Given that Thanksgiving is now being celebrated across the colonies (except by those who don’t celebrate it), and in view of the fact that we’ve been very quiet here recently, today we are proud to present another classic European folktale concerning the Christmas Wasp.

Like many other such tales, this one was collected by Professor Ernst Stellmacher, author of Insekten-Archäologie für Frauen (1873), some time in the 1860s, and probably carries a heartwarming message for children everywhere…

THE TAILOR OF BREMEN

There once was a poor tailor who lived in the town of Bremen, along with his wife and seven children. Originally he had intended to live in Düsseldorf, but he was so poor that he couldn’t afford the extra letters, especially with the severe tax on umlauts at the time. There – in Bremen, not in Düsseldorf, you can forget about the geography stuff now – this simple, honest tailor made marvellous suits for the rich merchants of the town, and beautiful gowns for their wives, who all sported inexplicable duelling scars (the reason for that won’t come up, either – you do understand what ‘inexplicable’ means, right?)

It was often said around town that the tailor’s clothes were some of the finest in the land – and it was also said that being simple and honest was how you stayed poor in those days, especially if rich merchants kept ‘forgetting’ to pay their bills. This being so, the family augmented what little the tailor made through his wife’s spinning, which occasionally attracted the interest of passing travellers.

“Ach! Why is that old woman round and round going? Wunderbar!” they would cry, and throw a few pfennigs into the children’s open mouths.

Despite this, one December day the tailor found that they had no money left to buy even a loaf of bread. So he left his house and walked down to the church to pray that God might ease his poverty, but he was unable to get in for the crowds of Calvinists, Lutherans, Anabaptists and other dissenters busy nailing proclamations to the church doors. What was he to do? Just then, a finely-scarred merchant’s wife saw the little tailor crouching by the church entrance, and took pity on him.

“This very morning,” she said, “I had a vision of the Blessed Emma of Stiepel, who is, as you know, the patron saint of Bremen – and not of that stupid Düsseldorf place. She came to me while I was ironing the children, and said that I would be granted a fine meadow, which I should give to the poorest people of the town.”

“A vision!” said the tailor. “But…”

The merchant’s wife nodded. “Ja, I thought that was a dumb idea as well. What should they do with a meadow? Eat it? So instead, I made a pact with the Devil, and he gave me hundreds of golden thalers, on each of which can be seen the image of the sacred Weihnachtswespe (or ‘Christmas Wasp’, for any foreigners reading this). These coins I give to you, that you and your family might prosper!”

At which she opened her silk gown, and out flew not coins, but a large swarm of irascible insects, mad as hell at being confined in the dress by a delusional merchant’s wife who had just spent three solid days and nights in her husband’s wine cellar, knocking back the hock and Glühwein.

And darting and stinging, the wasps drove both the poor tailor and the drunken merchant’s wife down the street, never to be seen again…

As for the tailor’s wife and children, they too were visited by the Blessed Emma of Stiepel, but – being neither drunk nor simple – they took up the offer of a meadow, applied for planning permission, and went into real estate, eventually owning half of Bremen. And some of the nicer parts of  Düsseldorf.

Thus even today, those who have been fooled by a suspiciously generous gift, or who have done badly in a transaction with a merchant, refer to themselves as having been ‘stung’… or something like that.

N.B. For those who like to know real stuff, Emma of Stiepel was born somewhere between 975-980 and died 3 December 1038, being known for her good works. More details tracing the myth of the Christmas Wasp can be found here: http://greydogtales.com/blog/folklore-origins-christmas-wasp/

Want to know more about William Hope Hodgson and his weird fiction, or about Carnacki the Ghost Finder? Then look no further. Five years ago this October we ran a month-long celebration of Hope Hodgson, and since then we’ve dipped back many times into his maritime fiction, his poetry, his weird novels, and of course his occult detective Carnacki the Ghost Finder. Plus we’ve looked at a whole range of pastiches and projects drawing on elements of WHH’s work, and included many audiovisual links.

We have tons of new weird and detective fiction stuff to mention some time soon, but being in an Octobral mood, we realised that searching for WHH or Carnacki on our site throws up far too many results, including dozens of incidental mentions, so five years on, we thought we’d pull together an index of all the key pieces instead.

N.B. A lot of our early work was done alongside our late and dear friend Sam Gafford, an authority on the subject, who used to maintain his own more scholarly site on Hope Hodgson, and we’re pleased to see that Sam is well-represented below.

As it happens, while we were doing this, we saw that Willie Meikle mentions his work on Carnacki, and his forthcoming Carnacki collection Starry Wisdom & Other Stories, in a recent podcast interview with Charles Christian (Willie comes on around 14:30 minutes in).

weird tales radio show

Starry Wisdom & Other Stories can be pre-ordered now:

dark regions pre-order

Also at the end of this post: A list of some of the Author/Horror sites taking part in the annual October Frights Blog Hop. We, alas, didn’t have time to take part this year, but do flick through the many and varied options they offer – excerpts, horror trivia, promotions and all sorts…

THE INDEX

One or two of the older external links to media may be dead, although we’re trying to replace/refresh those as we go. Internal links should all be active.

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 1: HODGSON AND CARNACKI

The nature of Carnacki himself, and Tim Prasil on Carnacki and fictional occult detectives.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-1-hodgson-and-carnacki/

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 1.5: CARNACKI AND MORE

A little about the original tales, and the inspiration for the Last Edwardian story cycle.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-1-5-carnacki-and-more/

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 2: THE VOICE OF HORROR

Samples of audio adaptations, and interview with audio artist Morgan Scorpion.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-2-the-voice-of-horror/

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 2.5

Art by Sebastian Cabrol, plus odds and sods of Hodgsoniana.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-2-5/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: THE INHERITORS

Interview with Willie Meikle, plus mention of other writers pursuing Hodgsonian fiction.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-the-inheritors/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR

An original Carnacki tale by Patrick J Allen, mention of Brandon Barrows’ Carnacki tales, and some French and German Carnackis.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-for-the-love-of-god-montresor/

THE INHERITORS contd.

Interview with John C Wright re his Night Land stories.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-inheritors-3-john-c-wright/

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 9: AN EDITOR CALLS

Critical commentaries on WHH, and the essay ‘A Concluding Oink’ about the hog motif in Hope Hodgson’s work.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-9-an-editor-calls/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: HE’S ALIVE, JIM

Essays – ‘The Strange Case of the Books in the Night’ by Sam Gafford and ‘The House of Zarnak’ by James Bojaciuk.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-10-hes-alive-jim/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: CRITICAL VOICES

Interview with Sam Gafford on the nature of Hope Hodgson’s work.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-11-critical-voices/

THE WRITER ON THE BORDERLAND 12: ALL HALLOWS EXHAUSTION

Sundry trivia and end of the festival month comments.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-writer-on-the-borderland-12-all-hallows-exhaustion/

CARNACKI LIVES

Interview with produce Scott Handcock on Big Finish’s superb audio production of Carnacki.

http://greydo gtales.com/blog/carnacki-lives/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON & THE SEA DOGS

Presentation by Dr Alexander Hay on the maritime elements in WHH’s work.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-and-the-sea-dogs/

CARNACKI :THE SECOND GREAT DETECTIVE

More on Carnacki pastiches, and the fact that there are more stories written in homage to Carnacki the Ghost Finder than there are of any Victorian or Edwardian detective save Sherlock Holmes.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/carnacki-the-second-great-detective/

MR HYDE, MR POE & MR CARNACKI

Interview with artist M S Corley and samples of his fantastic Carnacki illustrations.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/mr-hyde-mr-poe-and-mr-carnacki-an-interview-with-m-s-corley/

THE WOMAN WHO DREW WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON

Article on the artist Florence Briscoe, who illustrated Carnacki at the time.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-woman-who-drew-william-hope-hodgson/

THE MANY IDENTITIES OF MR CARNACKI

Some classic cover art, books by Willie Meikle and Josh Reynolds.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-many-identities-of-mr-carnacki/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON DISCUSSED

Sam Gafford on the continuing popularity of WHH.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/roots-weird-william-hope-hodgson-discussed/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON – ONE HUNDRED YEARS PASSED

The centenary of WHH’s death.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-hundred-years-passed/

THE LAND OF LONESOMENESS

Sam Gafford’s powerful and moving fiction covering WHH’s last days. A must read.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-land-of-lonesomeness/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: THE UNUTTERED WORD

Poet Frank Coffman on the poetry of WHH, plus a selection of the actual poems.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-unuttered-word/

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON: ESSEX-BORN MASTER OF HORROR

Author Peter Tremayne’s rare 1977 magazine article on WHH and his life, reprinted in full.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-essex-born-master-horror/

HOPE HODGSON & THE HAUNTED EAR

Updated audio-links to loads of WHH adaptations, and Sam Edwards on Hope Hodgson’s writing.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/hope-hodgson-and-the-haunted-ear/

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Sam Gafford’s old site, holding many gems of WHH information, is still accessible here:

https://williamhopehodgson.wordpress.com/

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OCTOBER FRIGHTS BLOG HOP

Sites taking part in this event:

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Night to Dawn Magazine & Books LLC

Hawk’s Happenings

Heidi Angell

Curiosities

James McDonald

Always Another Chapter

Spreading the Writer’s Word

Yours in Storytelling

Carmilla Voiez

Hello Romance

GirlZombieAuthors

Frighten Me

M’habla’s!

Angela Yuriko Smith

Brain Matter

NLCARTERWRITES.COM

The stories presented in Our Lady of Hate are drawn from a decade of work by a hitherto un-noted British female writer, Catherine Lord, whose stories were placed in various (mostly small) publications between 1892 and 1901, the year of the author’s death. In his introduction, editor Johnny Mains describes the collection as ‘pure literary entertainment’, which seems an appropriate phrase. It is a book to be read on a rainy day, with English tea and a fireside to hand.

Be warned that there is nothing truly monstrous or unusual within, yet Lord’s stories are well-written, often entertaining, and occasionally more wry than expected. Sometimes she even manages to surprise, though many of the pieces are simply windows into that classic Victorian story-world of orphans, small inheritances, early widowhood, death in childbirth, and unrequited love; of uncles variously beneficent or curmudgeonly, of turreted rooms and outdated values.

As for the supernatural, it is present, but far more often as an undercurrent than anything – hints of frightful incidents and influences which may turn out to be rather mundane. Lord suggests more than she details, only very occasionally launching the reader into actual otherworldly waters. Thus rambling manor houses, dark moorlands and sad deaths are often exactly what they seem, without any malign spiritual hand behind them, despite characters’ fears – upon which she frequently plays. More people fear ghosts in here than encounter them. And there is a certain pleasure in trying to anticipate ‘solutions’ to odd events or circumstances, but don’t expect many unrefuted spirits.

Of the twenty one stories within, we most enjoyed:

‘The Fell-Thorpe Ghost’ – an ‘Is there or isn’t there?’ tale.

‘A Singular Experience’ – a little meditation on a man’s scary situation.

‘Loyale Je Serais’ – because it just doesn’t go where you expect.

‘Our Lady of Hate’ – though more for the imagery than the plot.

‘My Uncle’s Pictures’ – an amusing tale of family and fraud.

Quite what Lord herself thought, in any social or psychological sense, remains as obscure as the writer has been until now. She is far more the product of mid-Victorian sensibilities than of the relative social tumult which was building at the turn of the century. There is no incipient struggle for suffrage, or acid commentary on the struggle between the sexes and a changing society – relationships may be ‘perfect matches’, tragic, unrequited love affairs, dutiful inevitabilities, or simply ill-judged. She seems, in essence, in favour of what you might expect – a loving relationship between a man and a woman within the boundaries of ‘normal’ society standards. There are decent step-mothers, faithful men, misguided lovers and even an alcoholic wife thrown in, but little demonising.

Johnny Mains has done an excellent job of locating and gathering together Lord’s output, and a service to readers, like ourselves, who are fascinated by the late Victorian and Edwardian literary period. Which is to be expected, of course, given his previous editorial work on more explicitly supernatural tales of the time – and the introduction to Our Lady of Hate also gives a fine feel of what it was like to track down and identify these obscure stories, a consummate piece of detection.

Our Lady of Hate (Noose & Gibbet Publishing) is due out December 2020, and pre-orders can be placed by emailing johnnymains@outlook.com Copies are £20 + £3 postage (£10 overseas postage because of rising international charges).

For those who seek directly supernatural stories from other, mostly forgotten, female authors, we do recommend Johnny Mains’ anthologies, available in print and Kindle:

A Suggestion of Ghosts: Supernatural Fiction by Women 1854-1900 (Black Shuck Books)

a suggestion of ghosts

An Obscurity of Ghosts: Further Tales of the Supernatural by Women, 1876 – 1903 (Black Shuck Books)

an obscurity of ghosts

Also available in Kindle now is Mains’ Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories:

The Pan Book of Horror Stories ran for 30 volumes between 1959 and 1989, entertaining and terrifying thousands of readers in equal measure. In this tribute to the classic horror series, award-winning editor and historian Johnny Mains has commissioned new pieces from some of Pan’s most respected authors, printed here alongside selected stories from the original volumes.

back from the dead

or Will The Real Blade Please Stand Up? Because when all’s said and done, we’ve always preferred the original seventies comic book Blade to the revised, enhanced version of the late nineties and the films. And maybe because Blade is actually British, which has been rather forgotten in the slew of Marvel re-imaginings over the last twenty years…

So yes, in one of our last entries for Black Vampire Week, we can state firmly that Blade the Vampire Killer (or Slayer, or Hunter) was born Eric Brooks in Soho, London, England, and raised as a Londoner. Honest.

We don’t find that out immediately in the comics. Created by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan, Blade’s first appearance was in the comic book The Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973), an all-action issue which had little time for flashbacks. And to be fair, they messed with his origins a few times even back in the seventies, though they never went as far as to make him Wesley Snipes and give him an American origin – that came much, much later.

In the original Tomb of Dracula comics, in early guest appearances and in Marvel Preview #3 (1975), Blade’s mother was bitten during the last stages of a difficult pregnancy, and Blade was the child delivered before she died. Who bit her was never stabilised – there were stories with an unnamed vampire, then a specific vampire, Deacon Frost (who would enter the main Blade mytho-verse), and even occasionally Dracula. Writers often played a bit fast and loose in those days.

The result was reasonably consistent, though. Blade is simply a human who, because of the events surrounding his birth, cannot be turned by a vampire’s bite. Having been raised in a brothel (with suggestions that his mother had been one of the prostitutes there) and told of what happened, he grows up mad as hell, with a serious chip on his shoulder. Which seems reasonable.

Tomb of Dracula presents him as a guy with a grudge, ready to kill any bloodsucker. Wolfman and Colan, however talented, could not come up with much in the way of an English accent, though, and so Blade talks more like Detroit than Soho a lot of the time. Throughout those early appearances, everyone else speaks in polite or cod-English, with some bizarre language from and about the London police especially – the ‘fuzzies’ appear and say things like “haul your black butt inta the wagon.”

Depictions of Britain itself vary between seventies modern, unlikely castles and faux-Dickens slums, but you do have vampiric English teen thugs, wicked nobility, and an annoyed New Scotland Yard. There’s no mistaking the London-centred nature of it all.

But he’s great. No huge swords or techno-weapons, no mutant talents – just a guy in coloured goggles and a green or purple jacket, with an afro and a bandolier of wooden knives – variously teak, ebony or mahogany. Very physically fit and very determined, with nothing else about him but the attitude, he manages to slay even Dracula (temporarily, of course). A real hero, with a touch of anti-hero loner about him.

Tomb of Dracula #30 and Marvel Preview #3 provide more detailed background material. We learn of Blade being brought up by the other women in the brothel, and exposed to vampire hunting through encounters with a man called Jamal Afari, an old jazz trumpeter, who fought vampires with silver but who was later turned. Blade hangs out at Slow-Boy’s, a London jazz club, was taught to play the horn, and so forth. We also learn that back in 1968, he was in China with other human vampire hunters, all Black, called Ogun, Azu, Musenda and Orji. Dracula is supposed to have killed all of them except Musenda (we believe) eventually, but it was there that Blade learned the value of using wooden knives, before returning to London.

(Marvel Preview #3 follows on from Vampire Tales #8 and #9 (1974) and is well worth picking up). The original Blade in full action against the Legion of the Damned.

As time passes in the seventies, Blade loses the afro, which is a shame, and grows a chin-beard, but still goes out there with his trademark jacket, goggles and bandolier of knives. It’s a great portrayal of an angry man. He’s no teenager – origin dates vary, but he’s at least in his mid-thirties, possibly much older – and he doesn’t take kindly to anyone interfering in his work. Other vampire hunters floating around Britain, such as Quincy Harker and Rachel van Helsing, do not find him easy to work with.

“You know you just killed a teenager, Blade?”

“That’s Mister Blade, Harker – and, frankly, I don’t give a flying hoot! He was a stinkin’ vampire.”

BLADE: THE RETREAD VERSION

But this is Comicsworld, and they couldn’t leave it alone. By the late 1990s, Blade becomes American (from Detroit, rather than only talking like that), and then… he turns into Wesley Snipes. Who gives us Blade as a dhampir (see later below), a human with vampire strengths but not their weaknesses, with the background timeshift that the attack on Blade’s mother happened in1967; doctors were able to save the baby, but the woman died of an unknown infection.

It’s not that we don’t like the films, or even some of the later comics, but yeah, we really want the afroed, knife-throwing British Black Bad Boy of the seventies, when Wesley was a mere teenager, and everyone could dig the cat who knew where it was at, the man you didn’t mess with…

Blade the Vampire Killer.

DHAMPIRS ALIVE

As an addendum, the folklore side: Blade has been described as dhampir, the child of a union between a vampire and a human. Quite how this applies in this case is uncertain, as rather than him being the unlikely offspring of two genetic strains, the comics seem to suggest that some unknown factor was passed from the bitten mother to the child, presumably through the placenta.

Nor, as we’ve said, do they use the dhampir angle in the comics at first (he is eventually bitten by Morbius the Living Vampire and gains quite a few directly vampiric/dhampiric characteristics).

Dhampir, a word of Albanian origin, had its own variable place in Slav folklore, and we can do no better than to direct you to Andy Paciorek of the Folk Horror revival, who wrote an entire book on Eastern European myths which we covered a while ago. In his Black Earth: A Field Guide to the Slavic Otherworld, he says:

In East European lore it is not uncommon for dead husbands to visit their still living wives. Sometimes they will feed on the vitality of their spouse, but sometimes they will still follow other matrimonial desires. It was believed, particularly amongst gypsies, that should a male child be born of the union between a widow and her revenant husband (or sometimes lover if out of wedlock) then the baby boy will grow up to be a being known as a Dhampir. Known sometimes as the ‘Devil’s Partner’, Dhampires are actually a force against evil, though their power demands both fear and respect. Dhampires assume the role of Vampire-hunters and are well equipped for the position for it is said that they possess great speed, strength and agility and the ability to see invisible spirits anti recognise vampires at sight.

There’s more in the actual book, which you can get through the link below (it’s also heavily illustrated by Andy):

black earth by andrew l paciorek

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As we close down Black Vampire Week, don’t forget that SLAY, full of some fantastic authors,  is due out on 13th October, and available to pre-order now:

SLAY on Amazon UK

SLAy on Amazon US