Buckriders

In the local folkloric and judicial corpus of the 18th century, the buckriders are presented as people who entered into an oath-bound alliance with an infernal master (referred to in sources as 'the Devil'). Tradition and trial testimony report that the Devil provided them with bucks/goats which they rode through the night; this motif is compounded with earlier European witchcraft imagery of nocturnal goat-riding and attendance at diabolic sabbaths. Historically, the label was also claimed or adopted by criminal bands active in Limburg and neighbouring districts and first appears in surviving records by name in the 1774 'trial of Wellen.'

Accounts emphasize collective imagery of riders astride large bucks/goats and moving through the night sky rather than distinctive individual dress. The goat/buck motif is explicit and ties the buckriders to wider witches' Sabbath iconography (goat-riding and diabolic attendance), while trial confessions describe mounting and flying on such animals.

Sources report that accused buckriders claimed nocturnal aerial travel on bucks/goats and vast, rapid mobility that enabled raids across large distances and return before dawn. Judicial records and later historiography treat these claims as part of confessions—many extracted under torture—and as a folkloric motif that was sometimes appropriated by criminal gangs to intimidate victims. Behavior attributed to them in sources includes organized robbery, extortion, and occasional violence against farms, churches, and isolated households, together with oath-taking and annual meetings with their infernal master (for example, a traditional rendezvous on the Mook Heath).