Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes;
Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her…
Hilaire Belloc, ‘Matilda, Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death’
It is Autumn, dear listener, and we are mindful of mellow days, of copper and iron-red foliage, and lingering warmth in the evenings. We welcome the light bluster of October storms, the sly ripening of the last Summer fruits and the coming of the medlars – medlar jelly is a great favourite here; we stare in awe at the changing seasons in the garden, and we wonder why we have twenty three thousand green tomatoes, none of them big enough to be worth frying.
We also note that Americans call this period Fall, which is what we do constantly when we are out with the dogs and dragged in haste across slippery leaves.
And then we remembered that we were supposed to do something for the annual October Frights Blog Hop, in which an unruly gang of horror and supernatural writers join together to promote each other’s web-sites and works. As we did so, we recalled an odd piece of verse drawn on in Robert Westall’s novel The Scarecrows (1981):
He rides his loud October sky:
He does not die. He does not die.
The Scarecrows is a fine and disturbing book, ostensibly a young adult novel, but surely evocative for all ages. A teenager broods on his mother’s new relationship, and his dead father, whilst dark spirits feed on his emotions and the scarecrows gather around his home. If you haven’t read it, you should, either as a Jamesian tale of subtle scares, or as a psychological exploration of need.
SIDENOTE: As we don’t have a copy of The Scarecrows to hand, it’s also possible that this specific quote is from another young adult supernatural book we read in the seventies or eighties altogether, so no point in sueing us. How’s that for honesty? We think it was in this one by Westall.
From what we remember, the verse can be read as referring to the young man’s father, who was killed in Aden – and ‘He shall not die’ is the boy’s earnest grip on the memory of his father. But where do these lines come from?
They are, in fact, the words of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), who is well known as the author of the collection Cautionary Tales (1907). More people will probably have read ‘Matilda, Who told Lies, and was Burned to Death,’ than any of Belloc’s other works. Although various artists produced later illustrations for Cautionary Tales, the original was illustrated by Belloc’s friend B.T.B. – Basil Templeton Blackwood. The collection is in the public domain in the States, but under copyright in the UK (and possibly a few other places).
However, keeping to our October theme, the lines quoted by Westall come from an interesting book entitled The Four Men: A Farrago (1911), issued seventy years before the publication of The Scarecrows.
The Four Men is a hymn to the county of Sussex and its old ways – Belloc lived in a house called King’s Land at Shipley, West Sussex from 1906 until shortly before he died. The entire book takes place over a five day journey, one rather appropriate to our October whims and the Halloween which is coming, as the journey through Sussex lasts from 29 October to 2 November (All Souls’ Day).
It contains musings on the countryside, pieces of lore, and philosophical reflections, including verse and the odd tale, such as the fate of men who are drawn into Fairy Mounds (curiously, in Sussex dialect, the fairies are known as ‘pharisees’).
“They bring him a sack, and he stuffs it full of the gold pieces, full to the neck, and he shoulders it and makes to thank them, when, quite suddenly, he finds he is no longer in that hall, but on the open heath at early morning with no one about, and in an air quite miserably cold. Then that man, shivering and wondering whether ever he saw the Little People or no, says to himself, ‘At least I have my gold.’
“But when he goes to take the sack up again he finds it very light, and pouring out from it upon the ground he gets, instead of the gold they gave him, nothing but dead leaves; the round dead leaves and brown of the beech, and of the hornbeam, for it is of this sort that they mint the fairy gold.”
The novel is, in effect, a conversation between Belloc (‘Myself’) and three other characters with whom he travels – the Grizzlebeard, the Sailor and the Poet, each contributing their own viewpoint. These may be part of his own psyche – though Belloc also said that the three parts may also be seen as supernatural beings.
“(They), looking sadly at me, stood silent also for about the time in which a man can say good-bye with reverence. Then they all three turned about and went rapidly and with a purpose up the village street. I watched them, straining my sad eyes, but in a moment the mist received them and they had disappeared.”
And as ‘Myself’ muses about his life, and Sussex, at the end of the book, he delivers lines on what endures if a person is truly rooted in the land and landscape:
He rides his loud October sky:
He does not die. He does not die.
There are various editions of The Four Men, including an online facsimile (but again, remember copyright, as Belloc only died in 1953). If you do hunt around for a physical copy, be sure that you find a decent reproduction of the original. As with many other period books, not all reprints are faithful.
We shall leave you there, and go back to being hauled through the sodden – if attractively coloured – leaves by over-eager lurchers…
October Frights Blog Hop Link List
Remember to hop on over to check out the other participants offerings as well.
And there are details of some neat books by these authors over at Story Origin – a wide range of dark fiction, horror, odd stuff and more. Why not click below and see if there’s anything you fancy…
october frights books at story origin