G is for George

From Edward Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies

The name "George" is significant to my family.  As mentioned in an earlier post, [here] my family name, before it was changed in the 1950s to Cosmas was Papagiorgiou or Papageorge or by by the time Dad was at school in the 1940s and '50s, just George.

There was also my Papou's older brother George.  He was a bastard.  Not literally, but the sort of psychotic, evil, misanthrope that you're not really surprised when you hear he's driven someone to murder. Him. And not just that. To cleft him in twain, so to speak.  Leaving his head in a sack in one place, and the balance of his person in another place. Quite different.  Quite remote.  Quite damp.  Quite definitely sure to be left undiscovered until it's riddled with maggots and other creepy, crawly critters the likes of which you'd like to see feasting on a person like George.

He wasn't nice, you see.  He was a troublemaker.  He took after his mother, Madeleine.  She wasn't nice either.  

As the story goes, George's sister, Sophia, had married a lovely fellow from a neighbouring village. Let's call him Andrea (Andrew)*.  Sophia and Andrea hadn't been able to have children but they were a lovely, loving couple, and he was devastated when Sophia, without word or warning, upped and died.  

Now, according to local law, if there are no "issue" from a marriage, the family of the bride is entitled to reclaim the dowry. So barely was the last sod turned on her grave, literally that very day, dear George, attended bravely by his posse, knocked at the widower's modest door, to demand return of the cutlery, linens and goodness knows what other else bollocks had been given with Sophia when she and Andrea had been joined together in their heavenly lifelong union.  And from which he had been cruelly, prematurely and most suddenly wrenched.

Incredulous at the gall and insensitivity of his brother-in-law and out of his mind with grief, Andrea threatened to kill George! And sure enough, before the week was out he found himself secreted in the bushes on a lonely road waiting for his quarry to pass.  As the light faded and George ambled past on his way to a small hut where he would sometimes stop to spend the night, Andrea jumped out, and DID HIM IN and then CHOPPED HIM and BAGGED HIM and DUMPED HIM HITHER and YON.

And of course he wasn't found for days and days because everyone knew he'd gone away and no-one missed him, so he was well and truly as rotten dead as he was alive by the time the sacks of his remains were located. 

Poor Andrea didn't get away with the deed though.  He had made the threats to kill in front of George's friends who, of course, were more than happy to testify against him.  The court didn't take any extenuating circumstances into consideration, so Andrea was hanged for murder, and one can only hope he was reunited with his darling Sophia in the afterlife.**

***

Ever since Uncle George I don't think there have been any subsequent George's in this branch of the family. He tortured my Papou; drove him out of home when he was just a little boy, enough to leave quite a bad taste!  And probably another good reason our family name was changed. Come to think on it.  Hmm...


*We don't actually have his name recorded and I'm still on the hunt for it - but half the men from Pitsilia seem to be called Andrea, so it's a fair guess!


**No good came to the hanging judge and the foreman of the jury. They both met untimely deaths shortly after Andrea's hanging. They were cursed by a member of his family for the lack of compassion they showed Andrea at the trial, and one way or another those afflictions were realised and thus it didn't end well for them.