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"[.]