Greer Gilman's Blog, page 94

All Hallows, 1959

I may use that unpink princess for an author photo...

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Netflixions

Their sorting algorithm seems to be drunk.  They recommend:

Grand Illusion
Because you enjoyed:

    *
      This Is Spinal Tap
 

Henry V
Because you enjoyed:

    *
      Wallace & Gromit: Three Amazing Adventures

Greer

That ain't workin'!

Silly captions?

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"...godfather to an insect..."

Nabokov was right about the evolution of butterflies.  Blues.  Awesome.

 

"The mysteries of mimicry had a special attraction for me. Its phenomena showed an artistic perfection usually associated with man-wrought things. Consider the imitation of oozing poison by bubblelike macules on a wing (complete with pseudo-refraction) or by glossy yellow knobs on a chrysalis ("Don't eat me--I have already been squashed, sampled and rejected"). Consider the tricks of an acrobatic caterpillar (of the Lobster Moth) which in infancy looks like bird's dung, but after molting develops scrabbly hymenopteroid appendages and baroque characteristics, allowing the extraordinary fellow to play two parts at once (like the actor in Oriental shows who becomes a pair of intertwisted wrestlers): that of a writhing larva and that of a big ant seemingly harrowing it. When a certain moth resembles a certain wasp in shape and color, it also walks and moves its antennae in a waspish, unmothlike manner. When a butterfly has to look like a leaf, not only are all the details of a leaf beautifully rendered but markings mimicking grub-bored holes are generously thrown in. "Natural Selection," in the Darwinian sense, could not explain the miraculous coincidence of imitative aspect and imitative behavior, nor could one appeal to the theory of "the struggle for life" when a protective device was carried to a point of mimetic subtlety, exuberance, and luxury far in excess of a predator's power of appreciation.  I discovered in nature the nonutilitarian delights that I sought in art.  Both were a form of magic, both were a game of intricate enchantment and deception."

                                                                                                          ---Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory


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The Pleasures of Strangeness

Here's a good little piece on Small Beer Press and their aesthetic:  "a spirit of playfulness, of invention and adventure."

"At one extreme, you'll find writers like Greer Gilman, whose Cloud and Ashes (2009) is more akin to a beguiling fever dream than a standard-issue novel, an edifice of startling word and world invention. At another, you'll find works like Geoff Ryman's The King's Last Song, a luminous tale of ancient and modern Cambodia rendered in more straightforward, if still compelling, prose. It's an elusive quality that unites the extremes of the Small Beer Press catalogue, but quality of a particular kind is the key: the works all spring from careful attention to that which surprises and delights in literature. That surprise and delight are often the stuff of invention—of language, of world, of imaginative territory."

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"...and the hunter home from the hill."

I did have a splendid if frantically overbooked Arisia, after which I came down with a spectacularly nasty cold, endured while putting on a full memorial service for my mother (complete with explosively incompatible relations and a nice buffet lunch), in a maelstrom of angst and Kleenex.

My heartfelt thanks, above all ,to negothick   and movingfinger  .

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a lovely great stack of books and a teapot, and recover.

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Arise! Arise!

Here's my final Arisia schedule.  How on earth did I end up on ten things?  All wonderful, to be sure—but I'll need to be theobrominated like crazy.  Hope to see some of you there!

Worlds Within Worlds: Cartography in Literature
Friday 5:00 PM
Catherynne M. Valente (m), David Camacho. Greer Gilman, Sarah Smith

Since the advent of map-making, there has been a desire to define places, including those which are unreal or fantastic. Likewise, many fantasy novels begin with a map of the terrain to be traversed. What happens when F/SF/H authors create maps of their own—psychological, fantastic, of known and unknown worlds—and where can we go with them?

Re-Reading Childhood Classics
Friday 6:30 PM
Vikki Ciaffone (m), Greer Gilman, Victoria Janssen, Patricia M. Cryan, Sonya Taaffe

We all have favorites from our childhood, but some of them, when we read them as adults, sour us on our original warm memories. Others surprise us with depths that we never caught the first time. And still others have the lyricism which we first fell in love with. Let's all look again.

Beyond Binaries 101: Exploring Gender Roles
Friday 9:30 PM
Trisha Wooldridge (m), Steve Berman, Greer Gilman, Victoria Janssen, Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert

How do science fiction, fantasy, and horror explore beyond our existing gender roles? How often do we see authors fall back on traditional gender roles or just flipping gender roles? Or how often do we do it ourselves? Who has created unique roles separate from gender or dealing with gender beyond binaries? What would we like to see?

Reading—Crighton, G. Gilman, Staats
Saturday 3:30 PM
Katherine Crighton, Greer Gilman, Richard Staats

Authors Katherine Crighton, Greer Gilman, and Richard Staats will read selections from their works.

{Taking a deep breath, I'll be trying out a little of the nameless work in progress.  I had to put it aside in October, so it's going to be almost as strange to me as to the audience.}

Selkies: The Next Big Thing?
Saturday 9:30 PM
Vikki Ciaffone (m), Greer Gilman, David Sklar, Sonya Taaffe

They won't drink your blood. They won't eat your brain. When the moon is full, they . . . um . . . slip off their sealskins and dance on the beach? Selkies may seem helpless, but they'll probably break your heart. And are they the next big thing? This panel will look at the sealfolk in legends, in modern retellings, and in stories still to be told.

Language and Linguistics in Genre Fiction
Sunday 12:30 PM
Sonya Taaffe (m), Greer Gilman, John G. McDaid, Lauren P. Burka, Tananarive Due

There's more to language than a dictionary and grammar, as these experts will tell you. Whether written, spoken, or signed languages grow out of specific cultural settings and specific neurologies, and affect those cultures and neurologies. The ways that languages affect minds and societies and what we can learn from a culture's language are fertile fields for research, discussion, and cool ideas.

Ballads of the Supernatural
Sunday 8:00 PM
Greer Gilman (m), Jeff Keller, Ellen Kranzer, Susan Weiner, Mark A. Mandel, Sonya Taaffe

Many traditional songs tell stories of the supernatural: Ghosts, faeries, shape-changers and so forth. Come listen or sing in this themed song circle.

Divination in Fantasy
Sunday 9:00 PM
Nisi Shawl (m), Greer Gilman, Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert, Tchipakkan, Catherynne M. Valente

Divination takes a fundamentally random process (the fall of playing cards, the position of tea leaves) and regards it as fated and meaningful, and hence indicative of the future. What are the motivations of authors who use divinatory systems in their fiction? What do such works end up saying about causality? It's possible to borrow an existing system or invent your own; what are the rationales for doing one or the other?

The Object in the Story, the Story in the Object
Monday 11:00 AM
David Sklar (m), Greer Gilman, Catherynne M. Valente

There is more to a story than just the narrative. Many artists contain stories in their work and many writers have art contained in their stories. This is a chance for visual artists and writers to meet and see where their crafts cross.

{Marbles. Wooden jigsaws. Water-bored stones. Half-human bicycles. There's more to fantasy than rings!}

Genius Loci: Setting and Story
Monday 12:30 PM
Shira Lipkin (m), Vikki Ciaffone, Robert Davies, Greer Gilman

How do the vast arc of the Ringworld, the snug hills of the Shire, and the treeless plazas of Trantor shape their stories' characters and events? Does local color bewitch or bore the reader? Are real places easier to evoke than imaginary ones? What SF/F/H settings do you find unforgettable?

"—as of Fairies, Elves, Water-spirits, Enchantment, and Ghostly Apparitions..."

I'll be leading a session at Arisia on ballads of the supernatural.  There are so many excellent singers gathered that I'd be loath to talk too much; so I've made a handout, a list of Child's ballads with uncanny elements, each with a little snippet of lyric as reminder or allurement.
Child Ballads of the Supernatural

“—as of Fairies, Elves, Water-spirits, Enchantment, and Ghostly Apparitions...”

Faerie

King Orfeo (Child 019)
“The King of Faerie with his dart
Has pierced your lady to the heart.”

Thomas Rymer {True Thomas} (Child 037)
“And he saw neither sun nor moon
But heard the roaring of the sea...”

The Wee Wee Man (Child 038)
“On we lap, and awa we rade
Till we came to yon bonny green...”

Tam Lin (Child 039)
“I should have torn out your eyes, Tam Lin,
And put in two eyes of tree...”

The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice (Child 040)
“Come and nurse an elf child down beneath the sea.”

Hind Etin (Child 041)
“She hadn’t pulled a nut, a nut
Nor broken a branch but one...”

Sir Cawline {Sir Colvin} (Child 061)
“Upon Eldritch Hill, there grows a thorn...”

Young Waters (Child 094)
“A mantle of the burning gold
Did keep him from the wind...”

(Just in that one verse, he could be an elfin.)

Water-spirits

Clerk Corvill {Clerk Colven} (Child 042)
“But she was vanished to a fish...”

Sir Patrick Spens (Child 058)
“I saw the new moon late last night
With the old moon in her arm...”

The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry (Child 113)
“I am a man upon the land
A silkie on the sea...”

The Mermaid (Child 289)
“Tonight she may look in the salt, salt waves
And find but one alive...”

Hags, Grotesques & Giants

The Marriage of Sir Gawain {Gawain & Ragnell; The Half Hitch} (Child 031)
“She looked like a teapot before and behind.”

King Henry (Child 032)
“She's eaten them up both skin and bone
Left nothing but hide and hair...”

Kempy Kay {King Knapperty} (Child 033)
“And each of the eyes in her true love's head
Was like to a rotting plum...”

“Every nail all on her hand
It was like to an iron rake...”

Lang Johnny {Long John, Old John, and Jackie North} (Child 251)
“For they were tall as the eagles call
And broad as the oaken tree...”

Young Ronald (Child 304)
“He had three heads upon one neck...”

Birds & Beasts

Sir Lionel {Bold Sir Rylas, Sir Eglamore, Rackabello, Old Bangum} (Child 018)
“Young Rackabello come to the wild boar's den
There he saw the bones of a thousand men.”

The Three Ravens {Twa Corbies} (Child 026)
“O'er his white banes, when they are bare / The wind sall blaw for evermair.”

The Bonny Birdy (Child 082)
“He that's in bed
With another man's wife
It's time he was away.”

The Gay Goshawk (Child 096)
“He flew unto the whin
And there he sat and sang their loves
As she went out and in.”

The Famous Flower of Serving Men (Child 106)
“Oh pretty bird, come sing it plain”
(An elusive white hind and a prophetic dove are Martin Carthy’s inventions.)

Enchantments

Kemp Owyne (Child 034)
“Her breath grew strang, her hair grew lang
And twisted thrice about the tree...”

Allison Gross {Alison Cross} (Child 035)
“The ugliest witch in the north country.”

The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea (Child 036)
“My father married the worst woman
That ever the world did see
And she has made me the laily worm
That lies at the foot of the tree.”

King Estmere (Child 060)
“My mother was a western woman
And learned in gramarye...”

The Earl of Mar's Daughter (Child 270)
“My seven sons in seven swans
Above their heads to flee...”

Witch Mothers

Gil Brenton (Child 005)
“We cast the kavils us amag
To see which should to the greenwood gang...”

Willie's Lady (Child 006)
“And who has loosed the nine witch knots
That was among that lady’s locks?”

The Lass of Loch Royal {Lord Gregory} (Child 076)
“But I'll take down that mast of gold and set up a mast of tree...”

(Not overtly supernatural, but it could be...)

The Mother's Malison; or, Clyde's Water {The Drowned Lovers} (Child 216)
“I got our mother's malison
For coming here to you.”

(Likewise.)

Transformation

The Twa Sisters {O the Dreadful Wind and Rain, Cruel Sister, Binnorie O, Bows of London, The Swan Swims So Bonny} (Child 010)
“He made fiddle pegs of her long finger bones...”

Touchstones

Hind Horn (Child 017)
“When this ring grows pale and blue
Then my love is lost to you.”

The Boy And The Mantle (Child 029)
“For if she be unfaithful
In tatters it shall fall...”

Bonny Bee Hom (Child 092)
“Looking on his gay gold ring
The stone grew dark and gray.”

Magician’s Duels

The Elfin Knight {Scarborough Fair} (Child 002)
“Tell her to find me an acre of land
Between the salt water and the sea strand...”

The Broomfield Hill (Child 043)
“Then up and spake this witch woman
As she sat all alone,
Saying, “You shall go to the Broomfield Hill
And a maid you shall come home.”

A variant is The Maid on the Shore
“And the captain's bright sword she's took for an oar...
And she's paddled right back to the shore.”

The Twa Magicians (Child 044)
“So the lady she turned into a mare
As dark as the night was black
Ah, but he became a golden saddle
And he clung onto her back”

A variant is Hares on the Mountain

“If all you young men were rushes a-growing
How many young girls would take scythes and go mowing?”

Captain Wedderburn's Courtship (Child 046)
A riddle song which Anne Lister’s “Beech and Willow” makes magical.

The Gardener (Child 219)
The milk-white snow will be your sark
And lie your body neist
The mirk-black rain will be your coat
A wind-gale at your breast...

Champions

Sir Aldingar (Child 059)
“A gryphon seized her in its claws and carried her to its nest.”

The Bonny Lass of Anglesey (Child 220)
“But e'er the king had gone one step
She danced his gold and his lands away.”

Foes

Lamkin {Long Lankin} (Child 093)
“Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the moss.”

“You have three silver gowns all bright as the sun
Come down, my pretty lady, all by the light of one.”

Prince Heathen (Child 104)
“‘O lady will you weep for me? Lady tell me true.’
‘Oh never yet, you heathen dog, I never shall for you.’”

Demon Lovers

Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight {The Outlandish Knight, May Colvin} (Child 004)
“Six pretty maids have you drowned here
And the seventh has drowned thee.”

James Harris {The Daemon Lover, The House Carpenter} (Child 243)
“I’ll show you where the white lilies grow
In the bottom of the sea.”

Ghostly Apparitions

The Twa Brothers {The Rolling of the Stones} (Child 049)
“Will you go to the rolling of the stones...?”

Fair Margaret and Sweet William {Little Margaret} (Child 074)
“Something appeared to Sweet William and his bride
And stood at their bed feet.”

“I dreamed that my chamber was full of wild swine
And my bride's bed floating in blood.”

Quoted in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1611).

Sweet William's Ghost {Lady Margaret} (Child 077)
“And should I kiss your rosy lips
Your days will not be long.”

“And all the live-long winter’s night
The dead corpse followed she."

The Unquiet Grave {Cold Blows the Wind} (Child 078)
“The wind doth blow today, my love
And a few small drops of rain...”

The Wife of Usher's Well (Child 079)
“The cock doth craw, the day doth daw
The channerin worm doth chide...”

“It fell about the Martinmas
When nights are lang and mirk...”

Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (Child 201)
(Not overtly supernatural. Elegaic; but could be haunting.)

“The plague come from the borough town
And slew them both together.”

The Grey Cock ; or, Saw You My Father? {The Lover’s Ghost, Night Visiting Song} (Child 248)
“I must be going, no longer staying
The burning Thames I have to cross.”

Willie's Fatal Visit (Child 255)
“Wan and weary was the ghost...”

The Suffolk Miracle (Child 272)
“And though he had a month been dead
This kerchief was about his head.”

Blood Will Out

Brown Robyn's Confession {The Guilty Sea Captain, Sir William Gower, William Glen} (Child 057)
“Tomorrow night you will lie with me.”

Young Hunting {Love Henry, Earl Richard, False True Love, Henry Lee} (Child 068)
“O white, white were his wounds washen
As white as a linen clout;
But as the traitor she came near
His wounds they gushit out.”

Young Benjie (Child 086)
“And at the dead hour of the night
The corpse began to thraw...”

The Devil You Say

Riddles Wisely Expounded {The Devil’s Nine Questions; Juniper Gentle and Rosemary} (Child 001)
“O what is sharper than the thorn?”

The Fause Knight Upon The Road {The Child on the Road} (Child 003)
“‘How many of them's mine?’
‘A' them that has blue tails.'”

The Farmer's Curst Wife {O Daddy be Gay, Devil & the Farmer’s Wife} (Child 278)
“Take her back, Daddy! She’ll murder us all.”

Miracles

St. Stephen and Herod (Child 022)
“The capon crowed Cristus natus est!”

The Cherry Tree Carol (Child 054)
“And the very tall branches bowed low to her knee,
And Mary picked cherries by one, two and three.”

“Oh, this world is no other than stones in the street
But the sun, moon, and stars will sail under thy feet.”

The Carnal and the Crane {King Herod and the Cock, King Pharim} (Child 055)
“Carry home your ripened corn
That you've been a-sowing this day.”

Dives and Lazarus (Child 056)
“There is a place prepared in hell
For to sit upon a serpent’s knee.”

Sir Hugh; or, The Jew's Daughter {LIttle Sir William, It Rained A Mist, Fatal Flower Garden} (Child 155)
“Mother, mother, make my bed
Make for me a winding sheet.
Wrap me up in a cloak of gold
See if I can sleep.”


So how does this look to you?  Have I missed any?  (There are a few slipsongs that aren't quite fantastic but could be.)

Are the verses quoted good teasers?  Now and then I've left two snippets, where I couldn't decide which to use.  Any opinions?

Are the headings all right?  I wish I could think of a good category for my beloved "Twa Sisters."  Metamorphosis?  Truth-Telling?  It's not an enchantment or a spell.  It could be a "Blood Will Out" ballad, but it transcends that class.

I wish I'd had time to do a bibliography of Child-inspired books and stories.  Another year perhaps.

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Morning's minion

On a winter morning, I saw a snow-lit hawk, tumbling round and round a crow.

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...riverrun...

Winter gilded.

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