Last night was Bonfire Night here in the UK. Fireworks are not really my thing, I grew out of them years ago, and so I stayed in and treated it like any other day. Being the sort of guy that I am though, I got to thinking about the word ‘bonfire.’ Guess what. It has some rather nasty origins. Trust me to find out something nasty 🙂
Okay, instead of thinking bonfire think BONE fire, because the original fuel for a bonfire was the bones of the dead.
There are different stories relating to this. Some say that the bones used were simply the remains of people’s dinners, which were then piled up outside and burned to get rid of them. Other say that the phrase is Scandinavian in origin and that, after a battle, the bodies of the dead were piled up and burnt as part of the victory celebrations. Still others claim that the word is English in origin and that, in 1555 Edmund Bonner, who was the Bishop of London, ordered 300 people be burned at the stake and that the bon in bonfire comes from BONner.
Who knows which is the correct origin of the word , but whichever one it is, the word Bonfire certainly seems to have macabre and grisly roots.