TSOU -- The Very Old Folk
Daniel Harms
The Shadow over Usenet
"The Very Old Folk"
Source: _Miscellaneous Writings_, Arkham.
Synopsis: A Roman scholar has convinced his
government to send a company of soldiers to the town
of Pompelo in the mountains to the north of Spain.
A group known as the "very old folk" lives there and
holds ceremonies on Halloween and May-Eve. Three
of their number were recently killed, and the Romans
fear reprisals. The column moves into the mountains,
and is attacked and destroyed by the very old folk.
Notes: This is a pretty rough piece, but it has a charm
all of its own for me. I'm not sure why.
"The Very Old Folk" was actually never intended
for publication. Lovecraft had been reading the AEneid
on Halloween night, and the combination of the two produced
the dream. He later sent this on to Donald Wandrei, Frank
Belknap Long, and Bernard Dwyer; the Wandrei version was
later printed in the journal _Scienti-Snaps_ in 1940 under
the title "The Very Old Folk". Long's version has not (to
my knowledge) been reprinted, but Lovecraft's letter to
Dwyer appears in _Selected Letters II_.
I personally prefer the Dwyer letter to the Wandrei
one. It seems Lovecraft polished up his account for Wandrei,
bringing a conversation between Balbutius and the scholar
which happened earlier in the dream and re-setting it in
Pompelo. This, of course, raises the question of just how
much of this was dream and how much was Lovecraft's
imagination working afterward. I doubt the latter played
much of a part in it, though; the richness of the details
in the Dwyer letter appears to me to have come from the
dream and not been tacked on later.
Lovecraft did consider writing up a story about
the dream, which would have been set in a present time
and would have involved a visit by an archaeological
expedition to the destroyed town (which would have been unnamed,
as Pompelo still exists and it would have been inconvenient
to destroy it in Roman times). In the end, the expedition would
have been overwhelmed by the forces which destroyed the town.
Lovecraft toyed with the notion for some time, but eventually
gave it over to Long, who incorporated it into "The Horror from
the Hills". (If someone could describe this, it would be great;
I haven't read it for years, and don't own a copy.)
Most of the interesting Mythos (?) material appears
in the Dwyer letter. The "Miri Nigri" were appropriated by
Long for his novel and have turned up elsewhere (largely
in CoC) since. No one seems to have dealt with the
_Hieron Aigypton_ ("Temple of Egypt"), a book of evil
lore which the hero consults to prove his suspicions.
Daniel Harms "...red hair and cross eyes
Box 3793 Station B have no symbolic significance
Vanderbilt U. in the composition of the
Nashville, TN 37235 civilization." -- H. P. Lovecraft
har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu
Deville
I'm sure you know that the version sent to Long became part of the story
"The Horror from the Hills", which I have not read. Anyone know how
easy it is to find a copy? Speaking of finding stories, I want to read
Klein's "Black Man with a Horn". Short of finding the original Tales of
the Cthulhu Mythos, where else has it been printed?
Thanks, Deville
Biddler
Klein's Black Men With a Horn is in his book, Dark Gods, a collection of
novelettes. It's OP, but a used bookseller might can find you a copy. I
*think* it's also in Cthulhu 2000, the newer Arkham collection.
Donovan Loucks
The Shadow over Usenet
---
"The Very Old Folk"
I hadn't read this story until now, although I have read the version of
the letter which Lovecraft sent to Bernard Austin Dwyer (letter number 303
in _Selected Letters II_). Daniel Harms <har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu>
has already pointed out that Lovecraft recounted this dream in letters to
Donald Wandrei, Frank Belknap Long, and Bernard Austin Dwyer. On the one
hand, since this was a _letter_, I hesitate to consider it as a piece of
fiction--on the other, it clearly contains a fictional story, like many
portions of Lovecraft's letters. Assigning a title to a letter (probably
done by J. Chapman Miske, the editor of _Scienti-Snaps_) doesn't make a
whole lot of sense either, but it's been that way for 57 years and appears
under that title in a Joshi-edited text, so I won't complain too much.
I'm fortunate enough to have a copy of Frank Belknap Long's "The Horror
from the Hills" (1929) in the paperback edition of _Night Fear_ (1979). I
haven't read it in some years, but can at least provide some information
on where the version of this letter that Lovecraft sent to Long fits in.
The story is broken into ten brief chapeters, with the following titles
and lengths:
1. The Coming of the Stone Beast (20 p.)
2. The Atrocity at the Museum (16 p.)
3. An Archeological Digression (4 p.)
4. The Horror On the Hills (1 p.)
5. Little's Dream (16 p.)
6. The Time-Space Machine (6 p.)
7. A Cure for Skepticism (2 p.)
8. What Happened in the Laboratory (3 p.)
9. The Horror Moves (6 p.)
10. Little's Explanation (5 p.)
Lovecraft's dream appears to make up about 8 pages of "Little's Dream",
which I suppose would make "Little" a fictional analogue to Lovecraft.
Comparing these three texts, "The Very Old Folk" (to Wandrei), "Little's
Dream" (to Long), and the letter to Dwyer, I find that, although the
stories are essentially the same, their texts are entirely different,
which I find surprising for Lovecraft, who would often copy portions of a
letter he was preparing to one person into a letter for another. I also
noted that the term _Miri Nigri_ ("Strange Dark Folk") is only used in the
Long and Dwyer texts. Of these three texts, I'd have to say that "The
Very Old Folk" is the weakest, with the letters to Long and Dwyer easily
being better (and longer) tales.
As for locations in this story: Well, I never been to Spain, but I
_kinda_ like the music... (Thanks to Three Dog Night for "Never Been To
Spain" and The International Lyrics Server at http://www.lyrics.ch!)
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Donovan K. Loucks Phoenix, Arizona dlo...@primenet.com |
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| The H.P. Lovecraft Archive: http://www.primenet.com/~dloucks/hpl |
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Karl Kluge
har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu (Daniel Harms) writes:
> Lovecraft did consider writing up a story about the dream, which would
> have been set in a present time and would have involved a visit by an
> archaeological expedition to the destroyed town (which would have been
> unnamed, as Pompelo still exists and it would have been inconvenient to
> destroy it in Roman times). In the end, the expedition would have been
> overwhelmed by the forces which destroyed the town. Lovecraft toyed with
> the notion for some time, but eventually gave it over to Long, who
> incorporated it into "The Horror from the Hills". (If someone could
> describe this, it would be great; I haven't read it for years, and don't own
> a copy.)
Here's an extract from HPL's letter to Long describing the envisioned frame
story:
Letter 308 to Frank Belnap Long (Thursday, December 1927): "As to my Roman
dream -- well, young man, I hate to be naive, but the fact is that most of it
really _was_ a dream, just as _Randolph Carter_ and certain part so _Celephais_
were! And I certainly do intend to surround it with a motivating framework and
sequel (which I have already described in an epistle to Dwyer) calculated to
increase its vividness and significance..........My story idea is to have a
traveller find a rusted fragment of a silver Roman aquila in a small museum in
northern Spain. It haunts him and excites his dreaming faculty, and the curator
-- Don Jaime Hernandez Mortono -- tells him it was washed down from the
foothills of the Pyrenees, which have a rather unsavory reputation among the
country folk. Finally, his dreams lead him to explore, and with the aid of some
Spanish archaeologists -- Miguel Longo y Santayana and Francisco Belnapio
Dotina -- he uncovers a new Herculaneum in the form of a buried Roman city. It
is a _very queer_ place. An avalanche must have ingulph'd it all at once, but
there are _no recognisable human remains_, only heaps of greyish dust in those
interiors where the burying earth did not enter. Otherwise, the place looks as
suddenly abandoned as the _Marie Celeste_: loaves in the bake shops, half
written manuscripts of parchment in one well-preserved household library, and a
papyrus codex of the terrible _Hieron Aigypton_ which causes the learned
Spaniards -- even the intrepid Francisco Belapio Dotina -- to tremble. And on
the walls of the houses are the most peculiar graffiti -- MAMERS * SERVA *
IUPPITER * NOS * TUTA * DIANA * NOBIS * PRAESIDUM * FAUNUS * MONTES * TENE *
OPPIDUM * TUTA * CONTRA * MAGNUM * INNOMINANDUM * MUNITE * NOS * DII *
IMMORTALES * CONTRA * MIROS * NIGROS * -- prayers to the gods to save the town
and people from some vague menace. Spurred by dream and curiousity, the
traveller goes alone into the antient hills and feels a strange sense of
familiarity. On a far, lonely peak he finds a terrible stone altar within a
circle of monoliths. And he sees a strange, dark man who makes a terrible sign
at him and vanishes. That night he falls sick of fever and is taken to the
hospital at Pamplona. (As you see, I'm shifting the dramatic action from this
_known_ place to a _wholly forgotten_ town). Here he dreams his dream --
substantially as written to you. Awaking from the nightmare he finds that a
week of delirium has passed, and that it is the first of November. That
afternoon he is still further disturbed by sad news from the hills. There has
been a terrible avalanche in the night, and poor Miguel Longo y Santayana and
Francisco Belapio Dotina are no more. All traces of the newly-excavated city
has been obliterated by a fresh downpour of evil earth. The Magnum Innominadum
does not forget."
briley
In article <5hmi93$1v3$1...@news.vanderbilt.edu>,
har...@ctrvax.vanderbilt.edu says...
>
>gave it over to Long, who incorporated it into "The Horror from
>the Hills". (If someone could describe this, it would be great;
>I haven't read it for years, and don't own a copy.)
>
Hmm... I haven't read it in a while, either. (Why is it Long's
albiet limited Mythos stories are never republished? In all the books I
own, I don't actually have one story of his...)
I believe that the archaeological digs in Spain somehow gave the
explorers that eventually went to Tsang and brought back Chaugnar Faugn
the clues to go there... of course, Chaugnar's brothers were also in
Spain, being the "Horror from the Hills" in the title. Another brief
memory is the brothers running amuck in Spain while Chaugnar feeds in New
York.
> Most of the interesting Mythos (?) material appears
>in the Dwyer letter. The "Miri Nigri" were appropriated by
>Long for his novel and have turned up elsewhere (largely
>in CoC) since. No one seems to have dealt with the
>_Hieron Aigypton_ ("Temple of Egypt"), a book of evil
>lore which the hero consults to prove his suspicions.
>
I'm puzzled by that, especially since Carter was so fond of
purloining little Mythos bits from HPL's letters that he never followed
up on himself... of course, in the story, the only information that was
definetely from this tome was about some spectacular Eastern ruins that
caused a "dream-within-dream" -- he certainly had a vivid mind!
Christophe Thill
On 1 Apr 1997 23:50:06 -0700, Donovan Loucks <dlo...@primenet.com> wrote:
>I'm fortunate enough to have a copy of Frank Belknap Long's "The Horror
>from the Hills" (1929) in the paperback edition of _Night Fear_ (1979). I
>haven't read it in some years, but can at least provide some information
>on where the version of this letter that Lovecraft sent to Long fits in.
A brief aparte about "Horror from the hills": this text is included in the
French edition of Lovecraft's complete works, in the section of "revisions and
collaborations"... though it can't truly be called a collaboration. "Manabi
monoliths" are mentioned in this tale, and this is very interesting as some
scholars have pointed out that the image of Cthulhu may have originated from an
artifact excavated in Manabi.
------
Christophe Thill - Paris, France (c_t...@worldnet.fr)
ArKa/D/ia! Homepage: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/
HP Lovecraft page: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/hpl/
"The King in Yellow": http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/chambers/
DAIKAIJU! Les monstres japonais: http://www.worldnet.fr/~c_thill/kaiju/