I almost forgot it was FM&M night. Well, a change of pace from Saturday's music may be welcomed, at any rate. I don't think I remember the title here, so I may never have heard it before, which is possible. Not likely, but possible. So I'll be listening right along as I play Solitaire.

That is, if it ever loads...

Waiting, waiting, waiting, hm hm hmmm...

Doo dee doo doo

Oh, is that the time? Goodness, it's late.



Oh here it is. Tonight we try to hang some wallpaper at 79 Wistful Vista.

In the 70's I went to events called Renaissance Fairs with my friends, usually with minds altered. I don't recall such events being considered the ultimate in geek fests as they are today. I learned from Robertson Davies that a geek is one who bites off the heads of live chickens. My memory of Renaissance Fairs is that there may have been one or two in attendance who fit that definition. I found myself at a few in England - one in particular, at Hever Castle, where 'knights' on real horses did some tilting with real jousts, and another at some historic castle or other, the name of which escapes me, which featured a dinner at which we became ill with honey wine and were encouraged to call the waitresses 'wenches.' Try that in a New Jersey diner and you'll end up in the dumpster out back. We fixed up our friend with one of these wenches. I seem to recall her sitting on his lap in her period costume, and he not entirely sure what to do with her except that playing with her bosoms seemed a good place to begin.

Well, being young, I admired the girls at such places. (As opposed to now, when I admire the horses.) They were very different, depending upon whether the fairs were local ones or the ones held in England. The latter had more the flavor of historical reenactment, with a staff of professional interpreters providing the chief points of interest. These were ordinary girls from the nearest village who decided to work at the castle rather than the Pizza Hut in the town, (possibly for the honey wine - I doubt the pay was better). But here - that is, here in the States of America - they were entirely amateur affairs which attracted people of a particular sort, by and large. I used to see them only at events of this sort. I called them "Stellas," for I believed their names should be Stella, and they were thin, boney-kneed creatures with mouse brown hair, and rather plain, wearing a gloomy expression which anticipated the 'goth' look by many years. Oh, I really thought they were dead sexy.

Now I read in popular British novels written in the early part of the last century that such attributes were not considered desirable. How can you say that, Mr. Graham Green? These are my people. I'm really not sure what brings this to mind, except that my interests in the things I've been posting this week were formed chiefly during that time. It was a time of teenage rebellion, a time of limited exploration - that is, limited to anything that seemed to be the opposite of whatever I thought I was expected to be exploring. And that's just what we do at that age: march in lock-step to an idea of nonconformity and judge one another, and ourselves, on the basis of how well we conform to it. No wonder teenagers are so daffy...

Of course, when we called for more honey wine by shouting out "Ho, wench," the two words were not yet synonymous. I suppose it would be redundant today. It would be like shouting "Ho Ho." But of course a wench would be a serving woman, not necessarily a woman of service. What I find alarming is the complete lack of revulsion to the terms pimp and 'ho that I observe in the people who seem to inhabit this dream with me. I understand it arises incrementally from the 70's glorification of the pimp character as he may have been played by Antonio Fargas, with high camp being the intention. Yes, we all had a jolly good laugh. But, combine that with the empty-headed symbolism which fuels the notion of 'correct' thinking - specifically that anything presented by a minority group is good on that basis alone - and what you end up with is 14 year-old girls singing along with popular tunes which romaticize men who sell the sexual favors of women whom they keep in a form of slavery.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak, like me?

I guess you could try to make the point that we are all historical interpreters, like those girls from the town who chose the castle rather than the Pizza Hut to work in. You might also say my "Stella's" were at least as freaky as your girlfriend. But if this was really what was going on then the MTV programme would not be called "Pimp My Ride," but rather "Ponce My Ride," which makes absolutely no sense at all. I wonder if anybody has tried waking up a feminist to have a look at this? It was not so long ago that precisely this kind of thing was the epitome of evil in the culture which was to be amended at all costs.

Well, it's a stretch.

The lack of moral outrage may also be the result of eclecticism, (says the man who has posted his thoughts on Celtic mythology and Victorian literature with "Camarillo Brillo" playing in the background), but I think mainly it comes down to the paralysis of Fear. And it is that same fear which almost entirely dominates the teenage mind: fear of rejection, fear of judgment, leading to parental apathy. Our parents have said, "Oh just do what you like," and left the house. To think like a sheep - to not think at all - is the fashion of the day. Yet in our youthful idealism we would have gloried in our newly-found ability for self-actualization, and taken moral stands against injustice wherever we saw it.

At the root of all injustice is the cheapening of life and its dignity, and this is also the sign by which we know that injustice is occurring. In this case, women - that is half of humanity - are being dished an injustice which nobody seems to possess the courage to address. I think that when I was a teenager I had something quite different in mind for the world I wished to create. Certainly I wanted to be free to express myself as I pleased, but certainly it pleased me to express myself with the same respect that I have come to appreciate from others.

Finally got a picture. This is the sort of thing.

      

--"Well, a corpse is a natural thing; but this was the dreadfullest sight I ever saw. She had her fingers straight pointin' at me, and her back was crooked, round again wi' age. Says she:
--'Ye little limb! what for did ye say I killed the boy? I'll tickle ye till ye're stiff!'"

(from 'Madam Crowl's Ghost,' 1870)

Reading short stories of Joseph Thomas Sheridan LeFanu (1814-1873). He was called "The Silent Prince" or "The Invisible Prince," depending on the source, in his later life in the city of Dublin where he published a number of newspapers including The Dublin Evening Mail. This nickname was accounted for by his reclusiveness. Other eccentricities are attributed to him, such as writing his ghost stories through the night whilst sitting up in his bed by the light of two candles - this according to his son, Brinsley.

The death of his wife in 1858 apparently grieved him deeply, affecting his character. Grief and mourning were themes of his work. His settings were often completely infused with an atmosphere of life-long grief, his fictional characters haunted by regrets, past sins, driven to excesses of behavior by personal demons. LeFanu's biographers have easily made the connection to his personal life.  

Lefanu was widely read during his lifetime but little known afterwards. M.R. James is responsible for reviving an interest in LeFanu's work, in 1923 publishing the collection, Madame Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery. James, himself a celebrated writer of ghost stories, was responsible for creating a 'standard' for the modern ghost story which he attributed chiefly to LeFanu and Ambrose Bierce.

I first read Carmilla as a callow youth, looking for the oft-celebrated but scarcely discernable lesbian overtones the story was supposed to contain. What I found instead was a quite chilling vampire story. Its influence on Bram Stoker is very plain when you read it next to Dracula. Still, the story does contain, in one paragraph, more of a suggestion of physical intimacy than may be found elsewhere in the body of LeFanu's work.

Gothic romances may be described as 'ghost stories without a ghost,' and LeFanu tried his hand at the romance genre twice with novels that disappointed him. Perhaps in an effort to find a wider audience he moved his settings across the water to England, and his characters lost their Irish in his later works. At the short story he excelled, and his two novels are really not quite novels at all but rather long short stories.

I possess a tiny volume of Uncle Silas, in paperback, with a lurid 'pulp fiction' picture on the cover which I treasure. The publishing company which created the series apparently marketed to soldiers away from home who craved literary entertainment. Uncle Silas is the perfect Gothic romance. Its atmospheric sense of unease is crafted in such a cunning way one cannot realize until it is too late that his perspective may never return to the land of sunlight and ordinary domestic tranquility.

LeFanu was haunted by a recurring dream - so goes the tale - of a large, decaying house which seemed in imminent danger of crumbling. This nightmare afflicted him for many years, and it may also help account for his famous insomnia. He was fascinated with sleep disorders in general, particularly somambulism - 'sleepwalking' - and his rare public appearances are said to have given the impression that he may have been living out his interest in the subject.

His death was unexpected. A doctor treating him for heart disease had given him and his family every reassurance that he might expect a long life if he cared for himself, and there were no bad habits apart from his sleep eccentricities which might have put too great a strain on him. When the doctor was called, and he examined him, he is reported to have declared, "It is as I feared. The house has fallen at last."   

  

Here is the account of the story of Ossian (here Oisin, appearing as the son of MacCumhail) from "Celtic Myths and Legends" by T.W. Rolleston, 1985. In my library I have the Bracken Books edition with a lovely dustcover featuring a detail of Queen Maeve as painted by the Pre-Raphaelite Fredrick de Sandys. 

It happened that on a misty summer morning as Finn and Oisin with many companions were hunting on the shores of Loch Lena they saw coming towards them a maiden, exceedingly beautiful, riding on a snow-white steed. She wore the garb of a queen; a crown of gold was on her head, and a dark-brown mantle of silk, set with stars of red gold, fell around her and trailed on the ground. Silver shoes were on her horse's hoofs, and a crest of gold nodded on his head.

When she came near she said to Finn, "From very far away I have come, and now at last I have found you, Finn son of Cumhal."

Then Finn said, "What is your land and race, maiden, and what do you seek from me?"

"My name," she said, "is Niamh of the Golden Hair. I am the daughter of the King of the Land of Youth, and that which has brought me here is the love of your son Oisin." Then she turned to Oisin, and she spoke to him in the voice of one who has never asked anything but it was granted to her. "Will you go with me, Oisin, to my father's land?"

And Oisin said, "That will I, and to the world's end," for the fairy spell had so wrought upon his heart that he cared no more for any earthly thing but to have the love of Niamh of the Head of Gold. Then the maiden spoke of the Land Oversea to which she had summoned her lover, and as she spoke a dreamy stillness fell on all things, nor did a horse shake his bit, nor a hound bay, nor the least breath of wind stir in the forest trees till she had made an end. And what she said seemed sweeter and more wonderful as she spoke it than anything they could afterwards remember to have heard, but so far as they could remember it was this:

"Delightful is the land beyond all dreams,

Fairer than anything your eyes have ever seen.

There all the year the fruit is on the tree,

And all the year the bloom is on the flower.

 

"There with wild honey drip the forest trees;

The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.

Nor pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,

Death and decay come near him never more.

 

"The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire,

Nor music cease for ever through the hall;

The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth

Outshine all splendors ever dreamed by man.

 

"You will have horses of the fairy breed,

You will have hounds that can outrun the wind;

A hundred chiefs shall follow you in war,

A hundred maidens sing thee to your sleep.

 

"A crown of sovereignty your brow shall wear,

And by your side a magic blade shall hang,

And you will be lord of all the Land of Youth,

And lord of Niamh of the Head of Gold."

 

As the magic song ended the Fians beheld Oisin mount the fairy steed and hold the maiden in his arms, and ere they could stir or speak she turned her horse's head and shook the ringing bridle, and down the forest glade they fled, as a beam of light flies over the land when clouds drive across the sun; and never did the Fianna behold Oisin son of Finn on earth again.

Yet what befell him afterwards is known. As his birth was strange, so was his end, for he saw the wonders of the Land of Youth with mortal eyes and lived to tell them with mortal lips.

 The Journey to Fairyland

When the white horse with its riders reached the sea it ran lightly over the waves, and soon the green woods and headlands of Erin faded out of sight. And now the sun shone fiercely down, and the riders passed into a golden haze in which Oisin lost all knowledge of where he was, or if sea or dry land were beneath his horse's hoofs. But strange sights sometimes appeared to them in the mist, for towers and palace gateways loomed up and disappeared, and once a hornless doe bounded by them chased by a white hound with one red ear; and again they saw a young maid ride by on a brown steed, bearing a golden apple in her hand, and close behind her followed a young horseman on a white steed, a purple cloak floating at his back and a gold-hilted sword in his hand.

And Oisin would have asked the princess who and what these apparitions were, but Niamh bade him ask nothing nor seem to notice any phantom they might see until they were come to the Land of Youth.

Oisin's Return

The story goes on to tell how Oisin met with various adventures in the Land of Youth, including the rescue of an imprisoned princess from a Fomorian giant. But at last, after what seemed to him a sojourn of three weeks in the Land of Youth, he was satiated with delights of every kind, and longed to visit his native land again and to see his old comrades. He promised to return when he had done so, and Niamh gave him the white fairy steed that had borne him across the sea to Tir na nÓg, but charged him that when he had reached the Land of Erin again he must never alight from its back nor touch the soil of the earthly world with his foot, or the way of return to the Land of Youth would be barred to him for ever.

Oisin then set forth, and once more crossed the mystic ocean, finding himself at last on the western shores of Ireland. Here he made at once for the Hill of Allen, where the dun of Finn was wont to be, but marveled, as he traversed the woods, that he met no sign of the Fian hunters and at the small size of the folk whom he saw tilling the ground.

At length, coming from the forest path into the great clearing where the Hill of Allen was wont to rise, broad and green, with its rampart enclosing many white-walled dwellings, and the great hall towering high in the midst, he saw but grassy mounds overgrown with rank weeds and whin bushes, and among them pastured a peasant's kine.

Then a strange horror fell upon him and he thought some enchantment from the land of Sidhe held his eyes and mocked him with false visions. He threw his arms abroad and shouted the names of Finn and Oscar, but none replied, and he thought that perchance the hounds might hear him, so he cried upon Bran and Sceolan and strained his ears if they might catch the faintest rustle or whisper of the world from the sight of which his eyes were holden, but he heard only the sighing of the wind in the whins.

Then he rode in terror from that place, setting his face towards the eastern sea, for he meant to traverse Ireland from side to side and end to end in search of some escape from his enchantment The Broken Spell But when he came near to the eastern sea, and was now in the place which is called the Valley of the Thrushes,* he saw in a field upon the hillside a crowd of men striving to roll aside a great boulder from their tilled land, and an overseer directing them. Towards them he rode, meaning to ask them concerning Finn and the Fianna.

As he came near they all stopped their work to gaze upon him, for to them he appeared like a messenger of the Fairy Folk or an angel from heaven. Taller and mightier he was than the men-folk they knew, with sword-blue eyes and brown, ruddy cheeks ; in his mouth, as it were, a shower of pearls, and bright hair clustered beneath the rim of his helmet.

And as Oisin looked upon their puny forms, marred by toil and care, and at the stone which they feebly strove to heave from its bed, he was filled with pity, and thought to himself, "Not such were even the churls of Erin when I left them for the Land of Youth " and he stooped from his saddle to help them. He set his hand to the boulder, and with a mighty heave he lifted it from where it lay and set it rolling down the hill. And the men raised a shout of wonder and applause; but their shouting changed in a moment into cries of terror and dismay, and they fled, jostling and overthrowing each other to escape from the place of fear, for a marvel horrible to see had taken place.

For Oisin's saddle girth had burst as he heaved the stone and he fell headlong to the ground. In an instant the white steed had vanished from their eyes like a wreath of mist, and that which rose, feeble and staggering, from the ground was no youthful warrior, but a man stricken with extreme old age, white-bearded and withered, who stretched out groping hands and moaned with feeble and bitter cries. And his crimson cloak and yellow silken tunic were now but coarse homespun stuff tied with a hempen girdle, and the gold-hilted sword was a rough oaken staff such as a beggar carries who wanders the roads from farmer's house to house.

When the people saw that the doom that had been wrought was not for them they returned, and found the old man prone on the ground with his face hidden in his arms. So they lifted him up, and asked who he was and what had befallen him. Oisin gazed round on them with dim eyes, and at last he said, "I was Oisin the son of Finn, and I pray you tell me where he dwells, for his dun on the Hill of Allen is now a desolation, and I have neither seen him nor heard his hunting-horn from the western to the eastern sea."

Then the men gazed strangely on each other and on Oisin, and the overseer asked, "Of what Finn do you speak, for there be many of that name in Erin?"

Oisin said, "Surely of Finn mac Cumhal mac Trenmor, captain of the Fianna of Erin."

Then the overseer said, "You are daft, old man, and you have made us daft to take you for a youth as we did a while ago. But we at least have now our wits again and we know that Finn son of Cumhal and all his generation have been dead these three hundred years. At the battle of Gowra fell Oscar, son of Oisin, and Finn at the battle of Brea, as the historians tell us; and the lays of Oisin, whose death no man knows the manner of, are sung by our harpers at great men's feasts. But now the Talkenn*, Patrick has come into Ireland and has preached to us the One God and Christ His Son, by whose might these old days and ways are done away with; and Finn and his Fianna, with their feasting and hunting and songs of war and of love, have no such reverence among us as the monks and virgins of Holy Patrick, and the psalms and prayers that go up daily to cleanse us from sin and to save us from the fire of judgment."

But Oisin replied, only half hearing and still less comprehending what was said to him, "If your God has slain Finn and Oscar, I would say that God is a strong man."

Then they all cried out upon him, and some picked up stones, but the overseer bade them let him be until the Talkenn had spoken with him, and till he should order what was to be done.

* Glen na Smole

*Adze-Head

From Celtic Myths and Legends, by T. W. Rolleston (Senate, 1994)

My short story, The Queen of the Park as briefly described in the post below, ends at an airport where a casket is being observed as it is loaded into a plane back to Ireland, and based upon who is remaining to observe it, we learn by process of elimination the identity of its occupant.

This brings up a problem only a folklorist would worry about: Banshees, as a rule, cannot cross water. Technically speaking, if one of the four Banshee-haunted noble families of Ireland, (O'Nale being one), were to emigrate there really is no chance they could bring their faeries with them.

Supernatural folklore has rules, dammit! But chief among these rules is the one which says Don't take yourself too bloody seriously, because it is true that the only authority over the evolution of legends is the storyteller himself who tells the story well, perhaps the one who tells the story best, and his listeners' willingness to accept his version.

We know, for instance, that vampires burn to a cinder in the sunlight. Some storytellers have found this law too limiting, and they thought, Now, wouldn't it be interesting if such were not the case? Maybe they did a little research and discovered that the daylight restriction is not a factor in every vampire legend of old - for indeed it is not.

Folklore changes because of market forces in the mind. It is a Supply and Demand universe in which we live.

Who knows about the Waterhorse - another Irish spook? A far more sinister one, too. A Waterhorse is a type of pookha, or talking animal. A pookha can be either malevolent or benign. There are many stories about such creatures, (which we would call demons as they are animals personified), in Irish mythology. The Bard of Finn MacCumhail, (picture above - pronounced 'MacCool'), as I'm sure you will readily recall, is given a magical horse by his bride the Faerie Queen to ride the length and breadth of the land. The poor fellow was homesick, though he lived in paradise. But the Queen gave him this one limitation: that if he dismounts from the horse he would then be unable to return to the faerie realm.

What the Bard sees on his journey disheartens him. Time, which seems to hold little power over the faerie realm, has proceeded apace back at home. The duns - that is, castles or houses - he had known as a big wig in the Fiannan court were now no more than mounds of earth. This dispiriting reality fills his bones with a coldness he had forgotten; the spectre of death.

Presently, he comes upon a group of very small men - men appearing as dwarves to him - attempting to shift a large rock in order to make way for their plough. The Bard pities them, small, helpless creatures that they are, not yet realizing that they are what has become of his own race of men in his absence. They are us - you and I - and the Bard is to us like a giant on a magnificent white horse, a giant in full battle armor undreamed-of except in very old stories. He is strong and youthful in appearance, but also immeasurably old, as faeries must be, and that is how the little men see him.

They are terrified. They fall back, making signs across their chests as though to ward off an evil spirit, (which he may be - who's to say?) But with one gesture the Bard leans over and knocks the large rock aside, having taken pity on them, and in so doing falls off his horse.

Suddenly, he appears as a very old and broken man. His horse simply vanishes. He is himself a dwarf among dwarves. Imagine his horror and his disappointment. The other men who witnessed this amazing thing now lead him to the presence of Saint Patrick. Patrick tells him about Christ. The Bard is converted. He spends the rest of his days writing down the story of the Irish.

As mythology goes this is an excellent provanence, though it was invented many years after the anonymous authorship of the first great Irish mythological stories in order to explain their origin. The stories, in several versions, were the works of monks who compiled what must have been oral histories. They were not likely to have questioned these legendary tales of supernatural things as historic fact, being believers themselves in supernatural things.

In any event, the talking animal - in this case, the horse - is one of the main characters of Irish myth. What's interesting about this story, which serves as a prologue to the Fiannan Mythology, is that the relation between the faerie realm and the now Christian world of men is not  one of animosity. In other words, Christianity did not villify the faerie realm. The fact that Patrick converts the Bard demonstrates that the faeries exist in a realm of invincible ignorance. They are therefore innocent, like a tiger who is neither good nor evil but will kill to eat, or like a cat who provides comfort and companionship by nature rather than by intent. They are innocent in the sense that animals are innocent, and yet they are also noble - that is, they are conscious of self and possess volition, or will - and this basically defines a faerie.

But here's the punchline:

The story of the Bard is an illustration of how a modern writer can influence traditional folklore, for his character was not invented until 1761 by James MacPherson in Fingal; An Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, Together With Several Other Poems Composed by Ossian, Son of Fingal. He presented it as a newly-discovered piece of the puzzle that completes Irish folkloric myth, and for many years was taken at his word. Walter Scott was a fan. MacPherson single-handedly revived an interest in Irish myth and is considered a giant of Romanticism. And now we are reasonably certain he wrote the epic poem himself and that there was no Bard named Ossian.

The Bard became the son of MacCumail in later tellings of the tale.

So what? It is a Supply and Demand universe. Folklore changes because a storyteller tells a story well and his listeners accept his version and pass it on. If I want to have a Banshee in Upstate New York, well good on me.

But the Waterhorse, unlike Ossian's noble beast, is a rather nasty sort of creature. If you come across a Waterhorse it will engage you in conversation on a variety of extremely interesting topics, (just like a blogger), and invite you to mount and ride it to amazing destinations. Of course, you will be very tempted to do this. And if you do decide to ride you will not at first be disappointed, for indeed the Waterhorse will take you to interesting places. Until it comes to water. When the Waterhorse comes to water it drags you under and tears you to pieces.

Some mushrooms you find in the woods are very tasty. Others will help you appreciate Jimi Hendrix. Others will kill you. Some talking horses are really quite nice; others not. It pays to know the difference between the Waterhorse, My Pretty Pony, and your garden-variety demon.