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Trilogy stitched together as panorama

The legend of the Bokkenrijders

The Bokkenrijders (“goat riders” or “buck riders”) were 18th-century robber bands in Limburg (Dutch and Belgian) and nearby areas, wrapped in folklore about flying goats, pacts with the devil, and witchcraft. The legend mixed real crime, extreme poverty, fragmented borders, and late-style witch-hunt justice.

According to popular belief, members sold their souls to the devil and rode flying goats (the bok long associated with Satan) through the night. They supposedly gathered once a year on the Mookerheide to meet their master. A common incantation was: “Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!” (“Over house, over garden, over stake, and even to Cologne into the wine cellar!”).

They were not one vast organized satanic army. Historians describe several loosely connected or unconnected groups of thieves, extortionists, and violent robbers active (with gaps) from the 1730s/1740s into the 1790s across the Lands of Overmaas (roughly South Limburg), the County of Loon (Belgian Limburg), the Kempen, parts of the Liège region, and near Aachen. Targets were mainly isolated farms, rectories, and churches. Methods included armed raids, binding and beating victims, and extortion letters threatening arson.

Roughly 1,200 people were accused and about 425–500 executed (some estimates higher when counting deaths in custody or under torture). Many historians believe a large share were innocent or only peripherally involved; the process resembled the tail end of European witch hunts. Executions were often public and brutal (hanging, breaking on the wheel, burning). Sites like the Bonderkuil near Wellen are still remembered.

Today the Bokkenrijders are part of Limburg’s intangible cultural heritage. They appear in monuments (Valkenburg, Schaesberg), walking routes, books, a Suske en Wiske comic, and recent theater/musical productions that often lean toward a more sympathetic “desperate poor vs. church and nobility” reading. Historians generally treat them as criminals whose story was inflated by superstition and whose prosecution produced many unjust deaths. They were neither purely Robin Hood figures nor a single supernatural conspiracy.

I first made a series of 7 images and then the video with ‘seamless’ transition between the images.

Vintage style…. Very silly … seems to happen all by itself today on this Silly Sunday 😊

Getting pretty crowded at the party 🎉