The Goat Riders (called the bokkenrijders in Dutch) is a legend of Limburg. There are however as many versions of the legend as there are story tellers. Look up Legend in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Capital Maastricht Queens Commissioner L.J.P.M. (Leon) Frissen Religion (1999) Roman Catholic 80% Protestant 3% Area • Land • Water 2,153 km² (9th) 56 km² Population (2005) • Total • Density 1,135,962 (6th) 528/km² (4th) Inclusion 1839 Anthem In t Bronsgroen Eikenhout ISO NL-LI Official website...
The legend
As the legend goes, the Goat Riders were a gang of ruthless robbers who made the Overmaas region (the current Limburg) an unsafe place to live from the 1730s to the 1780s. It was said that the members had made a pact with Satan and rode through the sky on the backs of goats. Recent historical research seems to discard the truthfulness of that story entirely. The gang of the Goat Riders would appear to be a myth, deliberately made up by the law enforcers of those days, as a pretext for torturing suspects while investigating some ten burglaries. Suspects would be tortured to the extent that they would release new names of the 'members' of the gang. This would lead to hundreds of people receiving the death penalty for only a few thefts in total. The reason of the law enforcers and judges to take these extreme measures in fighting these petty crimes is unknown. For other uses, see Satan (disambiguation). ...
There are two periods in which the Goat Riders were said to be active, around the 1740s and the 1780s. Between 1773 and 1774, 37 Goat Riders were held captured in the Schelmentoren (the local prison next the Pancratiuskerk (the church)) in Heerlen and executed on the Heesberg (a hill now part of the city). The Schelmentoren, probebly one of the oldest still erect buildings in Heerlen Same Schelmentoren but now from the side closest to the old wall The Schelmentoren in Heerlen is a Medieval which has served as a defendable living tower for the Here van Are (sometimes called the counts van Ahr... Bell Tower of the Pancratiuskerk North side of the Pancratiuskerk Back of the Pancratiuskerk; the right of the picture shows part of the Schelmentoren The Pancratiuskerk is a Roman Catholic church in Heerlen in the Netherlands. ... Heerlen is a municipality and a town in the southeastern Netherlands and the second biggest city in the province of Limburg. ...
Alternative versions of the legend portray the Goat Riders primarily as a sort of Robin Hood of the Low Countries. Robin Hood memorial statue in Nottingham. ... The Low Countries, the historical region of de Nederlanden, are the countries (see Country) on low-lying land around the delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse (Maas) rivers. ...
The gang of the GoatRiders would appear to be a myth, deliberately made up by the law enforcers of those days, as a pretext for torturing suspects while investigating some ten burglaries.
The Curse of the Billy Goat, or Billy Goat Curse, is the name of a urban myth superstition (or scapegoat) used to explain the World Series drought that Major League Baseballs Chicago Cubs have had to endure since their last appearance in the 1945 World Series, and their last...
As the story goes, the GoatRiders were a gang of ruthless robbers who made the Overmaas region (the current Limburg) an unsafe place to live from the 1730s to the 1780s.
The GoatRiders (called the bokkenrijders in Dutch) are part of the legends of Limburg and there are as many stories about them as there are story tellers.
There are two periods in which the GoatRiders were said to be active, around the 1740s and the 1780s.
Between 1773 and 1774 37 GoatRiders were held capture in the Schelmentoren (the local prison next the Pancratiuskerk (the church)) in Heerlen and executed on the Heesberg (a hill now part of the city).
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