Timothy Ferguson's Blog, page 9

Allingham and the Fear of Little Men

I was first taught this poem in primary school. It was in the standard English textbook, to explain what adjectives were. I thought I knew it. I only knew the first and last verses. The child abduction in the middle verses would have caused parental concern. Children getting lost in the bush is one of the archetypal fears in Australian children’s literature.

These creatures are small trooping fae, and can be designed using the statistics on pages 96-7 of Realms of Power : Faerie. The faerie king mentioned seems to live on Slieve League, which are the tallest sea cliffs in Ireland. Rosses is also in Donegal. The Columkill here isn’t the island of Iona, out near Scotland: it’s a loch between the two. I’m not clear on his identity. Let’s assume he’s a courtly faerie or a giant. which are also in the Realms of Power book.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
With frogs for their watchdogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hillside,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn trees
For pleasure, here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Extinct Familiars

We’ve dealt with extinct familiars before in the fanzines, by talking about folklore and its link to fossils, but the idea here is a bit different. There are several species which are living in Mythic Europe and have gone extinct since. These add odd colour to the game without changing the power level.

A few of these creatures are slight variations on animals which have already been stated in the core books. The Pyrenean Ibex is similar to the ibexes which currently live in Switzerland, but are larger and found on the border of modern Spain. They’ve gone extinct twice. After the death of the final great ibex a clone was produced from cell samples, but it died after seven minutes. Similarly the aurochs, which is the ancestral species of the domestic cow, still exists in 1220. It’s like a bull, but huge, so give it added Size and toughness. Conversely the Tarpan horse, which is still found in Eastern Europe during the game period, is a small, shy swift horse. We’d call it a pony because it is only four feet at the shoulder. It has folklore wrapped about it, so much so that people forgot what colour it really was. An Atlas bear is a svelte, rather more aggressive, version of the European bear. Let’s move onto some weirder options.

Do you want to play a cute mouse the size of a guinea pig? Pikas are still found in the modern world in South America. Until the Renaissance there were two weird stranded species surviving on the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. Corsica is important to the history of House Verdiitus, so I like having these things sitting on the shoulders of those magi. A pika can be statted as a large rat.

The Great Auk was a huge penguin-like bird that’s found on the coast of the icy sea from Norway, across Britain to Iceland. They aren’t penguins :they are an example of convergent evolution. Penguins, which were discovered when the southern hemisphere was explored by Europeans, are named after the auk. This is why the genus Penguinus is empty of living species: none of the penguins are in it. They make a cool variant to characters who have seal or dolphin heartbeasts or familiars. An auk can hold its breath underwater for 15 minutes and descend half a mile.

Time for my weirdest choice: but first let me do some special pleading. It was noted a few years ago that there’s a sulphur-crested cockatoo, drawn from life, can be found in the marginalia of a book from the court of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. These cockatoos are native to my part of Australia. Presumably it worked its way from the sea cucumber traders up the pilgrimage routes and then across to Europe. It may have helped that if you buy a sulphur-crested cockatoo, you are buying a pet from your grandchildren: they live over a hundred years. Also, they mimic humans like parrots, which makes them valuable. Stuff can get to Europe in all sorts of weird ways. Having said that, let me introduce megaladapis.

A megaladapis is a sort of giant lemur from Madagascar. You know King Julian? Imagine him made a meter and a half tall. The megaladapidae have a weirdl- shaped face for a lemur. It isn’t flat, like other primates. It is more fox or dog like. They are foliage eaters, but I just used the bear stats because, why not? They have huge claws. Well, fingers. Some people call them koala lemurs, so I play them as koalas: lazy and vaguely drugged out. I also like them because they have hands, and they don’t look like an ape.

The Dead Men of Pest from “Poems Original and Translated” by John Herman Merivale

We’ve been getting a heap of useful material out of decadent and romantic poets, so let’s continue. John Merivale was part of Lord Byron’s social circle, and this poem is about a vampiric plague in Pest, which is one of the three cities that merged to form modern Budapest in Hungary. The following recording was released into the public domain by Newgate. Novelist, who is one of my favourite Librivox recorders, thanks to her and to her production team.

In your campaign is this a single revener, in which case it’s the largest one ever recorded, or are these, alternately, thousands of revenants? House Tremere is going to want them stamped out, but the vast number of vampires gives them advantage at night when they are active. During the day they sleep, allowing even young magi to participate in the search and destroy mission. Some vampires, however, might stay awake in darkened spaces, and they have some sort of mesmeric power that might work on grogs or magi with weak Parmae Magicae.

As for stats, these are a variety of revenant, which are already fully written up in Realms of Power: The Infernal.

***

I left the chaulkie cliftes of Old Englonde,
And paced thro’ manie a region faire to see,
Thorowe the reaulme of Greece, and Holie Londe,
Untille I journied into sadde Hongrie.

I sawe old Cecrops’ towne, and famous Rome;
But Davydd’s holie place I lyked best ;
I sawe straunge syghtes that made me pyne for home,
Bot moche the straungest in the towne of Pest.

It was a goodlie citye, fayre to see ;
By its prowde walles and statelie towres it gave
A delicate aspect to the countree,
With its brigg of boates across the Danow’s wave.

Yet many thinges with grief I did survaie :
The stretys all were mantell’d o’er with grass,
And, tho’ it were upon the sabbath daie,
No belles did tolle to call the folke to masse.

The churchyard gates with barrs were closyd fast,
Like to a sinnefull and accursedde place ;
It shew’d as tho’ the judgment daie were past,
And the dedde exyledfrom the throne of Grace.

At last an aged carle came halting bye—
A wofull wyghte he was, and sadde of cheere —
Of whom, if aught of cell or bowre were nighe,
For wearie pilgrimme’s rest, I ‘ganne to speire.

“Straunger!” he sedde, ” in Marye’s name departe !”
And, whan thus spoken, wolde have past me by.
His hollowe voyce sanke deepe into my harte ;
Yet I wolde not lett him passe, and askyd,”

Why?”” Tis now mid daye,” quoth hee, ” the sunne shines brighte,
And all thinges gladde, bot onlie heare in Peste :
But an ’twere winter wylde, at dedde of nighte,
Not heare, O straunger, sholdstthou seke to reste ;

Tho’ rain in torrents fell, and cold winde blew,
And thou with travell sore, and honger pale.”
” Tho’ the sunne,” saied I, “shine brighte, and theday be newe,
He not departe ontill thou’s tolde thy tale.”

This wofull wyghte thanne toke me by the honde;
His, like a skeletonne’s, was bonie and colde.
Hee lean’d, as tho’ hee scarse mote goe or stonde,
Like one who fourscore yeares hath, haply, tolde.

We came togither to the market-crosse,
And the wyghte, all wo begon, spake never worde;
Ne living thinge was sene our path to crosse,
(Tho’ dolours grones from many a house 1 herde,)

Save one poore dogge, that stalk’d athwart a courte,
Fearfullie howling with most pyteous wayle :
The sad manne whistled in a dismall sorte,
And the poore thing slunk away and hidd his tayle.

I felt my verye bloud crepe in my vaynes ;
My bones were icie-cold, my hayre on end :
I wish’d myself agen upon the playnes,
Yet cold not but that sad old manne attend.

The sadd old manne sate down upon a stone,
And I sate on another at his side.
He heved mournfully a pyteous grone,
And thanne to ease my dowtes his selfe applyde.

” Straunger !” quoth he, ” regard my visage well,
And eke these bonie fingerrs feel agen—
Howe manie winterrs semyth it they tell
I dowtingly replyde, “Three-score and ten.”

” Straunger ! not fourty yeres agonn I laye
An infant, mewling in the nurse’s armes ;
Not fourty dayes agonn, two daughterrs gaye
Did make me joyful by their opening charmes.

” Yet now I seme some fowrscore winterrs olde
And everie droppe of bloud hath left my vaynes ;
Als’ myfayre daughterrs twayne lye stitie and coide,
And bloudless, bound in Deth’s eternall chaynes.

Straunger! this towne so pleasaunt to our sygbtes.
With goodly towres and palaces so fayre,
Whilom for gentle dames and valiaunt knyghtes.
From all Hongaria’s londe the mede did beare.”

But now the few, still rescow’d from the dedde,
Are sobbing out their breath in sorie guyse ;
Alle, that had strength to flee, long since have fledde.
Save onlye I, who longe to close mine eyes.

” Seaven weekes are past sithence our folk begann
To pyne, and falle away—no reason why ;
The ruddiest visage turn’d to pale and wann,
And glassie stillnesse film’d the brightest eye.

” Some Doctours sedde, the lakes did agews breede,
Bot spring retorning wold the same disperse,
Whiles others, contrarie to nature’s creede,
Averr’d the seasonn’s chaunge wold make us worse.

” And tho’ we leugh at these, like doaters fonde,
Or faytours wont in paradoxe to deele,
Yet, as the sun wax’d warm, throughout the londe,
Allemennethe more did wintrie shiverings feele

.”At length it chaunc’d that one of station highe
Fell sicke, and dyed uponn the seaventh daie :
They op’d the corse the hidden cause to spie,
And founde that alle the bloud was drain’d awaie.

There was a tailour, Vulvius by name,
Who longe emongste us dwelt in honest pride ;
A worthie citizenne esteem’d by fame ;
That since some moneth of a soddeine dyde. “

Now thus it happ’d—as oft it chaunceth soe—
That, after he was iron, straunge rumours spred
Of evill haunts where ’twas his wont to iroe,
And midnight visitacyonns to the ded.

” Now, whanne this fearfull maladye had growne
To soche an hyght as men were loath to saye,
Emongst the reste in our unhappie towne,
My darlinge doughterrs sore tormentyd laye.

” Nathless I mark’d that ever whiles they pyned
Their appetyte for foode encrees’d the more ;
They fedde on richest meates whene’er they dyn’d,
And drancke of old Tokaye my choicest store.”

Thus, everie eve, their colour fresh arose,
And they did looke agen both briske and gaye ;
All nighte depe slomberrs did their eyelidds close ;
Bot worse and worse they woxe by breake of daye.

” One nyght yt chauncyd, as they slepyng laied,
Their serving wenche at midnight sought their room,
To bring some possett, brothe, or gellie, made
To quelle the plague that did their lives consume.

” Whenne, ere she reach ‘d the spot, a heavie sound
Of footsteps lumbering up the stayre she heard ;
And, soon as they had gain’d the top-most round,
The buried tailour to her sighte appear’d.

” She herd him ope my daughters’ chamber dore—
(Her lighte lettfalle, she had no force to crye,)
Then, in briefe space, agen—for soe she swore.
It lumber’d downe ; but farre more heavilee.

” This storye herde, albe’ I inly smyl’d
To think the seely mayd such fears cold shake,
Vet, the nexte nighte, to prove her fancies wyld,
I kept myselfe, till past midnighte, awake :

‘ Whanne, at the midnighte belle, a sounde I herd
Of heavie lumbering stepps, a sound of dred ;
The tailour Vulvius to my sighte appeard ;
And all my senses at the instant fledde.

” Next daye, I founde a fryer of mickle grace,
A learned clerke, and praied he wold me rede,
In soche a straunge, perplext, and divellishe case,
His ghostly counsaile how ’twere best procede.

” Into the churchyarde wee together wente,
And hee at everie grave-stone saied a prayer ;
Till at the tailour Vulvius’ monimente
We stopt—a spade and mattoke had we there.

” Wee digg’d the earth wherein the tailour laye,
Till at the tailour’s coffyn we arrived,
Nor there, I weene, moche labour fonde that daye,
For everie bolt was drawen and th’ hinges rived.

‘ ‘ This sighte was straunge, bot straunger was to see ;
The corse, tho’ laid som moneth’s space in mold,
Did shew like living manne, full blythe of glee,
And luddie, freshe, and comelie to behold.

” And now the cause wee happlie mote presume.
The Vampire—so he named this demonne guest—
Had burst the sacred cerements of the tomb,
And of the buried corse himselfe possest.

” This newes, whanne thro’ the towne wee made it knowne,
Unusual horrour seised the stoutest wyghtes,
As deming not the tailour’s grave alone
Had so bin made a haunt of dampned sprites.

” The churchyarde now was digged all aboute,
And everie new made grave laid bare to viewe,
Whanne everie corse that they dyd digge thereoute,
Seem’d,like the firste, offreshe and ruddie hewe.

” ‘Twas plain, the corses that the churchyards fill’d,
Were they whoe nightly lumber’d upp our stayre,
Whoe suck’d our bloud, the living banquettes will’d.
And left us alle bestraughte with blanke despayre.

” Andnowe the Priestes burne incense in the choyre,
And scatter Ave-maries o’er the grave,
And purifye the churche with lustrall fire,
And caste alle things profane in Danowe’s wave ;

” And they’ve barr’d with ironne barrs the churchyarde pale,
To kepe them inn ; but vayne is alle they doe :
For whan a ded manne hath lernt to drawe a nayle,
Hee can also burste an ironne bolte in two.”

The sadde old manne here endyd.
I arose, With myngled greefe and wonderment possest :
I rode nine leagues or ere I sought repose,
And never agen came nigh the towne of Peste.

The Dark Angel by Lionel Johnson

Lionel Johnson was a decadent poet, and we’ve had some luck with those before, which is why we are fishing in his waters. He was part of Oscar Wilde’s set, indeed. He was the person who introduced Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas, the young man who legally speaking, he debauched, leading to Wilde’s imprisonment, and was thought by people at the time, the breaking of his constitution and his death.

Johnson was a fervent Catholic, and simultaneously homosexual. This caused him deep spiritual angst. His part in the Wilde affair also caused him great grief. He expresses this angst in the following poem, which eventually, I will start up as a demonic Tempter.

It’s a view of what we call Oppression, which is when a particular demon fastens the mortal person and destroys their life by removing all their sources of pleasure. This was one medieval understanding of what we now call depression.

As a note for the Warhammer fans in the audience, yes, there is a link. Warhammer 40k in the early editions was full of little jokes, and Lion El Johnson, the Primarch of the Dark Angels, is a direct reference to this poet and his work. When you’re using this Tempter in the game, it doesn’t have to be homosexuality that is causing the angst in the player character, it can be any personally-perceived fault.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtle violence!

Because of the, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changes thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears;
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers.
Or ripples down the dancing sea :
Thou, with thy troupe of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Though venomous spirits stirs and broods,
O master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonous the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright,
Waters of bitterness, how sweet:
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared for thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! Should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from death:

The second death that never dies,
That cannot die when time is dead:
Live death, were from the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel. with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change. o drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

***

Just a note of explanation, the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. It means the supernatural comforter.

Stats eventually.

Nympholepts

This week Mystery Cults and Nympholepts. Time for some more Swinburne, the excellent
decadent author who gave us the Lady of Pain and her cephalopodus servants.

A nympholept is a person who is inducted into a religio-magical mystery by a powerful spirit. The name comes from The Odyssey where Odysseus is taught transformations by Circe.
I did slide them into Ars as a hedge tradition in the Faerie book, but I’ve never actually seen one played in a live game. Really, I had been beaten to the punch by the writers of Fairies: 2nd edition, They had Mandagora Magi and I’d argue that’s an instance of the broader nymphileptic category.

In the hope of making them more popular or enriching the backstory of Merinita Magi,
I present the following recording, it was released via Librivox. The reader was Laura Fontaine and I’d like to thank her and her production team. In the podcast I only included an extract of the poem, but it is complete here.

After the quite lengthy Swinburne piece, there is a brief piece by another poet. His name’s Rupert Brooke, he was a First World War poet, and he was a war poet except he’s strangely upbeat through the whole thing. Anyway, it’s a failed mystery cult initiation, it only lasts for a couple of minutes. I think it’s funny, I hope it doesn’t undercut the entire piece. The LibriVox recording was done by Graham Redman and I’d like to thank him and his production team.

***

A Nympholept by Charles Swinburne

SUMMER, and noon, and a splendour of silence, felt,

Seen, and heard of the spirit within the sense.

Soft through the frondage the shades of the sunbeams melt,

Sharp through the foliage the shafts of them, keen and dense,

Cleave, as discharged from the string of the God’s bow, tense

As a war-steed’s girth, and bright as a warrior’s belt.

Ah, why should an hour that is heaven for an hour pass hence?

I dare not sleep for delight of the perfect hour,

Lest God be wroth that his gift should be scorned of man.

The face of the warm bright world is the face of a flower,

The word of the wind and the leaves that the light winds fan

As the word that quickened at first into flame, and ran,

Creative and subtle and fierce with invasive power,

Through darkness and cloud, from the breath of the one God, Pan.

The perfume of earth possessed by the sun pervades

The chaster air that he soothes but with sense of sleep.

Soft, imminent, strong as desire that prevails and fades,

The passing noon that beholds not a cloudlet weep

Imbues and impregnates life with delight more deep

Than dawn or sunset or moonrise on lawns or glades

Can shed from the skies that receive it and may not keep.

The skies may hold not the splendour of sundown fast;

It wanes into twilight as dawn dies down into day.

And the moon, triumphant when twilight is overpast,

Takes pride but awhile in the hours of her stately sway.

But the might of the noon, though the light of it pass away,

Leaves earth fulfilled of desires and of dreams that last;

But if any there be that hath sense of them none can say.

For if any there be that hath sight of them, sense, or trust

Made strong by the might of a vision, the strength of a dream,

His lips shall straiten and close as a dead man’s must,

His heart shall be sealed as the voice of a frost-bound stream.

For the deep mid mystery of light and of heat that seem

To clasp and pierce dark earth, and enkindle dust,

Shall a man’s faith say what it is? or a man’s guess deem?

Sleep lies not heavier on eyes that have watched all night

Than hangs the heat of the noon on the hills and trees.

Why now should the haze not open, and yield to sight

A fairer secret than hope or than slumber sees?

I seek not heaven with submission of lips and knees,

With worship and prayer for a sign till it leap to light:

I gaze on the gods about me, and call on these.

I call on the gods hard by, the divine dim powers

Whose likeness is here at hand, in the breathless air,

In the pulseless peace of the fervid and silent flowers,

In the faint sweet speech of the waters that whisper there.

Ah, what should darkness do in a world so fair?

The bent-grass heaves not, the couch-grass quails not or cowers;

The wind’s kiss frets not the rowan’s or aspen’s hair.

But the silence trembles with passion of sound suppressed,

And the twilight quivers and yearns to the sunward, wrung

With love as with pain; and the wide wood’s motionless breast

Is thrilled with a dumb desire that would fain find tongue

And palpitates, tongueless as she whom a man-snake stung,

Whose heart now heaves in the nightingale, never at rest

Nor satiated ever with song till her last be sung.

Is it rapture or terror that circles me round, and invades

Each vein of my life with hope—if it be not fear?

Each pulse that awakens my blood into rapture fades,

Each pulse that subsides into dread of a strange thing near

Requickens with sense of a terror less dread than dear.

Is peace not one with light in the deep green glades

Where summer at noonday slumbers? Is peace not here?

The tall thin stems of the firs, and the roof sublime

That screens from the sun the floor of the steep still wood,

Deep, silent, splendid, and perfect and calm as time,

Stand fast as ever in sight of the night they stood,

When night gave all that moonlight and dewfall could.

The dense ferns deepen, the moss glows warm as the thyme:

The wild heath quivers about me: the world is good.

Is it Pan’s breath, fierce in the tremulous maidenhair,

That bids fear creep as a snake through the woodlands, felt

In the leaves that it stirs not yet, in the mute bright air,

In the stress of the sun? For here has the great God dwelt:

For hence were the shafts of his love or his anger dealt.

For here has his wrath been fierce as his love was fair,

When each was as fire to the darkness its breath bade melt.

Is it love, is it dread, that enkindles the trembling noon,

That yearns, reluctant in rapture that fear has fed,

As man for woman, as woman for man? Full soon,

If I live, and the life that may look on him drop not dead,

Shall the ear that hears not a leaf quake hear his tread,

The sense that knows not the sound of the deep day’s tune

Receive the God, be it love that he brings or dread.

The naked noon is upon me: the fierce dumb spell,

The fearful charm of the strong sun’s imminent might,

Unmerciful, steadfast, deeper than seas that swell,

Pervades, invades, appals me with loveless light,

With harsher awe than breathes in the breath of night.

Have mercy, God who art all! For I know thee well,

How sharp is thine eye to lighten, thine hand to smite.

The whole wood feels thee, the whole air fears thee: but fear

So deep, so dim, so sacred, is wellnigh sweet.

For the light that hangs and broods on the woodlands here,

Intense, invasive, intolerant, imperious, and meet

To lighten the works of thine hands and the ways of thy feet,

Is hot with the fire of the breath of thy life, and dear

As hope that shrivels or shrinks not for frost or heat.

Thee, thee the supreme dim godhead, approved afar,

Perceived of the soul and conceived of the sense of man

We scarce dare love, and we dare not fear: the star

We call the sun, that lit us when life began

To brood on the world that is thine by his grace for a span,

Conceals and reveals in the semblance of things that are

Thine immanent presence, the pulse of thy heart’s life, Pan.

The fierce mid noon that wakens and warms the snake

Conceals thy mercy, reveals thy wrath: and again

The dew-bright hour that assuages the twilight brake

Conceals thy wrath and reveals thy mercy: then

Thou art fearful only for evil souls of men

That feel with nightfall the serpent within them wake,

And hate the holy darkness on glade and glen.

Yea, then we know not and dream not if ill things be,

Or if aught of the work of the wrong of the world be thine.

We hear not the footfall of terror that treads the sea,

We hear not the moan of winds that assail the pine:

We see not if shipwreck reign in the storm’s dim shrine;

If death do service and doom bear witness to thee

We see not,—know not if blood for thy lips be wine.

But in all things evil and fearful that fear may scan,

As in all things good, as in all things fair that fall,

We know thee present and latent, the lord of man;

In the murmuring of doves, in the clamouring of winds that call

And wolves that howl for their prey; in the mid-night’s pall,

In the naked and nymph-like feet of the dawn, O Pan,

And in each life living, O thou the God who art all.

Smiling and singing, wailing and wringing of hands,

Laughing and weeping, watching and sleeping, still

Proclaim but and prove but thee, as the shifted sands

Speak forth and show but the strength of the sea’s wild will

That sifts and grinds them as grain in the storm-wind’s mill.

In thee is the doom that falls and the doom that stands:

The tempests utter thy word, and the stars fulfil.

Where Etna shudders with passion and pain volcanic

That rend her heart as with anguish that rends a man’s,

Where Typho labours, and finds not his thews Titanic,

In breathless torment that ever the flame’s breath fans,

Men felt and feared thee of old, whose pastoral clans

Were given to the charge of thy keeping; and soundless panic

Held fast the woodland whose depths and whose heights were Pan’s.

And here, though fear be less than delight, and awe

Be one with desire and with worship of earth and thee,

So mild seems now thy secret and speechless law,

So fair and fearless and faithful and godlike she,

So soft the spell of thy whisper on stream and sea,

Yet man should fear lest he see what of old men saw

And withered: yet shall I quail if thy breath smite me.

Lord God of life and of light and of all things fair,

Lord God of ravin and ruin and all things dim,

Death seals up life, and darkness the sunbright air,

And the stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim

Laugh, saying, ‘What God is your God, that ye call on him?

What is man, that the God who is guide of our way should care

If day for a man be golden, or night be grim?’

But thou, dost thou hear? Stars too but abide for a span,

Gods too but endure for a season; but thou, if thou be

God, more than shadows conceived and adored of man,

Kind Gods and fierce, that bound him or made him free,

The skies that scorn us are less in thy sight than we,

Whose souls have strength to conceive and perceive thee, Pan,

With sense more subtle than senses that hear and see.

Yet may it not say, though it seek thee and think to find

One soul of sense in the fire and the frost-bound clod,

What heart is this, what spirit alive or blind,

That moves thee: only we know that the ways we trod

We tread, with hands unguided, with feet unshod,

With eyes unlightened; and yet, if with steadfast mind,

Perchance may we find thee and know thee at last for God.

Yet then should God be dark as the dawn is bright,

And bright as the night is dark on the world—no more.

Light slays not darkness, and darkness absorbs not light;

And the labour of evil and good from the years of yore

Is even as the labour of waves on a sunless shore.

And he who is first and last, who is depth and height,

Keeps silence now, as the sun when the woods wax hoar.

The dark dumb godhead innate in the fair world’s life

Imbues the rapture of dawn and of noon with dread,

Infects the peace of the star-shod night with strife,

Informs with terror the sorrow that guards the dead.

No service of bended knee or of humbled head

May soothe or subdue the God who has change to wife:

And life with death is as morning with evening weds.

And yet, if the light and the life in the light that here

Seem soft and splendid and fervid as sleep may seem

Be more than the shine of a smile or the flash of a tear,

Sleep, change, and death are less than a spell-struck dream,

And fear than the fall of a leaf on a starlit stream.

And yet, if the hope that hath said it absorb not fear,

What helps it man that the stars and the waters gleam?

What helps it man, that the noon be indeed intense,

The night be indeed worth worship? Fear and pain

Were lords and masters yet of the secret sense,

Which now dares deem not that light is as darkness, fain

Though dark dreams be to declare it, crying in vain.

For whence, thou God of the light and the darkness, whence

Dawns now this vision that bids not the sunbeams wane?

What light, what shadow, diviner than dawn or night,

Draws near, makes pause, and again—or I dream—draws near?

More soft than shadow, more strong than the strong sun’s light,

More pure than moonbeams—yea, but the rays run sheer

As fire from the sun through the dusk of the pinewood, clear

And constant; yea, but the shadow itself is bright

That the light clothes round with love that is one with fear.

Above and behind it the noon and the woodland lie,

Terrible, radiant with mystery, superb and subdued,

Triumphant in silence; and hardly the sacred sky

Seems free from the tyrannous weight of the dumb fierce mood

Which rules as with fire and invasion of beams that brood

The breathless rapture of earth till its hour pass by

And leave her spirit released and her peace renewed.

I sleep not: never in sleep has a man beholden

This. From the shadow that trembles and yearns with light

Suppressed and elate and reluctant—obscure and golden

As water kindled with presage of dawn or night—

A form, a face, a wonder to sense and sight,

Grows great as the moon through the month; and her eyes embolden

Fear, till it change to desire, and desire to delight.

I sleep not: sleep would die of a dream so strange;

A dream so sweet would die as a rainbow dies,

As a sunbow laughs and is lost on the waves that range

And reck not of light that flickers or spray that flies.

But the sun withdraws not, the woodland shrinks not or sighs,

No sweet thing sickens with sense or with fear of change;

Light wounds not, darkness blinds not, my steadfast eyes.

Only the soul in my sense that receives the soul

Whence now my spirit is kindled with breathless bliss

Knows well if the light that wounds it with love makes whole,

If hopes that carol be louder than fears that hiss,

If truth be spoken of flowers and of waves that kiss,

Of clouds and stars that contend for a sunbright goal.

And yet may I dream that I dream not indeed of this?

An earth-born dreamer, constrained by the bonds of birth,

Held fast by the flesh, compelled by his veins that beat

And kindle to rapture or wrath, to desire or to mirth,

May hear not surely the fall of immortal feet,

May feel not surely if heaven upon earth be sweet;

And here is my sense fulfilled of the joys of earth,

Light, silence, bloom, shade, murmur of leaves that meet.

Bloom, fervour, and perfume of grasses and flowers aglow,

Breathe and brighten about me: the darkness gleams,

The sweet light shivers and laughs on the slopes below,

Made soft by leaves that lighten and change like dreams;

The silence thrills with the whisper of secret streams

That well from the heart of the woodland: these I know:

Earth bore them, heaven sustained them with showers and beams.

I lean my face to the heather, and drink the sun

Whose flame-lit odour satiates the flowers: mine eyes

Close, and the goal of delight and of life is one:

No more I crave of earth or her kindred skies.

No more? But the joy that springs from them smiles and flies:

The sweet work wrought of them surely, the good work done,

If the mind and the face of the season be loveless, dies.

Thee, therefore, thee would I come to, cleave to, cling,

If haply thy heart be kind and thy gifts be good,

Unknown sweet spirit, whose vesture is soft in spring,

In summer splendid, in autumn pale as the wood

That shudders and wanes and shrinks as a shamed thing should,

In winter bright as the mail of a war-worn king

Who stands where foes fled far from the face of him stood.

My spirit or thine is it, breath of thy life or of mine,

Which fills my sense with a rapture that casts our fear?

Pan’s dim frown wanes, and his wild eyes brighten as thine,

Transformed as night or as day by the kindling year.

Earth-born, or mine eye were withered that sees, mine ear

That hears were stricken to death by the sense divine,

Earth-born I know thee: but heaven is about me here.

The terror that whispers in darkness and flames in light,

The doubt that speaks in the silence of earth and sea,

The sense, more fearful at noon than in midmost night,

Of wrath scarce hushed and of imminent till to be,

Where are they? Heaven is as earth, and as heaven to me

Earth: for the shadows that sundered them here take flight;

And naught is all, as am I, but a dream of thee.

***

The Voice by Rupert Brooke

Safe in the magic of my woods
I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
And washed with rain and veiled by night,

Silver and blue and green were showing.
And the dark woods grew darker still;
And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;
And quietness crept up the hill;
And no wind was blowing.

And I knew
That this was the hour of knowing,
And the night and the woods and you
Were one together, and I should find
Soon in the silence the hidden key
Of all that had hurt and puzzled me —
Why you were you, and the night was kind,
And the woods were part of the heart of me.

And there I waited breathlessly,
Alone; and slowly the holy three,
The three that I loved, together grew
One, in the hour of knowing,
Night, and the woods, and you ——

And suddenly
There was an uproar in my woods,

The noise of a fool in mock distress,
Crashing and laughing and blindly going,
Of ignorant feet and a swishing dress,
And a Voice profaning the solitudes.

The spell was broken, the key denied me
And at length your flat clear voice beside me
Mouthed cheerful clear flat platitudes.

You came and quacked beside me in the wood.
You said, “The view from here is very good!”
You said, “It’s nice to be alone a bit!”
And, “How the days are drawing out!” you said.
You said, “The sunset’s pretty, isn’t it?”

By God! I wish — I wish that you were dead!

The Ogre of Rashomon by Yei Theodora Ozaki

I missed this one.

I went through the backlog of Librivox material, looking for monsters and I missed this one because it had a non-European setting. But if you look at it, this is just Beowulf but with more samurai. You can turn this into a role-playing scenario for a wide variety of fantasy games. Over to Joanna Schreck, thanks to Joanna and to her liberal arts production team.

***

Long, long ago in Kyoto, the people of the city were terrified by accounts of a dreadful ogre, who, it was said, haunted the Gate of Rashomon at twilight and seized whoever passed by. The missing victims were never seen again, so it was whispered that the ogre was a horrible cannibal, who not only killed the unhappy victims but ate them also. Now everybody in the town and neighborhood was in great fear, and no one durst venture out after sunset near the Gate of Rashomon.

Now at this time there lived in Kyoto a general named Raiko, who had made himself famous for his brave deeds. Some time before this he made the country ring with his name, for he had attacked Oeyama, where a band of ogres lived with their chief, who instead of wine drank the blood of human beings. He had routed them all and cut off the head of the chief monster.

This brave warrior was always followed by a band of faithful knights. In this band there were five knights of great valor. One evening as the five knights sat at a feast quaffing SAKE in their rice bowls and eating all kinds of fish, raw, and stewed, and broiled, and toasting each other’s healths and exploits, the first knight, Hojo, said to the others:

“Have you all heard the rumor that every evening after sunset there comes an ogre to the Gate of Rashomon, and that he seizes all who pass by?”

The second knight, Watanabe, answered him, saying:

“Do not talk such nonsense! All the ogres were killed by our chief Raiko at Oeyama! It cannot be true, because even if any ogres did escape from that great killing they would not dare to show themselves in this city, for they know that our brave master would at once attack them if he knew that any of them were still alive!”

“Then do you disbelieve what I say, and think that I am telling you a falsehood?”

“No, I do not think that you are telling a lie,” said Watanabe; “but you have heard some old woman’s story which is not worth believing.”

“Then the best plan is to prove what I say, by going there yourself and finding out yourself whether it is true or not,” said Hojo.

Watanabe, the second knight, could not bear the thought that his companion should believe he was afraid, so he answered quickly:

“Of course, I will go at once and find out for myself!”

So Watanabe at once got ready to go—he buckled on his long sword and put on a coat of armor, and tied on his large helmet. When he was ready to start he said to the others:

“Give me something so that I can prove I have been there!”

Then one of the men got a roll of writing paper and his box of Indian ink and brushes, and the four comrades wrote their names on a piece of paper.

“I will take this,” said Watanabe, “and put it on the Gate of Rashomon, so to-morrow morning will you all go and look at it? I may be able to catch an ogre or two by then!” and he mounted his horse and rode off gallantly.

It was a very dark night, and there was neither moon nor star to light Watanabe on his way. To make the darkness worse a storm came on, the rain fell heavily and the wind howled like wolves in the mountains. Any ordinary man would have trembled at the thought of going out of doors, but Watanabe was a brave warrior and dauntless, and his honor and word were at stake, so he sped on into the night, while his companions listened to the sound of his horse’s hoofs dying away in the distance, then shut the sliding shutters close and gathered round the charcoal fire and wondered what would happen—and whether their comrade would encounter one of those horrible Oni.

At last Watanabe reached the Gate of Rashomon, but peer as he might through the darkness he could see no sign of an ogre.

“It is just as I thought,” said Watanabe to himself; “there are certainly no ogres here; it is only an old woman’s story. I will stick this paper on the gate so that the others can see I have been here when they come to-morrow, and then I will take my way home and laugh at them all.”

He fastened the piece of paper, signed by all his four companions, on the gate, and then turned his horse’s head towards home.

As he did so he became aware that some one was behind him, and at the same time a voice called out to him to wait. Then his helmet was seized from the back. “Who are you?” said Watanabe fearlessly. He then put out his hand and groped around to find out who or what it was that held him by the helmet. As he did so he touched something that felt like an arm—it was covered with hair and as big round as the trunk of a tree!

Watanabe knew at once that this was the arm of an ogre, so he drew his sword and cut at it fiercely.

There was a loud yell of pain, and then the ogre dashed in front of the warrior.

Watanabe’s eyes grew large with wonder, for he saw that the ogre was taller than the great gate, his eyes were flashing like mirrors in the sunlight, and his huge mouth was wide open, and as the monster breathed, flames of fire shot out of his mouth.

The ogre thought to terrify his foe, but Watanabe never flinched. He attacked the ogre with all his strength, and thus they fought face to face for a long time. At last the ogre, finding that he could neither frighten nor beat Watanabe and that he might himself be beaten, took to flight. But Watanabe, determined not to let the monster escape, put spurs to his horse and gave chase.

But though the knight rode very fast the ogre ran faster, and to his disappointment he found himself unable to overtake the monster, who was gradually lost to sight.

Watanabe returned to the gate where the fierce fight had taken place, and got down from his horse. As he did so he stumbled upon something lying on the ground.

Stooping to pick it up he found that it was one of the ogre’s huge arms which he must have slashed off in the fight. His joy was great at having secured such a prize, for this was the best of all proofs of his adventure with the ogre. So he took it up carefully and carried it home as a trophy of his victory.

When he got back, he showed the arm to his comrades, who one and all called him the hero of their band and gave him a great feast. His wonderful deed was soon noised abroad in Kyoto, and people from far and near came to see the ogre’s arm.

Watanabe now began to grow uneasy as to how he should keep the arm in safety, for he knew that the ogre to whom it belonged was still alive. He felt sure that one day or other, as soon as the ogre got over his scare, he would come to try to get his arm back again. Watanabe therefore had a box made of the strongest wood and banded with iron. In this he placed the arm, and then he sealed down the heavy lid, refusing to open it for anyone. He kept the box in his own room and took charge of it himself, never allowing it out of his sight.

Now one night he heard some one knocking at the porch, asking for admittance.

When the servant went to the door to see who it was, there was only an old woman, very respectable in appearance. On being asked who she was and what was her business, the old woman replied with a smile that she had been nurse to the master of the house when he was a little baby. If the lord of the house were at home she begged to be allowed to see him.

The servant left the old woman at the door and went to tell his master that his old nurse had come to see him. Watanabe thought it strange that she should come at that time of night, but at the thought of his old nurse, who had been like a foster-mother to him and whom he had not seen for a long time, a very tender feeling sprang up for her in his heart. He ordered the servant to show her in.

The old woman was ushered into the room, and after the customary bows and greetings were over, she said:

“Master, the report of your brave fight with the ogre at the Gate of Rashomon is so widely known that even your poor old nurse has heard of it. Is it really true, what every one says, that you cut off one of the ogre’s arms? If you did, your deed is highly to be praised!”

“I was very disappointed,” said Watanabe, “that I was not able take the monster captive, which was what I wished to do, instead of only cutting off an arm!”

“I am very proud to think,” answered the old woman, “that my master was so brave as to dare to cut off an ogre’s arm. There is nothing that can be compared to your courage. Before I die it is the great wish of my life to see this arm,” she added pleadingly.

“No,” said Watanabe, “I am sorry, but I cannot grant your request.”

“But why?” asked the old woman.

“Because,” replied Watanabe, “ogres are very revengeful creatures, and if I open the box there is no telling but that the ogre may suddenly appear and carry off his arm. I have had a box made on purpose with a very strong lid, and in this box I keep the ogre’s arm secure; and I never show it to any one, whatever happens.”

“Your precaution is very reasonable,” said the old woman. “But I am your old nurse, so surely you will not refuse to show ME the arm. I have only just heard of your brave act, and not being able to wait till the morning I came at once to ask you to show it to me.”

Watanabe was very troubled at the old woman’s pleading, but he still persisted in refusing. Then the old woman said:

“Do you suspect me of being a spy sent by the ogre?”

“No, of course I do not suspect you of being the ogre’s spy, for you are my old nurse,” answered Watanabe.

“Then you cannot surely refuse to show me the arm any longer.” entreated the old woman; “for it is the great wish of my heart to see for once in my life the arm of an ogre!”

Watanabe could not hold out in his refusal any longer, so he gave in at last, saying:

“Then I will show you the ogre’s arm, since you so earnestly wish to see it. Come, follow me!” and he led the way to his own room, the old woman following.

When they were both in the room Watanabe shut the door carefully, and then going towards a big box which stood in a corner of the room, he took off the heavy lid. He then called to the old woman to come near and look in, for he never took the arm out of the box.

“What is it like? Let me have a good look at it,” said the old nurse, with a joyful face.

She came nearer and nearer, as if she were afraid, till she stood right against the box. Suddenly she plunged her hand into the box and seized the arm, crying with a fearful voice which made the room shake:

“Oh, joy! I have got my arm back again!”

And from an old woman she was suddenly transformed into the towering figure of the frightful ogre!

Watanabe sprang back and was unable to move for a moment, so great was his astonishment; but recognizing the ogre who had attacked him at the Gate of Rashomon, he determined with his usual courage to put an end to him this time. He seized his sword, drew it out of its sheath in a flash, and tried to cut the ogre down.

So quick was Watanabe that the creature had a narrow escape. But the ogre sprang up to the ceiling, and bursting through the roof, disappeared in the mist and clouds.

In this way the ogre escaped with his arm. The knight gnashed his teeth with disappointment, but that was all he could do. He waited in patience for another opportunity to dispatch the ogre. But the latter was afraid of Watanabe’s great strength and daring, and never troubled Kyoto again. So once more the people of the city were able to go out without fear even at night time, and the brave deeds of Watanabe have never been forgotten!

Gift giving

The idea for this episode came from an episode on Not Just The Tutors, which is a podcast. It was discussing a display about the role of books in gift-giving during the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, and held at the Bodleian Library. When this podcast was released, some of the digital assets are still on the Bodleian Library’s website, and I encourage you to have a look at them.

Gift-giving was a hugely important social lubricant in the eras we’re interested in for Ars Magica and Magonomia. Let’s examine the process. A gift is given. The way it is given and its value matter. Once it is received, the gift creates a duty of reciprocation. This is why Hobbes said that all gifts were burdens, and gratitude in the periods we’re discussing is a terrible vice.

So the gift creates an uncomfortable tether, being the recipient of a gift, is effectively a sort of minor flaw in Ars Magica. It’s floating around waiting for a mistake to be made so that it turns into a negative reputation. In Magonomia it’s even simpler. It’s a situational hook where the sender can force a social attack with advantage.

Now let’s look at some relationships. The simplest is friendship, which in period is signalled with a continual flow of small gifts. These are as simple as food or rumours. The skill here is to know the friend well enough to give preferred food and relevant gossip. The seasonality of food though makes food gifts so common. There’s good evidence that in large parts of Europe, Bata was not a thing. Instead, there are these webs of gift debt, which are expiated through further gifts.

This creates the kinship layer of gift-giving, which is surprisingly significant, even among the well-off. Older people, like myself, were taught in school that feudalism was a structural pyramid of social ranks, but that was really a Norman custom, so it was only found in Normandy, England and Sicily. By the Magonomia period, it’s broken down so much that there are no dukes because Elizabeth kills the last Duke, and then she waits for as many earldoms as possible to die out. The factions in her court are all filial. This is one of the reasons that the Queen carefully controls the marriage market within her court.

Kinship customs are much as we’d expect, but slower than today. Gatherings, eating together, in a sort of serial progress over the course of the year, useful information passed either way within the kinship group. The big gift-giving day is New Year’s Day, which is why I’m releasing this episode today. Remember that Christmas in both the periods that we’re interested in is a 12-day long festival that ends at the Epiphany in January.

The bond of loyalty to the ruler or patron is generally expressed with gifts and advice. This is recompensated by protection and also advice, but in some cultures also gifts. Scandinavian countries and their descendants seem to favour services and advice from the person with lower status and treasure from the ruler.

By Elizabeth’s day, access to the monarch is of itself considered valuable. When she gives you a gift, that it came from the Queen is of itself a source of prestige, and so the financial disparity of your gifts to her and her gifts back to you is counted by that extra prestige, which is grateful is because she is perpetually broke. Her progress, where she visits your home, drains your supplies, drives you into debt, and then leaves, is an extension of this. Getting to bend her ear for hours is considered a gift. She can give you good advice, information and contacts, even if she has eaten your house clean with all her retainers.

At the highest level of court, gifts are used to jockey for power. The skill used in this game is so complicated that there are instruction manuals written in period. Seneca was considered an entry text to the gifting game, and his observations were themselves given as a gift. So that’s very meta, but when you’re giving that gift, it’s very important that you’re giving it to someone who is new to the game, because otherwise you’re patronising them in the modern sense, rather than patronising them in the sense that it would have been used in the time. By offering them advice, you are starting a gift-giving chain, and if they have a lower status than you, you are in a sense offering to be their mentor.

Your gift binds them to reciprocation. In the earlier sections, I’ve mentioned that goods and information are gifts, even among the rich. I’d note that this wraps around to the domestic alchemy in the Venice material that I was preparing last year, and I’m now editing this year. The recipes in these books of secrets are given as great gifts. They are, for example, a gift between Elizabeth and Catherine de Medici. They quite often discuss all kinds of cures and cosmetics, and because we use the word cosmetics in a quite shallow way in the modern period, I’d like to stress that cosmetics are considered a form of longevity potion essentially in period. To follow further, I would need to find a copy of The Gift of Narrative: Gift-giving in Early Modern
Britain, which I’m just putting here so that I flag it later.

And now a quick word for me about the future of the podcast. Hopefully, normal service will now be resumed. Apologies for skipping six weeks. A mixture of illness and a literal tornado, knocking out the power supply for 120,000 people in my state, have conspired against me. I am considering turning the podcast and the associated notes into something rather more like a fanzine for Ars Magica. If I do that, the way the podcast runs will have to change. For example, it’s more expensive, so I may have to find some I have putting in adverts. All feedback and discussion is very welcome. Please find me on the Ars Magica forum. Please don’t send me articles yet. I would like to wait until Atlas releases their open license so that we can see what’s allowed.

Happy New Year!

The Child who Went with the Fairies by J Sheridan Le Fanu

For our Monster of the Month, we’re returning to the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

Weirdly, I’m starting this story halfway through. The reason I’m doing that is because Le Fanu was an Irish author writing for an English audience, and he spends the first half of his story explaining that you can keep away fairies with horseshoes, and rowan trees, and holy water, and it goes on forever, and we don’t need any of it.

So now, over to Sandra Callum: thanks to her and her production team at Librirox.
***

And the door being barred, the two children, sometimes speaking together, often interrupting one another, often interrupted by their mother, managed to tell this strange story, which I had better relate connectedly and in my own language.

The Widow Ryan’s three children were playing, as I have said, upon the narrow old road in front of her door. Little Bill or Leum, about five years old, with golden hair and large blue eyes, was a very pretty boy, with all the clear tints of healthy childhood, and that gaze of earnest simplicity which belongs not to town children of the same age. His little sister Peg, about a year older, and his brother Con, a little more than a year elder than she, made up the little group.

Under the great old ash-trees, whose last leaves were falling at their feet, in the light of an October sunset, they were playing with the hilarity and eagerness of rustic children, clamouring together, and their faces were turned toward the west and storied hill of Lisnavoura.

Suddenly a startling voice with a screech called to them from behind, ordering them to get out of the way, and turning, they saw a sight, such as they never beheld before. It was a carriage drawn by four horses that were pawing and snorting, in impatience, as it just pulled up. The children were almost under their feet, and scrambled to the side of the road next their own door.

This carriage and all its appointments were old-fashioned and gorgeous, and presented to the children, who had never seen anything finer than a turf car, and once, an old chaise that passed that way from Killaloe, a spectacle perfectly dazzling.

Here was antique splendour. The harness and trappings were scarlet, and blazing with gold. The horses were huge, and snow white, with great manes, that as they tossed and shook them in the air, seemed to stream and float sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, like so much smoke–their tails were long, and tied up in bows of broad scarlet and gold ribbon. The coach itself was glowing with colours, gilded and emblazoned. There were footmen in gay liveries, and three-cocked hats, like the coachman’s; but he had a great wig, like a judge’s, and their hair was frizzed out and powdered, and a long thick “pigtail,” with a bow to it, hung down the back of each.

All these servants were diminutive, and ludicrously out of proportion with the enormous horses of the equipage, and had sharp, sallow features, and small, restless fiery eyes, and faces of cunning and malice that chilled the children. The little coachman was scowling and showing his white fangs under his cocked hat, and his little blazing beads of eyes were quivering with fury in their sockets as he whirled his whip round and round over their heads, till the lash of it looked like a streak of fire in the evening sun, and sounded like the cry of a legion of “fillapoueeks” in the air.

“Stop the princess on the highway!” cried the coachman, in a piercing treble.

“Stop the princess on the highway!” piped each footman in turn, scowling over his shoulder down on the children, and grinding his keen teeth.

The children were so frightened they could only gape and turn white in their panic. But a very sweet voice from the open window of the carriage reassured them, and arrested the attack of the lackeys.

A beautiful and “very grand-looking” lady was smiling from it on them, and they all felt pleased in the strange light of that smile.

“The boy with the golden hair, I think,” said the lady, bending her large and wonderfully clear eyes on little Leum.

The upper sides of the carriage were chiefly of glass, so that the children could see another woman inside, whom they did not like so well.

This was a black woman, with a wonderfully long neck, hung round with many strings of large variously-coloured beads, and on her head was a sort of turban of silk striped with all the colours of the rainbow, and fixed in it was a golden star.

This black woman had a face as thin almost as a death’s-head, with high cheekbones, and great goggle eyes, the whites of which, as well as her wide range of teeth, showed in brilliant contrast with her skin, as she looked over the beautiful lady’s shoulder, and whispered something in her ear.

“Yes; the boy with the golden hair, I think,” repeated the lady.

And her voice sounded sweet as a silver bell in the children’s ears, and her smile beguiled them like the light of an enchanted lamp, as she leaned from the window with a look of ineffable fondness on the golden-haired boy, with the large blue eyes; insomuch that little Billy, looking up, smiled in return with a wondering fondness, and when she stooped down, and stretched her jewelled arms towards him, he stretched his little hands up, and how they touched the other children did not know; but, saying, “Come and give me a kiss, my darling,” she raised him, and he seemed to ascend in her small fingers as lightly as a feather, and she held him in her lap and covered him with kisses.

Nothing daunted, the other children would have been only too happy to change places with their favoured little brother. There was only one thing that was unpleasant, and a little frightened them, and that was the black woman, who stood and stretched forward, in the carriage as before. She gathered a rich silk and gold handkerchief that was in her fingers up to her lips, and seemed to thrust ever so much of it, fold after fold, into her capacious mouth, as they thought to smother her laughter, with which she seemed convulsed, for she was shaking and quivering, as it seemed, with suppressed merriment; but her eyes, which remained uncovered, looked angrier than they had ever seen eyes look before.

But the lady was so beautiful they looked on her instead, and she continued to caress and kiss the little boy on her knee; and smiling at the other children she held up a large russet apple in her fingers, and the carriage began to move slowly on, and with a nod inviting them to take the fruit, she dropped it on the road from the window; it rolled some way beside the wheels, they following, and then she dropped another, and then another, and so on. And the same thing happened to all; for just as either of the children who ran beside had caught the rolling apple, somehow it slipt into a hole or ran into a ditch, and looking up they saw the lady drop another from the window, and so the chase was taken up and continued till they got, hardly knowing how far they had gone, to the old cross-road that leads to Owney. It seemed that there the horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels rolled up a wonderful dust, which being caught in one of those eddies that whirl the dust up into a column, on the calmest day, enveloped the children for a moment, and passed whirling on towards Lisnavoura, the carriage, as they fancied, driving in the centre of it; but suddenly it subsided, the straws and leaves floated to the ground, the dust dissipated itself, but the white horses and the lackeys, the gilded carriage, the lady and their little golden-haired brother were gone.

At the same moment suddenly the upper rim of the clear setting sun disappeared behind the hill of Knockdoula, and it was twilight. Each child felt the transition like a shock–and the sight of the rounded summit of Lisnavoura, now closely overhanging them, struck them with a new fear.

They screamed their brother’s name after him, but their cries were lost in the vacant air. At the same time they thought they heard a hollow voice say, close to them, “Go home.”

Looking round and seeing no one, they were scared, and hand in hand–the little girl crying wildly, and the boy white as ashes, from fear, they trotted homeward, at their best speed, to tell, as we have seen, their strange story.

Molly Ryan never more saw her darling. But something of the lost little boy was seen by his former playmates.

Sometimes when their mother was away earning a trifle at haymaking, and Nelly washing the potatoes for their dinner, or “beatling” clothes in the little stream that flows in the hollow close by, they saw the pretty face of little Billy peeping in archly at the door, and smiling silently at them, and as they ran to embrace him, with cries of delight, he drew back, still smiling archly, and when they got out into the open day, he was gone, and they could see no trace of him anywhere.

This happened often, with slight variations in the circumstances of the visit. Sometimes he would peep for a longer time, sometimes for a shorter time, sometimes his little hand would come in, and, with bended finger, beckon them to follow; but always he was smiling with the same arch look and wary silence–and always he was gone when they reached the door. Gradually these visits grew less and less frequent, and in about eight months they ceased altogether, and little Billy, irretrievably lost, took rank in their memories with the dead.

One wintry morning, nearly a year and a half after his disappearance, their mother having set out for Limerick soon after cockcrow, to sell some fowls at the market, the little girl, lying by the side of her elder sister, who was fast asleep, just at the grey of the morning heard the latch lifted softly, and saw little Billy enter and close the door gently after him. There was light enough to see that he was barefoot and ragged, and looked pale and famished. He went straight to the fire, and cowered over the turf embers, and rubbed his hands slowly, and seemed to shiver as he gathered the smouldering turf together.

The little girl clutched her sister in terror and whispered, “Waken, Nelly, waken; here’s Billy come back!”

Nelly slept soundly on, but the little boy, whose hands were extended close over the coals, turned and looked toward the bed, it seemed to her, in fear, and she saw the glare of the embers reflected on his thin cheek as he turned toward her. He rose and went, on tiptoe, quickly to the door, in silence, and let himself out as softly as he had come in.

After that, the little boy was never seen any more by any one of his kindred.

“Fairy doctors,” as the dealers in the preternatural, who in such cases were called in, are termed, did all that in them lay–but in vain. Father Tom came down, and tried what holier rites could do, but equally without result. So little Billy was dead to mother, brother, and sisters; but no grave received him. Others whom affection cherished, lay in holy ground, in the old churchyard of Abington, with headstone to mark the spot over which the survivor might kneel and say a kind prayer for the peace of the departed soul. But there was no landmark to show where little Billy was hidden from their loving eyes, unless it was in the old hill of Lisnavoura, that cast its long shadow at sunset before the cabin-door; or that, white and filmy in the moonlight, in later years, would occupy his brother’s gaze as he returned from fair or market, and draw from him a sigh and a prayer for the little brother he had lost so long ago, and was never to see again.

The Phantom Town

This week, The Phantom Town, recorded
into the public domain by Colleen McMahon through LibriVox, thanks to Colleen and her
production team. This is a piece of Irish folklore that was originally written into a newspaper in the late 19th century. Clearly useful in other Ars Magica or Magonomia.

***

Sir, the following story is founded on the legend well-known on the carry shore of the Shannon. I imagine it originated in something like the fatal morgana of the Bay of Naples, or some such appearances as those noticed in a former number of your journal, as having been observed along the Causeway Coast.

W.F.G

On a bright summer’s morning, as I stood on one of the tremendous cliffs which overhang the broad Shannon at its mouth, where the unceasing war of the Atlantic’s gigantic waves had fretted and foamed for ages, among the caves and hollows of this iron-bound coast. Gradually a shade was thrown on the bosom of the placid glass-like river. As I gazed on the smooth waters, the shadows increased, and imperceptibly began to take palpable forms. My wonder increased on perceiving, slowly developed, the shadowy forms of towers, steeples and
pterodid castles which spread themselves on every side. There was to be seen clearly defined a noble town. On a sudden I heard a noise as of rushing waters, accompanied with what I took to be whalings and lamentations. Looking towards the sea, I saw the white crested waves rushing with impetuosity, towards the shadowy town. On they came, and in a moment all had vanished, except one solitary castle at its farthest extremity. From this, as I gazed with increased astonishment, issued the form of a warrior, armed, and mounted on a jet-black horse. On his crapper was seated, a female form, who clung closely to the warrior with one hand. The other she alternately waved towards where the town was and the shore where I stood. They buffeted with the waves for a few moments, then sunk amidst the boiling surges. As I turned with melancholy feelings from viewing these strange appearances, I heard a voice calling me in a commanding tone to remain. I stood transfixed. A venerable old man in the garb of a monk
was advancing from the face of the cliffs towards me.

“Stay, O man,” said he, “and hear from me the melancholy story of the strange sights to which you have been an unbidden spectator. I alone destined for my punishment to remain on earth, till time shall be no more, can explain these wonders.”

Centuries have passed, he continued, since these now deserted shores were in livens by the neighborhood of a large and populous town, such as you have just now seen reflected on the waters. Buried many fathoms beneath these waves led the palaces and castles of princes and barons of this land.

How so great a calamity happened, you shall hear.

The castle of King Ulic was illuminated for a general banquet in rejoicing. His queen had given birth to a daughter, heiress to his throne and possessions. The numerous retainers of the king occupied each side of the immense board, which reached from end to end of the great hall. At the head, on a throne elevated above the rest, sat the king himself.

The night was nearly spent, and many of the revellers retired, when a stranger was observed standing just within the threshold, intently gazing on the king. All eyes were quickly turned on the intruder, who, seeing he was observed, walked deliberately up the hall. When he approached the king, he drew from under his ample robe a scroll of parchment, placed it before him and retired, as if to observe its effect. The king took up the parchment and read as follows,

“O King, when thy daughter a stranger shall wed,
whose hand with the blood of her father is read,
where thy castles now stand, the broad Shannon shall cover,
and thy courtyard the grave of the maid and her lover.”

“Seize that evil-boding stranger!” cried the king, greatly excited by what he had read. A hundred armed men started to their feet, but the stranger was nowhere to be found. How he had entered, or how departed, no man could tell. All present, deeply moved to the incident, deserted the banquet, and retired to rest.

Adjoining Ulic’s territories were those of Mac-Murchard, the powerful chieftain of Leinster. These princes had united in enmity in order to repel the English invader. Mac-Murchard had a son, then six years old, to whom Ulric determined to betroth his infant daughter. He sent a trusty messenger to negotiate this treaty, and the marriage contract was ratified with the full consent of all parties. Mac-Murchard, in order that his son should possess that learning of the schools which his ancestors despised, sent him to his brother’s convent in France, where he was to remain until able to bear arms.

16 years had passed, the young Mac-Murchard had long since returned, and became a successful wooer in person to the beautiful Eva. The day was fixed for the ceremony, and all was preparation for the festivity.

Some days previous to the marriage, Mac-Murchard’s brother, the monk, unexpectedly arrived from France. He came, he said, to look once more on his native land before he died. At length, the bridal morn arrived, most inauspiciously gloomy and tempestuous. The young Mac-Murchard led his timid bride to the altar. They pledged their mutual vows, and the ceremony was finished.

At this moment, a voice was heard saying, “Ulic! Ulic, thy destiny is nearly accomplished!”. All eyes immediately turned towards that part of the chapel from which the voice came, and Ulic’s followers instantly recognized to the figure of the stranger monk, who had so mysteriously entered with the prophetic scroll.

“Ulic, said he, as he advanced, “Look on me and recognize the enemy of thy youth, Alan Mac-Murchard. Has thou forgotten the day when you disgraced my manhood with a vile blow? Thinkest thou that because my father, treating me as a hot-brained boy, interfered to prevent my staining my hands with thy coward blood, that I have forgotten that degrading stain? You were my senior in years in strength. You struck me. I sworn oath that I would not die until I’d amply revenged the dishonor. That hour is now arrived. Far towards the black north I traveled to a mighty sorceress, to procure that prophetic scroll. I, it was, who placed it on thy board. By my means thy daughter is wedded to a stranger and thy ruin certain.”

“Know, proud king, that my brother’s son, the young Mac-Murchard, lived but a few hours after his arrival at the convent. I, knowing of the marriage contract with your daughter, reared up an orphan peasant as the heir of Mac-Murchard, and a base-born Frenchman’s son as the bridegroom you have chosen.”

“Then perish minion!” said Ulic, drawing his sword, “and with thy death leave that accursed spell still unaccomplished.” He made a lunge toward the bridegroom. But the monk, seeing his intention, threw himself between them, received the wound in his side and fell.
The young Mac-Murchard, as we shall still call him, then obliged to defend himself from the furious king. Being hard-pressed made a desperate pass at Ulic, who fell mortally wounded.

“Fly!”, cried the monk with a faint voice. “Hear you not the roar of the raging waters? Take up your fainting bride and fly while there is yet hope.” All fled from the chapel on hearing this awful announcement of the dying monk.

The young Mac-Murchard, bearing the inanimate form of the lady, hastened toward the stables and led forth his trusty black warhorse. The lady, now restored to animation, he placed behind him, and prepared to ride from the threatened danger, but it was too late. The lamentations and drowning cries of the inhabitants, born on the winds, announced that some dreadful occurrence had taken place. As he advanced to the gate, the rush of the mighty ocean was heard. In a moment, the gates were closed by the violence of the waves.

Mack-Murchard, still hoping to escape, clung to his horse, supporting his bride. But a gigantic billow was seen rolling along with resistless impetuosity. They rode on its summit for a moment and were overwhelmed to rise no more. All that inhabited that peninsula were totally swallowed up by the rapacious element. Once in a hundred years, the phantom town is seen in its wanted situation, and the events of that tremendous day are acted over again, and I, the guilty monk, Mac-Murchard, an unwilling spectator of my evil work.

He ceased. I looked once more at the waters, now ruffled by the western breeze, and turned again to address the spectre monk. He was gone.

I departed and never since visited the neighborhood of the phantom town. Your saga may vary.

W.F.G

Cider Fauns

When I was writing up the fauns for the Magonomia Bestiary I missed a trick. The player characters discover they can make faun-like creatures with different alcoholic beverages. I missed an important one: cider.

Cider and beer are rivals for English drinkers over centuries, but cider is in the ascendant in the Ars Magica period. This is because one of its great cultural centres is Normandy, and the 1066 invasion makes it popular in the upper classes. That’s not to say cider wasn’t already made elsewhere, it was: it’s just that when you look at nobles they are mostly wine drinkers in most of Europe. Among peasants it was also popular, because it was cheaper to make than beer.

It’s cheap to make cider, because you don’t need to boil the apple juice in the way that you boil the barley mash. You don’t need fuel, which is handy in a kingdom that has deforested itself and not yet discovered the widespread use of sea coal. Cider apples are also usually picked in October during the period, which is after many of the other duties of the agricultural year.

If you look at the basic information about variants, you’ll read that there are three essential types of apple. These are dessert, the cooking and crab apples. The last one’s used to make cider, and you’ll read is is full of tannins which make it too astringent to eat, but which add flavour to the cider and clarifies it. These divisions are essentially rubbish in modern Australia, and may be where you are too. I’ve eaten apples sold as crab apples, and they were just dessert or cooking apples that were too small to be accepted by supermarkets. Australia’s favourite cooking apple, the Granny Smith, is probably a weird natural mutation of the French Crab, which is a cider apple people also use for desserts. Basically you can mix and match your apples to create different flavours and qualities.

A better way of thinking about apples is along two axes: sweetness and biterness. This divides apples into four groups and I’d like to suggest that you could map these to the four humours so that you could program the personality of the faun-like creature you make with cider. The types are:

Bittersharp: This is the classic ancient cider apple, that can be used without being mixed with other apple varieties. It is high in tannins (bitter) and acid (sharp). The acid slows fermentation, but that’s not a bad thing sometimes: it means that your apple juice is less likely to pick up stray yeasts and ferment weirdly.

Bittersweet: This is a high tannin apple, but it is low in acid, so it tastes sweeter than a bittersharp. Lower acid in the juice makes fermentation faster, so these let you speed up and bulk out your cider.

Sharp (or, in the French system, acidic): A sharp apple is low tannin and high acid. It can be added to up the acidity level, see above for how that preserves apple juice. A lot of cooking apples are sharps, because the acid generally breaks down under heat. So, the Granny Smith is a sharp apple. To show how useless the three-way division of apples is, the Harrision Cider Apple is also a sharp cultivar.

Sweet: this is a high sugar, low acid apple Basically, that’s a table apple. Sugar doesn’t add a lot of flavour to cider, but it does add extra alcohol after fermentation, so, handy to have. In the Faun chapter, you are initially looking for highly potent alcohol, and so you’d load up on sweet apples when making a faun. In the four humour model that would push all of the fauns toward the sanguine humour, and your tuning would be along the tannic axis, so you could push some into phlegmatic (by making the cider bitter). After you work out that the strength of the alcohol doesn’t matter, you could pull back on the sugar and add more sharpness (acid) to pull your fauns back toward melancholic or phlegmatic. I’d argue silenii are pretty phlegmatic, so you might be able to make something a little like them that way.

Would there be a physical divergence? I have thought of these creatures as a sort of woodwose, but I’m not tied to that idea. I have also considered them as serpent people.