You’ve likely come across the story of the girl whose head is held on with a ribbon at some point in your journey as a horror fan, but what if I told you it has surprisingly dark origins? The roots of this tale go back to the French Revolution, and the urban legends and folklore that sprang up around Madame la Guillotine.

Alvin Schwarz’s version of the story, The Girl with the Green Ribbon, from the children’s anthology In a Dark, Dark Room, is the one most people are familiar with. In it childhood sweethearts Alfred and Jenny, who always has a green ribbon tied around her neck, grow up, get married and grow old together. Alfred keeps asking about the ribbon but Jenny refuses to tell him why she won’t take it off until finally she’s on her death bed and gives him permission to untie it, at which point her head comes tumbling down. It’s a surprisingly wholesome take on the story, at least up until the point when her head comes off, but it’s that dissonance between the two parts and the surprise of it that makes it such an effective piece of horror.

Schwarz’ adaptation has reached iconic status, entering contemporary English language folklore as a phenomenon all it’s own, detached from the historical context and narrative lineage that produced it. The original version of the tale, or at least the earliest version anyone can track down, is an urban legend and one decidedly not for children. In it a young German student, as in the similarly named The Adventure of the German Student by Washington Irving, was (bizarrely) hanging around near the guillotine after the day’s grisly work was done. While there it just so happened that he met the woman of his dreams, took her home with him, and, intending to live together going forward, went out again the next day in order to find a larger apartment for them both. On returning home however he found that the velvet ribbon she had worn around her neck had been removed, and she now lay there dead, her head separated from her body. Upon investigation by a member of the local constabulary it was ascertained that she was actually one of the victims of the guillotine from the day before, and that she had of course already been dead by the time the two of them met.

It’s easy to see where this comes from. At the height of The Terror the guillotine claimed as many as 30 people a day, with the vast majority of victims being pulled from the ordinary citizenry of France rather than the nobility or clergy. Anyone perceived as a threat to the Jacobin’s hold on the government, from poets to feminists to political philosophers who challenged their totalitarian approach, were summarily murdered without trial, and the impact on the population’s psyche was immense. In the wake of The Terror women who were part of the fashionable Marveilleuse subculture wore red ribbon chokers around their necks, as an act of memorial and rebellion, while wild bals des victimes were said to be breaking out all over Paris; parties where people wore mourning garb or dressed as victims of the guillotine, greeting each other with sharp, jerky nods that resembled the moment the blade came down and heads came flying off. There’s some question as to whether these parties were an urban legend themselves, but even if they were, their existence as a story the people of Paris were telling about themselves says something important about the collective psychological state of the city.

From this the image of the Marveilleuse who is actually a victim of The Terror emerges. Her short hair, scanty clothing, and bare feet aren’t a political-fashion statement but because this is how women were sent to the guillotine. The red ribbon around her neck isn’t a metaphor commemorating the dead or her own narrow escape but camouflage for the real thing, as well as a wholly inadequate bandage quite literally holding body and soul together just a little bit longer (perhaps the knowledge that heads seemed to survive a few moments after decapitation played into this). She could be anyone, passing unseen amongst the living, because so many were killed in that time how would you know them by sight? She’s another beautiful face that ended up in a basket at the end of a long, bloody day, and now she’s in your bed, the ribbon come loose in the night, throwing all of your survivor’s guilt into your face.

Over time the story takes on new forms. Gothic writers like Alexander Dumas and Irving wrote their own literary versions. It reached America and started shifting for a different society with different needs, guilt, and fears. The ribbon changes colour, to black, white, then green. The underlying evil in the story changes, from indiscriminate state violence to patriarchal, and the demands husbands and lover’s place on women and their bodies — there are some fabulous feminist adaptations out there and I suggest reading them when you get the chance. Jenny and Alfred’s story is relatively benign, they live a long and happy life together, with only the ending, a sharp twist to thrill children, adding horror to the mix. The stories that came before, and after it, are something else entirely.