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In the legend, the Bokkenrijders were gangs of robbers and criminals who made a pact with the Devil. In exchange, the Devil gave them flying goats (or bucks) to ride through the night sky. They used these mounts to raid farms, churches, and villages quickly over large distances, impossible for normal travel. Their famous chant was: “Over huis, over tuin, over staak, en dat tot Keulen in de wijnkelder!” (Across houses, across gardens, across stakes, even to Cologne into the wine cellar!).
The name means “goat riders” or “buck riders”. The bands were real. They operated in the eighteenth century across Limburg, the region now split between the Netherlands and Belgium, and in neighbouring land around Aachen and Herzogenrath in Germany. The legend grew around them, and the trials against them mixed robbery charges with accusations of devil worship.
Where the name comes from
The local history site of the County of Loon traces the first written use of the term, in the old spelling “bockereyders”, to a book of 1779 by S.J.P. Sleinada. That name is a pseudonym of A. Daniels, parish priest of Schaesberg, now part of Landgraaf, who knew several gang members personally and followed the trials.
The County of Loon history site sums up the legend in one line.
De sage wil dat de rovers een pact met de duivel hadden gesloten en zich 's nachts op bokken voortbewogen.
Het Graafschap Loon, "Bokkenrijders" (short excerpt for review and study)
In English: the legend has it that the robbers had made a pact with the Devil and travelled at night on goats.
The same source says that once a year the riders flew to the Mookerheide, the heath near Mook in the Netherlands, to meet their master, the Devil. The chant above is the spell said to lift them into the air. A note in J. R. W. Sinninghe’s Noord-Brabantsch Sagenboek (1933) explains the wine cellar: Cologne was a well known wine city in the Middle Ages.
The bands behind the legend
In a 1984 study in the Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, Louise Nelson describes Limburg in the eighteenth century as poor, fought over by foreign armies, and hit by repeated cattle plague. She explains the name by a belief that the bandits, by calling on the Devil, would be carried on the back of a black ram (the Dutch bok means a male goat or buck).
Nelson describes how the later bands swore new members in.
They met in churches or in isolated chapels to initiate new members in a ceremony in which the latter had to sit on a wooden ram.
Louise Nelson, "The Bokkerijders", Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies V.ii (1984) (short excerpt for review and study)
Nelson divides the gangs into stages. The early bands, from 1734, mostly stole without violence. The later bands, from 1762, worked for profit, sent extortion letters, burned the houses of those who refused, and often tortured and killed. Their leaders could be respected men. Nelson names Josef Kerckhoffs, chief surgeon in Herzogenrath, as a gang leader between 1762 and 1776.
Trials and executions
Confessions were taken under judicial torture, which was still legal in the region. Nelson notes that Emperor Joseph II banned it in 1787, that the order was ignored, and that the French ended it in November 1794.
Nelson gives the overall toll from the criminal records.
From 1754 to 1794, 860 people were sentenced as Bokkerijders. Of these, 195 were executed, eight were sent into exile and fifty whipped.
Louise Nelson, "The Bokkerijders", Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies V.ii (1984) (short excerpt for review and study)
Other counts are higher. Historian François Van Gehuchten, in his study Bokkenrijders, late heksenprocessen in Limburg, concluded that far more people were arrested and executed than there were ever violent robbers, which is why the trials are often compared with the late witch hunts.
Parallels to Baal
Some readers compare the goat riders with Baal, the Canaanite storm god known from the clay tablets of Ugarit in present day Syria. The comparison is an interpretation, not a historical link.
Baal’s main epithet is “Rider of the Clouds” (in Ugaritic texts, he rides clouds as a storm god, bringing rain and thunder). The Bokkenrijders ride flying goats through the sky at night. Both involve a divine or demonic figure moving swiftly across the heavens, associated with power and terror.
The Lexham Bible Dictionary notes that the Ugaritic phrase rkb ʿrpt occurs 15 times in the Ugaritic texts and refers mainly to Baal as the bringer of rain, and often to Baal as a warrior. In the battle with Yam, the sea, the craftsman god Kothar-wa-Khasis uses it to urge Baal on.
The goat is where the comparison is weakest. In European folklore the goat belonged to the Devil and the witches’ sabbath, and Baal was cast as a false god in the Bible. Those who draw the parallel see the Bokkenrijders’ goat pact as the end of a long line in which old gods were turned into demons. The Ugaritic texts themselves do not give Baal a goat mount.
