign languages ​​. After finishing his studies taught Baring - Gould at a boys' boarding, and according to tradition, he should be there noticed as an unconventional teacher with a penchant for the supernatural, for he appeared to class with his pet on the shoulder - a tame bat. At the age of 30 he received the higher orders of the Anglican Church and took his first pastorate at the industrial north, in Horbury (Yorkshire ).

Turning to occult subjects

In the desolation of dirty workers' settlements, the young vicar turned probably particularly gloomy topics. His interest in psychic phenomena, which he shared with many of his contemporaries, had already shown in his early years when he was touched only by the barren Dartmoor in the West of England. Experiences on his travels as an adolescent had made him in France with the werewolf faith known, and so he wrote in a relatively short time, the first book about these shapeshifters in English, the 1865 ud T. Book of Werewolves. His knowledge of several European languages ​​allowed him to study even the most remote sources and quote. The following year saw a second plant, which again was devoted to strange topics, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

The Book of Werewolves, which is still frequently quoted in British circles werewolf experts even today, falls into its scientific and also in the presentation of details far beyond the two years earlier published work by Wilhelm Hertz back. While the habilitation thesis of the German philologist was an academic work, the objective was to work up the phenomenon of werewolves historical and mythical history, the Reverend Baring - Gould taught at a late romantic audience that craved creepy reading. His Book of Werewolves can best be classified as a popular thriller, although it pure " fiction " through its focus on classical myths, folklore traditions and real cases is different, but dispensed with an interpretation of faith in the shapeshifter and instead focus on the chill effect sets. They also criticized the level of detail with which the author devotes cases that have nothing to do with the topic werewolf. Three chapters on Gilles de Rais are simply unnecessary. In the case of Sergeant Bertrand, the " werewolf " - or rather " ghoul " - from Paris, one can argue whether he is in the book. Maybe reflected in these chapters anti-French prejudices of the tight resisted British.

More career

But not only in the literary field corresponded to the young pastor from a wealthy family not the hopes placed in him: he knew Social prejudices apparently, because in 1868 he married the factory worker Grace Taylor, whom he had previously financed an education that a future pastor's wife was appropriate. The Anglo- Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw was for many years a personal friend of the pastor's family, and so it is conceivable that his comedy Pygmalion, which provided inspiration for the musical My Fair Lady, was inspired by the unusual couple Baring - Gould.

After a ten -year stint as a priest in Essex Sabine Baring - Gould was in 1881 finally the prestigious parish of Lewtrenchard on the edge of the infamous Dartmoor assume ( Devonshire ). The parish was traditionally owned by the family of Baring - Gould, and the income from the associated estate allowed it the Reverend to allow his large family a befitting life. On top of that, he made still extensive educational travel, and like a man possessed, he collected books, without neglecting the writing of books there.

Literary creation

There is no complete list of all his publications, because many an article was published anonymously in this or that magazine. Of the more than 200 books, pamphlets and sermons - the salaried products not included in the calculation - is talk. Among them are more than 30 novels and his monumental Lives of the Saints in 16 volumes. There are also books on theological and moral issues, social policy, about local history and course of his travels, such as the south of France and Iceland. At times he is with the flood of his publications, the list of the most prolific authors have cited throughout the history of English literature, as it is called in a brochure of the " British Library ", the British National Library. In one of his most famous novels, The Frobisher (1901 ), he denounced the dreadful working conditions in the ceramic factories means of England, in the Potteries of Staffordshire, and one of the first writers he thematized environmental diseases such as the widespread lead poisoning, in its effects, many politicians deliberately in the interests of the economic boom, the eyes closed.

The bustling Reverend Especially was researching and recording of regional folk at heart. Its still popular collection Songs of the West (1889, 2nd edition 1905) with folk songs from Cornwall and Devonshire he described like as his favorite work. It was followed by books with folk songs for schools and other folkloric title and folk tales. Over the two rather occult -inspired early works he later no longer expressed, and also the official website dedicated to him conceal his morbid interest in werewolves and other spooky curiosities.

Ironically, remembers his posterity not because of its flood of religious writings or his folk song collections. Only Baring - Gould's hymn Onward, Christian Soldiers! is a common good has become - a prime example of the militant sense of mission of the Victorian age. 2nd place will be a Book of Werewolves, but which is concealed in almost all official biographies. The book published in 1904 of Ghosts appear in almost any book list. Apparently does not want to fit into the picture of a pastor this unstandesgemäße interest in blood and murder, although this was at least contemporary of Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack the Ripper.

Last years

In 1916 died his wife Grace, who had given him 15 children during the almost fifty years of marriage. Sabine Baring - Gould, William followed her eight years later, only three weeks before his ninetieth birthday, and was buried next to her at the family cemetery in Lewtrenchard.

Descendants

Baring - Gould's grandson William Stuart inherited the interest in the Dismal, and turned in literary forth his profound knowledge of crime fiction. He gave the collected crime stories about Sherlock Holmes out in a scientific annotated edition and wrote a fictional biography of the legendary detective, where he wove parts of the real life story of his famous grandfather Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's meager information about the childhood and adolescence of his great detective. Later also a fictional biography of the American super detective Nero Wolfe followed.

Works

• Curious Myths of the Middle Ages. London 1877 online
• The Book of Werewolves. Kiel 2004. ISBN 3-89094-427-2