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Folklore Behind The Wicker Man
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Mar 31, 2025
When the harvest is bountiful, we all eat. But what do we do when nature fails us? If the rains refuse to come, or the insects amass an army against the crops, or the fruit withers on the vine, then we starve. Science can help, but even science has its limits. Then is the time to pray for help. But how to attract the attention of the heavens? Perhaps going to church? Perhaps a sacrifice. Surely a powerful being demands a powerful offering, maybe even human.
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When the harvest is bountiful, we all eat
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But what do we do when nature fails us? If the rains refuse to come, or the insects amass an army against the crops
0:10
or the fruit withers on the vine, then we starve. Science can help, but even science has its limits
0:17
Then is the time to pray for help. But how to attract the attention of the heavens
0:22
Perhaps going to church? Perhaps a sacrifice? Surely a powerful being demands a powerful offering
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Maybe even human. Today, on Scream to Screen, we take a look at the folklore behind The Wicker Man
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the iconic horror film that frightened a generation. The Celts spread through Europe with a vicious campaign of war
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But with their dreams of conquest, they also brought an ancient religion
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one that centered around nature and rebirth. The gods worshipped by the Celts were generous and they felt honored
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And so the Druids, the priests of the Celtic people, found ways to keep their gods happy and content
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The Celts were animists. They believed the natural world, animals, plants, rocks, and even the weather contained spirits
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Holy places may be where two streams meet or a tree that offers a sense of power could become shrines
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And these shrines would be the center of sacrifices. Fire, water, and land, all were sacred to the spirits
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Offerings would often be buried in the earth or even thrown into streams and bogs
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With these gifts, the fairy folk might grace the human world with bountiful harvests of grain and fruits
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or keep the torrential rains and blistering droughts away. With popular movies like Lord of the Rings and Peter Pan
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the fairy folk have grown to resemble caring or perhaps mischievous friends of humanity
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But to the Celts, they were powerful and vengeful spirits, not to be trifled with
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Jealous of the homes, if a human entered a fairy mound or a fairy circle
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revenge would be swift. A trespasser might find his baby had been stolen by the Fair Folk
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and a changeling left in its place. While their child grew up a captive in the other realm
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the changeling left in its place might be constantly ravenous, or extremely wicked, or even worse
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One cure was to throw the changeling into the fireplace. The flames would make the spirit climb the flue and bring back the real child
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Of course, if it wasn't actually a changeling, then, well, not so good for the baby
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So the Celts learned to live in harmony and balance with nature and the spirits who watched them
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After churning butter, a small amount would be left for the fair folk. Milk fresh from the cow would be poured onto a rock with a hole in it
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If a crop failed, then a greater sacrifice might be called for. One story involves Bakuma a woman who lied about being a virgin when she married the king To appease the spirits of fertility she was told by a druid priest an infant boy would need to be sacrificed but a cow was replaced for an infant and this seemed to appease the spirits
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It was not uncommon to sacrifice an infant at the threshold of a newly built house
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just in case they had intruded on the land of one of the fair folk. In times of poor harvest
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the tribal leader might be beheaded. Someone important was needed to balance the life of the foods to be grown
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Julius Caesar reported that the Celts had a ritual involving a wicker man
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a giant wooden cage in the shape of a man. They would take their sacrifice, lock him inside the wicker cage
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and set it on fire, burning the victim alive. Recent scholars have called into question the truth behind Caesar's claims
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but human sacrifices were a part of the religious practice of the Druids. All of this was to honor the gods of fertility, which they saw all around them
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Seeds, pollen, rabbits, life. The truth of nature is reproduction, and the Celts honored and worshipped it
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The May Day celebration, in spring when all the nature is in rebirth, involved a dance around a maypole
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In effect, a large phallic symbol, after which unbridled sexual festivities would happen in the field
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hoping their human fertility would inspire fertility on the crops. In 1971, Christopher Lee and Anthony Schaefer decided to embrace the Celtic rituals in the movie The Wicker Man
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Lee, eager to escape being typecast as Dracula, a part he played in almost a dozen films, brought the rights to the book Ritual by David Penner
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A story about a police officer who goes to investigate the ritual murder of a young girl in a rural village
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The wicker man opens with police sergeant Neil Howie flying himself to the remote Scottish island of Summerisle
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Armed with a photo of a young girl and an anonymous letter claiming she had gone missing
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he is baffled when no one claims to know her. What he does find is an island filled with pagan rituals
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A devout Christian, Howie is appalled that there is no minister, but there is an apothecary whose jars of brains, hearts, and foreskins suggest an ancient type of belief
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At night, a dozen couples copulate brazenly in the open, while in the daylight hours, a ring of naked girls leap over an open flame in a joyous celebration
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Tomorrow is May Day. The Wicker Man is a study in belief
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For Police Sergeant Neil Howey, Christianity is his foundation, the only truth that can be found in a difficult and confusing world
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But to Lord Summerisle and his small island of pagan worshippers, the old gods hold a promise of something bigger
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something concrete that they can hold on to, not just the Christian promise of a world beyond life
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Trapped on the island, alone with a village filled with pagans, Officer Howey searches for the missing girl
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He passes a group of schoolboys dancing around the maypole singing an eerie song about a boy born from a man seed who grows to a man then dies and his grave becomes a tree
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It's not the song and its theme of death and rebirth that seem frightening as much as the vacant stares of the children as they sing and robotically dance around the pool
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Howie does find the girl, about to be sacrificed, and rescues her, letting her lead him away to safety
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But something is wrong. The girl leads them both to a clearing where a giant wicker man stands
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The image of the huge wooden man standing tall against the setting sun elicits fear and has become one of the most powerful visuals in cinematic history
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In the end, the sacrifice does happen. A human is locked, bound, and alive in the wooden chest of a giant wicker man
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and set on fire. The villagers dance and chant, offering this gift to the god of the sun and the god of rebirth
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Howie yells that this will fail, that the islanders will take Lord Summer Isle next year when the crops fail
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The calm Lord Summer Isle smiles. The crops will not fail, and the ceremony is completed
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Does the sacrifice work? Did the pagan ritual provide a bountiful crop
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or was it just a heresy against a righteous Christian god? The movie leaves us to answer this question for ourselves
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Every year the apple harvest is rich and bountiful, except for the past year
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Only a sacrifice can save them, and for such a powerful request, it must be a human sacrifice
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We never learn if the following year brings the desired fruit. Whose belief was right
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The Wicker Man created a new genre, folk horror. The crippled, disfigured soldier who returned after World War I showed us all, on a vast international stage, that there are monsters
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and the young film industry embraced our fears with monster movies like Dracula and Frankenstein
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Monsters whose humanity made us sympathetic but whose disfigurements showed us fear
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Then the nuclear attacks of the Second World War gave us a new terror, mutations
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and enemies within our own bodies. Movies like Godzilla and Invasion of the Body Snatchers
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fed those anxieties. In the 70s, a wave of city dwellers looking to escape the crowds and move to rural areas
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gave way to a new set of horror. The superstitions of those living in the country, with their folk remedies and tales of ancient gods and demons
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The sanctity of the church and the safety of numbers gave way to the gods of nature, and nature demanded sacrifice
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The Wicker Man, along with two other folk horror films, Witchfinder and Blood of Satan's Claw, became the template of a new fear
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Change is bad. City folk, with their modern ideas, were not welcome to the quiet seclusion of the rural lands
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The Wicker Man centers around a god of fertility, and the result is an uncomfortable sense of terror
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Instead of a visual smack in the face of blood and guts a woman breastfeeds her child in public while holding an egg A candy store sells chocolate rabbits Symbols of fertility Not your typical horror moments but
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setting up a weird imbalance that just seems off. A group of young boys dance around a maypole
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singing about a man and a grave. The rather unattractive male villagers sing of the landlord's
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daughter, with the line, and nothing can delight us so, as the part between her left toe and her
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right toe, along with even more subtle vulgarities. You feel, as does Officer Howie, uncomfortable
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but the landlord and his daughter both laugh along with the crowd. There are no jump scares
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no bloody decapitations, yet you watch with growing alarm. The greatest battle is between
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the Christian god of Officer Howie and the pagan gods of the villagers. Howie defends his beliefs
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berating and accusing the villagers, even though he is a minority of one. The fact that they do not
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attack him makes us dread the final confrontation. No one can be that patient. In a strange twist
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the horror builds while the townsfolk sing folk songs, like a hippie festival from the 60s
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Though hard to imagine folk songs in a horror movie, it works. It all seems so out of place
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so odd, that we're scared. Not of what we see, but what we know must happen
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Folk horror involves the old creatures and gods. This movie set the foundation for the regeneration
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of primeval terrors. Films like The Leprechaun, Children of the Corn, and The Lair of the White
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Worm use the old gods as a powerful and ancient horror. Even more recent movies like The Blair
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Witch, Krampus, and The Evil Dead center around old gods and legends. The more our society grows
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the more we fear the dark corners of our past. The rural versus city terror of folk horror can be
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seen in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, The Deliverance. The theme of civilized
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city folk tormented by rural evil owes a nod to The Wicker Man. A remake of The Wicker Man
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starring Nicolas Cage was made in 2006. Tragically, this film omitted the folk songs and building
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intensity of the original and replaced it with horror movie cliches. The truth of the folk horror
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genre was gone, and with it, the appeal of the movie. But the allure of the 1973 film has kept
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The Wicker Man alive. A roller coaster in Alton Towers called The Wicker Man has a train passing
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through a six-foot Wicker Man tower that bursts into flames. The British band Radiohead's music video for their song, Burn the Witch
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seems eerily familiar to the movie. And the National Theatre of Scotland recently produced an appointment with the Wicker Man
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The fear of our past gods and demons holds our collective memories in a tight grip
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Even today, we still find fascination with leprechauns, trolls, banshees, and nymphs
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Who's to say they don't exist, laying wait in the dark, ready to offer us what we want
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in exchange for a sacrifice
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