The woman in question was Marguerite, the wife of George Walezer, who lived in 16th-century Vienna. In 1545 she became pregnant and felt the normal movements of the baby during pregnancy. When she went into labour with 'furious and sharp pains' she called her mother and some midwives. During the long labour they heard a noise and commotion like a cracking inside the mother and thereafter the fetal movements ceased. They assumed, correctly it seems, that the baby had died. The midwives used all their skills but failed to deliver either the baby or the placenta.

Some days later, feeling her pains return, Marguerite summoned a series of most eminent doctors from far and wide, imploring their help. The doctors merely gave her a series of drugs but with no effect. Marguerite therefore 'resolved to let nature take its course and bore with exceeding pain for the space of four years this dead corpse in her stomach'. In the fifth year she finally persuaded a surgeon to open her up and remove the child which was 'half rotted away'. The operation took place on 12 November 1550. Marguerite soon recovered and was 'so full of life and so healthy that she can still [i.e. in 1559] conceive children'.

Marguerite’s ordeal may have been due to an abdominal ectopic pregnancy. Most ectopic pregnancies occur when the fertilized ovum becomes implanted in the fallopian tube, and a tubal ectopic pregnancy almost always dies after two or three months of gestation. But just occasionally the fertilized ovum becomes implanted in the wall of the abdominal cavity. Sometimes, it is thought, abdominal ectopic pregnancy starts with implantation into the fimbriated end of the fallopian tube and then migrates to the abdominal cavity and invades the peritoneum secondarily...

It may be that Marguerite’s dead baby was never delivered vaginally because it was never in the uterus. Being shut off, so to speak, from the outside world, a dead baby could have escaped being the source of an infection...

In this case, when a surgeon finally agreed to operate, he did not perform a caesarean section; he simply opened the abdominal wall and promptly saw and removed the remnants of the baby. The placenta would not have been a problem because in abdominal ectopics if the baby dies the placenta soon shrivels and can be left intact. This one had five years to shrivel.

Until the 13th century, authors equivocated when speaking of the unspeakable sin alluded to in the Life of St. Giles. Some authors continued to dodge the issue in the centuries to come, but others did not. They made shocking accusations against Charlemagne and committed them to writing. Perhaps the accusations themselves were invented in the 13th century, or perhaps such claims had long circulated awaiting the moment when authors finally mustered the courage to write them down. Be that as it may, authors offered two different identifications of Charlemagne's unspeakable sin. Some authors identified Charlemagne's unspeakable sin as incest. Specifically, they claimed that incestuous relations between Charlemagne and his sister, Gisela, had in turn resulted in Gisela giving birth to Roland, the hero of the Song of Roland.

The allegation of an incestuous relationship between Charlemagne and Gisela appears in the Karlamagnus Saga, a 13th century account of Charlemagne's life written in Norse. From there, the incest claim is then taken up by a number of different texts, especially French texts.

Other authors identified Charlemagne's unspeakable sin as necrophilia. That claim appears in a 14th century German poem about Charlemagne, "Karl Meinet," and the idea was then taken up in a number of 14th and 15th century German chronicles and treatises.

Specifically, someone had hexed Charlemagne by placing a charmed ring under the tongue of his dead wife. The ring caused Charlemagne to become infatuated with the wife and to continue the relations they had had while she was alive. When a bishop discovered the ring and removed it from the dead wife's mouth, Charlemagne became infatuated with the bishop. The bishop tossed the ring into a swamp, and Charlemagne became infatuated with the swamp, building a palace and dwelling there. To be clear, none of this is true...

One can only speculate as to why stories arose alleging that Charlemagne was guilty of incest or necrophilia, and why those stories gained a significant and distinguished audience. These stories did not emerge in or remain confined to a specific geographical milieu. They do not seem to have been concocted to achieve any specific political outcome. Perhaps they emerged primarily as a reaction against the overblown praise that Charlemagne received in other works. The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

Alas! Charlemagne's "asbestos tablecloth" is the purest of pure myths, one of the many that were added to the ones inherited from the Middle Ages in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries, particularly in France — by-products of the Enlightenment and its Napoleonic reflections, as the "scientific" element in this one suggests.

The practical, non-ritual, reason given for horse's skulls concealed in buildings is that they are placed under floors to create an echo. This has been suggested both in the British Isles and in Southern Scandinavia... Ceramic pots have also been concealed in buildings for acoustic reasons. The acoustic skulls were placed in churches, in houses and in Scandinavia especially in threshing barns.

In churches the acoustics were very important, of course. And in houses were people danced and music was played, but why in threshing barns? It was considered important that the sound of threshing carried far. Could this have some magic purpose? It is well known that in many cultures loud noises are considered to expel evil forces. So this "practical" custom of acoustic skulls may not be contradictory to magical and symbolic acts at all. One question to consider is also why horses' skulls were preferred. One would presume that the skulls of cattle would be available more often than those of horses, and possibly just as suitable for acoustics.

At Boxley also was a famous image of St. Rumald, Rumbold, or Grumbald, the son of a Northumbrian king and of a daughter of Penda, King of Mercia. He died when three days old, but not before he had repeated the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed in Latin, a feat for which he gained canonisation.

His image at Boxley is said to have been small, and of a weight so light that a child could lift it, but that it could at times become so heavy that it could not be moved by persons of great strength.

Thomas Fuller, the quaint old divine, tells us that "the moving hereof was made the conditions of women's chastity. Such who paid the priest well might easily remove it, whilst others might tug at it to no purpose. For this was the contrivance of the cheat — that it was fastened with a pin of wood by an invisible stander behind. Now, when such offered to take it who had been bountiful to the priest before, they bare it away with ease, which was impossible for their hands to remove who had been close-fisted in their confessions. Thus it moved more laughter than devotion, and many chaste virgins and wives went away with blushing faces, leaving (without cause), the suspicion of their wantonness in the eyes of the beholders; whilst others came off with more credit (because with more coin), though with less chastity."