I talk a lot. It’s not that I don’t enjoy listening to flesh-people (I find them jolly interesting), it’s not a defence mechanism, and it’s not meant to overwhelm others – but my brain is one of those busy, shallow things, always on the go. If you’ve seen a pond with loads of mad little insects skimming across the surface in constant, frenetic motion, well, that surface is me. All the other writers are the deeper, contemplative waters beneath.
two typical flesh-people. last week
So, apart from my regular agoraphobia, meeting flesh-people is peculiar. Last week I went to a meeting of the Scandalous Bohemians, a group of Holmesian enthusiasts, and very nice it was too. Being well-mannered, I tried to not chip in all the time. Because of my shallow trivia-packed mind, I had things to say on almost every topic, but I sat back listening as much as I could. I was a Good Dog. Relatively.
In the next fortnight, I’m also making myself go to the annual UK Fantasycon, and speaking at the Ryedale Spookfest, part of their Literary Festival. More flesh-people. The first will be eased by my minder being present, there being a bar, and the fact that there are some nice folk I know there. The second may be helped by the advantage that I’m being interviewed, where you’re expected to talk. Phew.
I was reminded, looking at these commitments, of Mr Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin, who represents my alter-ego, the soul who neither talks a lot nor really wishes to hear the ins and outs of other lives:
“Arthur Hill was of modest county stock, a junior manager in his father’s engineering firm. Mr Dry was not greatly interested in his targets, but had endured the half-drunk father’s long, sometimes tearful explanation. A good boy, a credit to his late mother, bright at school. Arthur and his beloved gun-dog, the delightful country walks with his father and cousins… there had seemed no end to it.
“Mr Dry had been reminded why he merely killed people. Living with them must be intolerable.”
‘The Intrusion’, John Linwood Grant
And I sort of admire Mr Dry for simplifying things by making a decision early in his life: get on with your work, and filter out the nonsense that flesh-people produce. It does, unfortunately, make you into a quiet, lethal assassin working to a morality no one else can understand. Swings and roundabouts.
I don’t think my chattering self would last long if the Deptford Assassin was around. Mr Dry asks questions only when he wishes to know something directly of value to his work. Most people decide they’d better answer, sharpish. He listens only when necessary, when useful. It’s a fine discipline when you pad the streets of London with purpose.
Perhaps he’s the Anti-Linwood Grant, who will save us all.
in which mr dry hunts and listens, but rarely speaks
By the way, in all of these social situations I’d prefer to have the little donkeys (the lurchers, to you) with me, but practicalities of hotel policies aside, they have their own quirks. Chilli is very dominant, and bashes people in the groin to say hello, plus she tells almost every other dog to submit. And Django, who is affable and bumbling, likes to urinate on things and make them his. Not everyone likes a large black lurcher leaping into their lap whilst a half-kangaroo beast claims their briefcase, funnily enough.
So should you really wish, you can meet me and hear me mutter at Fantasycon 2018, in Chester from 19th – 21st October, and the Ryedale Spookfest, in Malton, Yorkshire, Saturday 27th October. Or you can be like the Deptford Assassin, and get on with something useful.
Time has been horrendously pressing this year, and we haven’t had time to do the October Frights Blog Hop justice – here are some writers (who are also flesh-people) we meant to mention . Organiser Anita Stewart has been busy with a series which we want to cover on greydogtales in the future, as one of our reviewers says it looks very promising – The Saga of the Outer Islands. Dark fantasy, with the second book out last month.
Another participant in October Frights, Christine Verstraete has released her second ‘Lizzie Borden’ re-imagined horror novel, Lizzie Borden Zombie Hunter 2: The Axe will Fall.
Finally, with Halloween on its way, we’ll nod to a further participant, one who has something coming out on October 26th 2018, deliberately timed for the season (so obviously, we haven’t been able to read it yet). Last autumn, writer Stephanie Ayers put out the first of a series of collections of short fiction, The 13: Tales of Illusory, and this year’s offering is The 13: Tales of Macabre.
“Killer watermelons, murderous jewelry boxes, centenarian sea whisperers, creatures of myth/legend, and more…
“This supernatural story collection will make you reconsider everything you thought you knew. At night you’ll hover under your covers while looking over your shoulder in the day. Down, down in the depths they fell; bodies in the dark of a liquid hell. Can you survive all 12?”
Stephanie adds:
“I write a lot of short stories, 90% of them creepy, spooky, horror-ish. I decided I would do one book of short stories a year, released around Halloween. Thus the whole The 13 series was born…
“Next I had to pick through all my stories and figure out which ones belonged in this volume. I revised and added to many of them and even wrote a few new stories, so several of them are never before seen, not even on my blog. I expect readers to get a little grossed out, feel a little squeamish, cower under their blankets, and look over their shoulders. I hope each story plays like a movie in their head and their spine crawls.”
More October bookerations today, dear listener. A quick note on a new novel by Willie Meikle, a guest review of a themed anthology, Welcome to the Show, complied by Matt Hayward and edited by Doug Murano, and a mention of another anthology on the wind from Planet X Publications – which also concerns a show, the classic US carnival.
Right, there are always far more interesting books than we can cover. So in addition to our usual wittering, articles and oddities, we’re going to include more guest reviews. We’ll still be doing our own thing, poking our cold wet noses into other people’s work and exploring, of course. We’re going for this approach because one of the biggest problems for small and independent presses (and their authors) is getting their works noticed at all.
The guest reviews will be clearly marked and attributed, just in case you get confused. Any opinions expressed in those sections belong to the reviewers, not us – our tastes are a bit peculiar, and we’ll make our own recommendations as we bumble along. This might also leave us more time to go back to lurchers and classic weird things!
What we ourselves are reading, by the way – about fifteen books at once, but Tade Thompson’s recent novel Rosewater is absolutely cracking and it looks like we’ll be recommending that one highly. First speculative novel we’ve read recently that was also a complete page-turner.
We’re also interested in Haunted are These Houses (from Unnerving), short stories and poetry with Gemma Files and others; Trade Yer Coffin for a Gun by Mer Whinery (from Muzzleland), Entranced by Eyes of Evil, edited by Tim Prasil (Brom Bones Books) and many more. We will try to report back.
The Green and the Black
Firstly, released this week we find Willie Meikle’s latest novel The Green and the Black, published by Crossroad Press.
“A small group of industrial archaeologists head into the centre of Newfoundland, investigating a rumour of a lost prospecting team of Irish miners in the late Nineteenth century. They find the remains of a mining operation, and a journal and papers detailing the extent of the miners’ activities. But there is something else on the site, something older than the miners, as old as the rock itself.
“Soon the archaeologists are coming under assault, from a strange infection that spreads like wildfire through mind and body, one that doctors seem powerless to define let alone control. The survivors only have one option. They must return to the mine, and face what waits for them, down in the deep dark places, where the green meets the black.”
William Meikle at his best, delivering strong, deftly-written prose entwined with a highly imaginative and richly-detailed mythological plot. It digs out the most disturbing elements of local folklore and legend and then uses them as a framework for a powerful, atmospheric and slow-burning piece of horror fiction that is often almost unbearably tense. – The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer
And now we have writer/editor Duane Pesice on a new anthology from Crystal Lake Publishing, Welcome to the Show…
WELCOME TO THE SHOW
Reviewed by Duane Pesice
Here’s the pitch:
“We all know the old cliché: Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Now, add demons, other dimensions, monsters, revenge, human sacrifice, and a dash of the truly inexplicable. This is the story of the (fictional) San Francisco music venue, The Shantyman.
“In Welcome to the Show, seventeen of today’s hottest writers of horror and dark fiction come together in devilish harmony to trace The Shantyman’s history from its disturbing birth through its apocalyptic encore.”
Table of Contents:
Alan M Clark – What Sort of Rube
Jonathan Janz – Night and Day and in Between
John Skipp – In the Winter of No Love
Patrick Lacey – Wolf with Diamond Eyes
Bryan Smith – Pilgrimage
Rachel Autumn Deering – A Tongue like Fire
Glenn Rolfe – Master of Beyond
Matt Hayward – Dark Stage
Kelli Owen – Open Mic Night
Matt Serafini – Beat on the Past
Max Booth III – True Starmen
Somer Canon – Just to be Seen
Jeff Strand – Parody
Robert Ford – Ascending
Adam Cesare – The Southern Thing
Brian Keene – Running Free
Mary SanGiovanni – We Sang in Darkness
The Shantyman’s beginning isn’t really chronicled – it’s a going concern in even the oldest (chronologically-speaking) stories, such as Alan Clark’s excellent show-opener, which also treats with the associations of the venue’s name.
And it fades away rather than rusting…but that’s just a sales blurb.
This is a pro anthology, make no mistake about that. One quick glance at the ToC confirms that these are some of the best-regarded, most popular writers on the scene.
Each story is carefully-plotted, well-characterized. The gears turn when asked, and the overall impression is one of technical competence.
The strongest stories are at the front and the rear, with the middle, which mostly consists of random devil/demon stories, sagging somewhat. That section may not sag for every reader. Random violent demons are a proven market driver. For me, that’s the easy way out, as cheerless a prospect as seeing romantic vampires or viral zombies.
I like specific demons. Paimon is one thing, Pazuzu another. Take the time to research and develop your devils, I say. Out-Blish Blish if you can. Blatty took the time.
Some standouts – Clark’s story, Max Booth III’s piece, Mary Sangiovanni’s tale. Those are more imaginative and move to different music.
In the bulk of the tales here, The Shantyman stands in for the Fillmore West or a reasonable facsimile. It seems natural, given the premise. But, given the quality of the pen-wielders here, I wanted more. Perhaps some insight into the mind of a bandmember, by someone who knows the music biz. Maybe some instrument-talk, something to add verisimilitude, to demonstrate some love for the idea.
I’d have loved to see a haunted venue. A couple of the pieces flirt with the idea, but shy away in favor of outre ideas. Two have actual ghosts, and they’re pretty satisfying.
Kelli Owens’ Open Mic Night has some neat ideas along the ghostly track, and Adam Cesare’s The Southern Thing unrolls nicely, to choose a couple more stories that made me nod or smile.
Mind you, there are no BAD stories here. Even the least tale has redeeming qualities. The floor is very high, but the ceilings aren’t raised.
I’ll give it three and a half stars, and recommend that you read it and form your own opinion.
Duane Pesice is currently editing the anthologies Test Patterns 2: Creature Features, and Caravans Awry, from Planet X. Being jolly transparent, poor greydog will have stories in these, but we nabbed Duane to review simply because he offered and we were short of time. You can be reassured that even our nepotism and corruption are done in a rambling and confused manner.
Caravans Awry
An anthology of sixties carnival stories along Route 66
Due out October/November 2018 from Planet X.
When the clowns turn away, you know not to look. They are our hyenas, ready with their grinding jaws and their maniacal amusement at the world’s pain. If they cannot face what comes, you do not want to even glimpse it. I do not want to glimpse it.
But I did. Something came to the carnival that night, and I looked.
***
I don’t have a name for the outfit that owns me. We are Mr Maelstrom’s Fun Palace, and the Leman Brothers’ Travelling Show. Or White’s Circus, in a gentle season when the leaves have no edges, and children smile. We were Rousch’s Carnival a few years ago. I don’t remember further back.
I do remember an early autumn in the mid-sixties, and the abandoned gas station that we found. ‘Eddie’s Gas’, an imaginative name. The Twinkies in the vending machine were stale, specked with gray when we opened them, but everyone was hungry, and there were crates of flat cherry soda around the back. These was no sign of what had happened to Eddie, but what did we care?
The place had a septic tank into which we could drain the wagons, and under the cracked concrete apron there was still fuel in the underground tank. Jackie Knife found it, fooling around with one of the two rusty pumps and spraying herself in the process. Reynard the fire-eater closed in on her when he smelled the octane, but the clowns growled him back.
We’d put on five shows in a row across three towns. Wheels churned and axles creaked as we drove from one dead-eyed, God-fearing place to another, playing to half-crowds only. Weatherford and Clinton had paid, but not in cash. This was a land of preachers, who would stand outside the general store and denounce the carnival before it was dust on the horizon.
Sometimes that helped, the thrill of the forbidden, but mostly it made parents send their kids to their rooms, and teenagers hang around the edge of the fairground, hesitant. A good minister could smell us on the wind.
Wires – John Linwood Grant, for Caravans Awry
You can support Caravans Awry here by pledging/reserving a copy here:
Once again we’re part of this fun tour – sixteen horror-y writers this year, sharing posts, offering neat stuff and so on. Do have a look round, and we’ll have some more books news and guest posts on here over the next week.
Want some exciting thriller/horror reads? Today sees the paperback of greydog’s new novel The Assassin’s Coin released, so we bring you exclusive extracts from this and its sister book, The Prostitute’s Price by Alan M Clark. Conceived of as part of a joint project, both books feature female protagonists. And both books unfurl these women’s lives against the backdrop of events in Victorian Whitechapel, events which lead up to what has been called the Autumn of Terror.
assassin’s coin and prostitute’s price
These are not women without hope or ambition, nor are they mere adjuncts to men. The issues of Catherine Weatherhead and Mary Jane Kelly are issues of survival, respect, affection, solace and all those things which we seek for ourselves, male or female.
They are people, and their anger, frustration and fear are human things, not gender politics. They do live, however, in a period during which men have more options, rights and power, and so they must make constant, difficult decisions.
Our interwoven project covers the period autumn 1886 to autumn 1888, and each novel follows its own distinct story-line. Events which are clouded or mentioned in passing in one book may hold a different significance in the other, but each is complete in itself and can be read on its own.
NOTE: Some readers browse genres which represent their favourite types of fiction. The Assassin’s Coin and The Prostitute’s Price might be called historical thrillers or period horror. Can we say anything else helpful? Alan’s masterfully detailed tale of Mary Jane Kelly’s life is, of course, the story of the woman reported as the last victim of Jack the Ripper, with all the threat and horror that entails.
Greydog’s tale of Catherine Weatherhead also explores the world of Victorian spiritualists and the unforeseen consequences of being open to other ‘levels’ of existence.
Come have a quick look at our protagonists.
THE ASSASSIN’S COIN
by John Linwood Grant
Catherine Weatherhead, a woman in her early twenties with an unreliable psychic gift and little status beyond that which she can forge for herself…
Some women survive.
They survive despite everything set against them – disease, the injustices of society, and the casual ease with which a body can trip and fall under an omnibus or a drayman’s horse. They avoid the blows of a man’s grimy fist, the scratch of another woman’s claws, and the lawyers of the rapacious rich; they remain strangers to the poorhouse or the prison.
Mrs Bessovitch was one of those women.
Swathed in perpetual mourning, she used black lace and brocade to dissuade gentlemen callers, and sharp glances to see off the few who nevertheless persisted. She flaunted tragic memories of her husband, and shed onion tears for his loss, years long gone, in some distant naval conflict. Only her closest confidants knew that Mr Aaron Bessovitch had leaned too far over the rail of the Dover to Calais packet ship whilst inebriated. Tragic, possibly, but not of great value to the Empire.
Catherine Weatherhead looked on her landlady as a safe harbour, and thanked God (with whom she was not overly familiar) for guiding her to Mrs Bessovitch’s lodgings in Southwark.
“Madame Rostov, she was a success?”
Mrs Bessovitch clattered at the sink, her accent thicker than usual. Catherine knew that she was concerned.
“I… no, it all went well. At first.”
“These ladies, they had their doubts about you?”
“It isn’t that. I’d done the usual work – picked up details on them from the local shops as myself, gossiped a little. You know.”
That part had gone smoothly. It had been easy to check the local cemetery and see that Margaret Carlton’s grave was untended. For backup, she had a rumour about the family’s time before they came to Islington, and a tale from a garrulous greengrocer. Catherine knew how to read people, without needing her unreliable gift. The Aether did not need to stir itself to satisfy most séance goers.
“So… what is matter?” The landlady peered at a smudged glass, wiping it with her cloth.
“Something… something reminded me of the past, that is all. It’s nothing.”
“Da. Nothing, that is always frightening.”
They shared a smile.
“I’ll tell you some time, Mrs B. For the moment, I should rest.”
“No dinner?”
“Later, if I may.”
Catherine trudged up the stairs, her feet sore. Her imposture as Madame Rostov, the psychic from somewhere vague in Eastern Europe, involved far too much walking. Hansoms were expensive, on the little she had made so far, and she had always to make sure she wasn’t observed in her transition between roles. She had learned far more than she wanted about the streets of London in her first six months. More comfortable boots would have to be her next major purchase.
Her bedroom on the first floor was too tidy. Mrs Bessovitch’s work, but she could hardly complain. The rent was a pittance, nor were there any other lodgers.
“It is my home,” the landlady said when Catherine finally dared to query her. “If I wish company, I let my rooms. You are company. So…”
In the ancient, creaking wardrobe hung Mrs Bessovitch’s cast-offs, ideal for Madame Rostov. Furs – not grand, even slightly moth-eaten, but with the right look for the part. Old-fashioned clothes, easily tacked (by the landlady) to approximate Catherine’s leaner figure.
It had been her landlady’s idea, in a sense. Their first meeting was on a stormy January morning, and Catherine, after a winter struggling in the capital, needed shelter. Her savings were low, and previous lodgings had been unsafe, plagued by drunken fights. Then she had seen a notice in the paper. Quiet room available. Only single lady.
She walked to the address in Southwark, and presented herself. With her black hair wild and her face scrubbed red by the wind, Mrs Bessovitch approved.
“You look like good Russian woman,” she said as she made them a pot of tea. “I will like you.”
“The room is still available?”
“Da. A young woman, she comes but she is pretty. She smiles too much. I do not think she knows life.”
“And me?”
“You are not so pretty.”
The blunt comment took Catherine by surprise, and she laughed, spilling her tea.
“You see?” said Mrs Bessovitch. “You understand.”
THE PROSTITUTE’S PRICE
by Alan M Clark
Mary Jane Kelly, much the same age as Catherine, but engaged in prostitution for some time and no longer sure of her way out of risk and the streets…
(The Jennifer Weatherhead mentioned below is an impoverished cousin of Catherine, living a very different life)
Mary Jane guided Jennifer across Stepney High Street and into Durham Row, which ran along the northern edge of St. Dunstan’s Church. Trees in the churchyard had taken on yellow fall color, the leaves beautiful beneath an unusually crisp and clear blue sky.
Entering the Ashfield Place footpath to head northward to the coffee shop, Mary Jane noted that Jennifer’s limp had lessened.
“While soliciting, I use the name Ginger. If you would, please use my true name only when we’re alone. You should find a name to use other than your own, one that feels comfortable.”
“I’ll think about what that might be,” Jennifer said. “My friends call me Jennie.”
Mary Jane considered the last statement an invitation.
She saw a man with red side whiskers and mustache moving toward them among the other pedestrians ahead. With the warm color of his whiskers and the hair that poked out from beneath his brown bowler, he stood out, even at a distance.
Brevard!
Her heart beat quickened, and a tingling at the back of her neck told her to hide. She didn’t want to frighten Jennie.
“Look at this hat,” Mary Jane said, taking Miss Weatherhead by the arm and tugging her into the recessed doorway of a Milliner’s shop. “Now where is it?”
Though clearly surprised by the sudden deviation, Jennie seemed willing to concentrate on the hats displayed in the window. “Which one?” she asked. “They’re all quite beautiful.”
Mary Jane hadn’t got a good look at the man, and she didn’t think he’d seen her.
Jennie stands out too far! He might recognize her.
“Excuse me for a moment,” Mary Jane said. “I have a rock in my boot. Would you steady me?” She offered her left hand.
Jennie took it and turned toward her.
Good. Now she faced completely away from the approaching man and had her face down.
Mary Jane crouched and pretended to attend to her foot with her right hand beneath the cover of her skirts. Then she realized that if the man had noticed her, crouched down as she was might prove her undoing, since she would not be able to sprint away quickly. She gathered in her hand the hems of her skirts in case she did have to make a dash for it.
The fellow walked by, taking no notice of the women in the Milliner’s shop doorway.
He was not Stuart Brevard, yet she had felt the return of the fear from a month earlier, and regretted taking a more casual view of the threat he posed.
Mary Jane realized she’d been holding her breath. With relief, she took a gulp of air.
Remaining in her crouch for a few moments to compose herself, she leaned out of the recess to watch the man walktoward the pretty trees of the churchyard and turn eastward into Durham Row.
“Did you remove the stone?” Jennie asked somewhat impatiently.
“Oh…yes,” Mary Jane said, standing.
The two women continued up Ashfield Place.
Mary Jane dreaded a possible future in which Stuart Brevard tracked her to her new lodgings in Globe Road, an eventuality that seemed a matter of time. She’d gone to live with Joseph Fleming initially to confuse her trail and gain some male protection. Persuading him to help her recover the necklace was taking more time than she’d anticipated. If Stuart Brevard found her in Globe Road before Fleming agreed to help, and she had to move again, she might lose her chance to get the necklace altogether.
AFTER-NOTE: As for the men within these books, some intend to be kind and some choose to be cruel. Many are no more sure of what they are, and what they will become, than Catherine and Mary Jane.
The only figure in both novels who might be said to have no doubts about himself is, as you might guess, Mr Edwin Dry, the Deptford Assassin. To Catherine Weatherhead he is the killer in the bowler hat who haunts her visions; to Mary Jane Kelly he is the ‘black-eyed man’ who is a terrible threat and an opportunity at the same time…
The novels are now available in Kindle and paperback:
Once again we’re part of this fun tour – sixteen horror-y writers this year, sharing posts, offering neat stuff and so on. Do have a look round the sites involved – link below. We’ll have some more October Frights books news and guest posts on here over the next week…
As Edgar Allan Poe once famously said “Get that bloody raven out of the room – it’s just done its business all down the escritoire!” Words which will resonate with any writer who has had to combine the sublime use of their craft with domestic chores. As soon as you have ominous birds (or even incontinent Muses) perching on your furniture and relieving themselves, then the bills for rubber gloves, scrubbing brushes and disinfectant start eating into those royalties.
c. Jason Eckhardt/Ulthar
With that in mind, today we face up to the mystery of one of M R James’s night-monsters – bird or demon? – and in the next few days we’ll highlight a jolly nice-looking new version of Poe’s work, illustrated by Jason Eckhardt. For now, the wonders of translation…
M R JAMES AND THE OWL
Musing on Poe, and remembering a classic James short story, it struck us that if ravens are strange, the screech owl is stranger. So we drifted into one of those impromptu pieces of complicated trivia, for idle amusement.
This one revolves around a single translated word, ‘lamia’, and its role. You may remember the famous inscription mentioned in M R James’s story ‘An Episode of Cathedral History’, published in the Cambridge Review (1914) and reprinted in A Thin Ghost and Others (1919):
He accompanied them with a sketch of the tomb and a copy of the short inscription on the metal cross which was affixed at the expense of Dr. Lyall to the centre of the northern side. It was from the Vulgate of Isaiah xxxiv., and consisted merely of the three words —
IBI CUBAVIT LAMIA.
The inscription is widely taken to mean ‘a night-monster lives/lived here’ – here being within the old tomb. What it truly means is one of those wonderful mysteries of language and the art of translation.
The direct source is the Latin Vulgate Bible (Isaiah 34:14):
et occurrent daemonia onocentauris et pilosus clamabit alter ad alterum ibi cubavit lamia et invenit sibi requiem
And demons shall meet with monsters, and one hairy one shall cry out to another; there the lamia has lain down and found rest for herself.
The funny thing about the Vulgate (late 4th/early 5th CE) is that it was largely the work of Jerome (later St Jerome), a Greek who turned from the Septuagint Greek translation of the Bible and, around 390 CE, began his translation to Latin from the Hebrew, despite being only a moderately competent Hebrew scholar.
We can assume that in the Vulgate, Jerome was referring to one of the mythic female monsters of the Greeks, the lamiai. These were considered part of a wider class known as empousai – female supernatural creatures who seduced young men and/or ate young children.
c. loneanimator, on deviantart
Extra Fun – According to the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia:
“Arabic translators render the word in Isaiah 34:14 by ‘ghul’, which is identical with the ‘lamia’ of the Vulgate.”
See our series on the true origins of the ghul/ghoul myth here:
Note that when using the uncapitalised term lamia, writers were distinguishing the general creature from THE Lamia, a vengeful figure from Greek mythology beloved by Zeus, whose children were destroyed by the jealous goddess Hera.
Diodorus Siculus, on the other hand, preferred to place the original Lamia in a historical context, saying that she was a real woman, a wild and beautiful queen, living in a mountainous area of Libya, who lost all her children. He considered her more of a bogeywoman figure:
She was crushed by her suffering and became envious of the fertility of other women. So she commanded her men to snatch the children from their mothers’ embraces and kill them at once. And so it is still now in our age the story of this woman is kept alive with her mere name and is absolutely terrifying for them.
Diodorus (c.30 BCE)
Jerome, as he worked on the Vulgate, would likely have known both the literary references and the folklore concerning the lamia and the empousai, such as mentions in the works of Philostratos. From Philostratos’ Life of Apollonius (written between 217 and 238 CE):
Having passed the Caucasus our travelers say they saw men four cubits height, and they were already black, and that when they passed over the river Indus they saw others five cubits high. But on their way to this river our wayfarers found the following incidents worth of notice. For they were traveling by bright moonlight, when the figure of an empusa or hobgoblin appeared to them, that changed from one form into another, and sometimes vanished into nothing. And Apollonius realized what it was, and himself heaped abuse on the hobgoblin and instructed his party to do the same, saying that this was the right remedy for such a visitation. And the phantasm fled away shrieking even as ghosts do.
(F.C. Conybeare translation, 1911/12)
Thus far we might conclude that the Southminster Cathedral of M R James had at some point acquired a malevolent female spirit, a true lamia who fed on young men and children, or some combination thereof, well known to the Greeks. However, no folk are consumed in the story, and another notable attribute of many lamiai is their unpleasant smell, which isn’t mentioned. Let’s look further…
The Trouble with Lil
The original Hebrew word in the passage is Liyliyth or Lilith, a Jewish demonic spirit whose legends evolved through centuries of Hebrew demonology. As with the Lamia, Lilith has been given rather negative qualities, including being a seductress of young men and one who steals children, especially babies. So Jerome’s translation to ‘lamia’ follows, in that sense.
lilith, john collier, 1892
But… going even further back, in Mesopotamian lore lili and lilitu refer to night or wind spirits which could bring disease. The male version is lilu (Gilgamesh’s father was described as a phantom or lilu):
The Lilu who wanders in the plain.
They have come nigh unto a suffering man on the outside.
They have brought about a painful malady in his body
Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (1891)
We like this, because at no point are the Greek lamiai associated directly with disease. Consider again M R James’ tale:
The season — it was a hot summer — turned sickly on a sudden. Dr. Ayloff was one of the first to go, with some affection of the muscles of the thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at many services the number of choirmen and boys was very thin.
And
The season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was built on a site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or for whatever reason, the residents in its immediate neighbourhood had, many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people — Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen — the summer proved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of weeks, or at the least, a brooding sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares.
Does this mean that we’re talking about a Sumerian demon on the loose, bringing sickness in the night? Etymology goes mad here. Put simply, there appear to be far too many words rooted lil- across the historic Mesopotamian languages and Hebrew to be sure which is related to which, and there are arguments about whether or not the Sumerian terms relate directly to the Hebrew Liyliyth.
Some prefer to look to the lilin, who were night-spirits in both Mesopotamian and Hebrew lore. Lilin were said to be of human shape (but possibly with wings). If lilin are seen as the sons and daughters of Lilith, then this option opens up M R James’s Solomonic influences (see also his story ‘Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book’), for the lilin were said – in variants of the Book of Esther – to have danced at King Solomon’s command.
Or we could stick with Lilith herself:
The first question which Solomon asked Beelzebub was the very natural one whether there were any female demons. And, by way of answer, one was brought before him, whom we recognise as the Greek Empusa, and have met in the Frogs of Aristophanes. She is here called Onoskelis; and it may be remembered that Empusa had the leg of an ass or mule. In the long account of herself which she gives to Solomon we see a good many traits which connect her with the Lilith of Jewish mythology.
The Testament of Solomon (review of), M R James, Guardian Church Newspaper (1899)
There’s that Greek empusa – or empousa – again, but as an individual, not a class. For other detail on Lilith to help us out, we might consider Jewish folklore:
The superstitions regarding her (Lilith) and her nefarious doings were, with other superstitions, disseminated more and more among the mass of the Jewish people. She becomes a nocturnal demon, flying about in the form of a night-owl and stealing children. She is permitted to kill all children which have been sinfully begotten, even from a lawful wife.
Grunwald, vol. 62 Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Jüdische Volkskunde
A night-owl, eh?
Owls of the World
a passing owl, demonstrating big red eyes a la James
Many will know that the King James Bible (early 17th century) presents the crucial Isaiah passage as:
The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.
The screech owl? ‘Ibi cubavit lamia’ is about bird-life?
The King James Version of the Old Testament was based on Blomberg’s Rabbinical Bible, which included commentaries by the famous Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089–c.1167), who is said to have interpreted the Hebrew word as meaning the screech owl. Ibn Ezra was reputed to be a bit of a rationalist, and not much given to believing in literal demons, so seems to have avoid the Lilith myth issue, although the KJV may have acknowledged the demon connection when it suggests “night-monster” in the margins. But screech owl it is, in print.
Now, the true screech owl is a New World bird, which means it was unlikely to have been found wandering around deserts in the Middle East. Could the bird in question have been a species of the scops owl type, closely related to the screech owl, whose range does include the Levant. Well, no, because peculiarly, neither of these two types of owl screech at all, whatever you call them.
So perhaps we should turn to the barn owl (Tyto alba) as the main suspect, as this does have a shrill, scary call and was indeed known as the screech owl in some parts of Europe. But… barn owls tend not to be found in desert regions.
On the other hand, the pharaoh eagle-owl is a relatively common species of owl found in deserts, including all Biblical territories, and would be ideal for the terrain. Unfortunately the pharaoh eagle-owl does not appear to screech.
As Ibn Ezra was widely travelled throughout the Mediterranean countries, even reputedly coming to England, he would have been familiar with the barn owl. He might well, from his time in Palestine and North Africa, have known the pharaoh eagle-owl. Did he conflate two owls for literary effect, or did he have something else entirely in mind? It’s a bit late to ask him, sadly.
We can’t even pin down that darn owl.
The State of the Lamia
So, going through a dozen translations and more, there is no agreement as to what ‘ibi cubavit lamia’ means. Not only do translators vary between using lamia, night-monster, screech owl, Lilith and more, for one final added delight, the New World version used by Jehovah’s Witnesses takes its own ornithological route:
Yes, there the night-jar will settle and find a place of rest.
From M R James’ original descriptions, we don’t think it was a night-jar.
‘Come, you must have seen it,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you see? A thing like a man, all over hair, and two great eyes to it?’
‘Black it was,’ he’d say, ‘and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.’
The gender of the thing is not discussed in the story, we’re afraid – assuming ‘like a man’ simply refers to general anthropoid appearance – but on that gender issue, Monty gives us another direction when he mention the cries in the night:
‘You go and look it up.’ I wanted to know what he was getting at myself, and so off I ran home and got out my own Bible, and there it was: ‘the satyr shall cry to his fellow.’ Well, I thought, is that what we’ve been listening to these past nights?
Satyrs are notoriously male, of course, but this would rely on the King James Version – many translations use ‘goat’, ‘hairy goat’ or ‘goat demon’, without specified gender. We see M R James’s reference in the conversation as no more than a reflection on mournful sounds, an association by the speaker, not indicative of the creature’s true nature.
That it was ‘all over hair’ is problematic for a number of our options – if lamiai are anything apart from always female and sometimes hideous, they are referred to as having scales or other serpentine qualities.
edward topsell, 17th century
And owls are not hairy, though witnesses in the story might have mistaken a fine coat of feathers for such. Was the creature’s appearance due to the hair of one of Lilith’s lilin children having grown long and unmanageable?
Or – reaching back to the satyr if we must pursue the hairy matter – this is a translation of the original se’irim, a class of Hebrew demon of the hairy variety, which haunted woods, wasteland and deserts.
The wilderness as the home of demons was regarded as the place whence such diseases as leprosy issued, and in cases of leprosy one of the birds set apart to be offered as an expiatory sacrifice was released that it might carry the disease back to the desert (Lev. 14:7, 52)
Jewish Encyclopedia (1906)
Disease once more rears its head – not a Greek satyr, but the earlier Hebrew form. Which would imply that the lamia (in witch, demon, serpent or other form) has nothing to do with the story except that she/it happens to be part of the passage drawn on for the inscription. In which case
IBI CUBAVIT PILOSUS
would have been a bastardised quote but a more appropriate one. And maybe the bird released was an owl? Let’s not go there.
In Non-Conclusion
We must ask, after all that, was the inscription over the tomb at Southminster Cathedral meant to indicate:
a) The resting place of a Hebraic, disease-bearing, night-demon owing its powers to its origins in the Sumerian wastelands?
b) The home of a depressed, misplaced Greek lamia, who no longer had the will to devour young men and children directly?
c) The lair of one of Lilith’s last surviving offspring, no longer under Solomon’s control but still drawn to places of Abrahamic worship?
d) Occupation by a very large, annoyed member of the order Strigiformes, that is to say, an owl who was looking for somewhere dark and quiet to have a kip?
Our final alternative is that, as the inscription ‘ibi cubavit lamia’ was place there by Canon Lyall, who had earlier quoted Isiaiah 34:14, and was erected AFTER the whole affair was over, it was merely a whimsy of the good canon. It was never intended to be definitive of anything. It had stuck in Lyall’s head, and was as good as quote as any with which to mark the tomb. A mood, not a monster.
Oh, and no, we don’t think it was a vampire.
That beautifully illustrated Poe book, which we’ll say more about next time, is available now:
Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/d/jbeaTyJ
Amazon UK http://amzn.eu/d/06yFDz0
