The Swapped Blades & The Scarecrow

The Misnamed Weapons

There appears to be a naming inconsistency between two of Bloodborne's most significant weapons—one that becomes obvious when examining their thematic purposes and wielders.

Gehrman's "Burial Blade" is the weapon of mercy:

Gehrman offers to free the hunter from the Dream through death—a mercy killing
His scythe is the tool of the gentle reaper, granting release from endless hunting
The weapon's purpose is to provide merciful death
It should logically be called the "Blade of Mercy"

Eileen's "Blade of Mercy" performs burial rites:

Eileen is a Hunter of Hunters—she kills hunters who have succumbed to bloodlust
Her entire aesthetic centers on crows and sky burial (leaving bodies for carrion birds)
The weapon's purpose is to perform the final disposal of fallen hunters
It should logically be called the "Burial Blade"

Both weapons are forged from siderite, connecting them thematically. The swap in naming appears to be either a development oversight or a deliberate inversion whose meaning has been lost.

Eileen the Scarecrow

The common fan interpretation identifies Eileen as a "plague doctor." This reading ignores significant visual evidence and misses a more coherent thematic interpretation: Eileen is designed as a scarecrow.

The wordplay: SCARE-CROW. She scares hunters (by hunting them), she IS a crow (her mask, her aesthetic), and she functions as a scarecrow—something meant to ward off threats, but in her case, she IS the threat to hunters who've lost themselves to the beast.

Visual evidence supporting the scarecrow interpretation:

The hat: A conical, pointed design typical of scarecrow headwear—not the wide-brimmed hat worn by actual plague doctors
The mask: Does not look like a normal plague doctor mask—the beak is shorter, the texture is wrinkled, the eyes have a different shape and no protective glasses over them. Compare this to the genuine plague doctor masks visible elsewhere in the game, which have longer beaks, a smoother structure, and eye protection (visible on certain wheelchair-bound hunters)
The feathered cape: Deliberately tattered, resembling both crow wings and the ragged cloth tied to a scarecrow's frame

She is also missing the iconic cane, which could easily have been a Threaded Cane. Instead, she wields dagger-like blades.

The scarecrow reading provides thematic coherence: Eileen wards off the corruption of hunters by culling those who fall, functioning as both guardian and executioner—a living scarecrow keeping watch over a field of potential beasts.