Today, dear listener, we bow to both popular and unpopular demand, and offer you a brief excursion to the parish of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds, in darkest Yorkshire. A location of which H P Lovecraft once said:
“I shall no doubt have to tone this benighted place down if I want to base my modest tales upon it. It contains such peculiar horrors that no editor is likely to respond with any kindness.” (Note to his milkman, 15th July 1923)
Are you a kallikantzaros, destined to terrorise your village for the next few days? Or are you impish and troublesome at this time of the year by choice? Today we recommend a novel, recount some dark folklore and suggest baptism in the Orthodox church. We are in the Twelve Days of Christmas, and thus calling in on Greek folk-legends, shadow puppetry and science fiction. Naturally.
Let’s turn to the author Roger Zelazny, who knew that children born at this time run the risk of turning into those blackened, misshapen goblins known to the Greeks as kallikantzaroi.
Twelvetide has many myths and rituals associated with it across the world. We thought about going with the Hunting of the Wren, but the lure of a particular novel, This Immortal by Roger Zelazny (1937-1995), was too great.
The book was serialised in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1965 under the title And Call Me Conrad, with some cuts from the original manuscript. Subsequently released in various forms as a novel, the original text was restored, and it became known under the This Immortal title. Zelazny apparently preferred the Conrad title, but the publishers didn’t.
It’s not Zelazny’s best book, but it does introduce some rather neat ideas. And it’s another work showing his fascination with immortal or extremely long-lived central characters. Corwin of Amber, from the Amber series; Sam from the quite brilliant Lord of the Light; Francis Sandow from Isle of the Dead. We covered the last one at length earlier in the year – roger zelazny – my family and other vorvolakas . Another novel full of great ideas, including a man possessed by an alien god.
So what’s the folklore element here? In Greece they have a rather interesting Twelvetide belief, one which is shared in various forms across Southeastern Europe – Serbia, Greece, parts of Turkey and so on. The kallikantzaros is a mischievous creature, a sort of blackened goblin. These goblins are often portrayed as stunted or malformed creatures of various heights, some with animal parts, others with enormous genitalia, or with mis-matched limbs.
The most curious part is their behaviour, which is governed by light and religion. For most of the year, the kallikantzaroi spend their time underground, sawing at the roots of the Tree of the World and trying to bring it down. Echoes of Yggdrasil, the Norse World Tree, and the dragon/demon Níðhöggur which gnaws at Yggdrasil’s roots.
Spurning the light, it is only during the Twelve Days of Christmas when the sun is at its lowest, that the kallikantzaroi emerge into the world of humans to cause trouble. They’re not exactly the most evil goblins, but tricksters and mischief-makers. And some believe that children born during these twelve days may turn into kallikantzaroi (the Serbs called Twelvetide ‘the unbaptised days’). This was to be prevented by various folkloric traditions – surrounding the child with garlic or straw rubbed with garlic, making sure that a priest had blessed them, and, for some odd reason, singeing their toenails.
After causing minor mayhem, such goblins returned underground with the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, either the 5th or the 6th of January. This must have been frustrating, as in their absence the Tree of the World had healed itself and it was time to pick up that saw again.
Roger Zelazny composted a whole bundle of Greek myths when he came up with This Immortal. You can look for connections not only with the kallikantzaros legend, but with Dionysian tales, the Great God Pan and sundry other beliefs. He has a nice observation about the nature of the Greek goblins in there as well:
“So feathers or lead” I asked him.
“Pardon?”
“It is the riddle of the kallikanzaros. Pick one.”
“Feathers?”
“You’re wrong.”
“If I had said ‘lead’… ?”
“Uh-uh. You only have once chance. The correct answer is whatever the kallikanzaros wants it to be. You lose.”
“That sounds a bit arbitrary.”
“Kallikanzaroi are that way. It’s Greek, rather than Oriental subtlety. Less inscrutable, too. Because your life often depends on the answer, and the kallikanzaros generally wants you to lose.”
“Why is that?”
“Ask the next kallikanzaros you meet, if you get a chance. They’re mean spirits.”
In the book, he references Easter, and the possibility that kallikantzaroi are driven from their work on the World Tree by the Easter bells. This would be fitting, given the importance of East to the Greek Orthodox Church. Χριστὸς ἀνέστη – Kristos aneste – Christ is Risen. In the Orthodox Church, Christmas is really a preliminary to Easter, which is the more significant event in the liturgical year.
The novel is set on an Earth devastated by war and mostly in ruins, with much of the planet owned by aliens, the Vegans, who come here on sight-seeing trips. Humans live under many stars, mostly as employees or servants of the aliens, who are generally benevolent in their way. Only the Mars and Titan colonies are semi-independent, having had to get along on their own after Earth fell apart. With a disjointed human population, a lot of post-war wreckage and radioactive hot-spots, humanity is not in the best of positions. The Returnist movement has fought, physically and politically, to have their planet back, but with little success.
Enter Conrad. Like Sam in Lord of Light, he has many names. He may be Conrad Nomikos, Konstantin, or the freedom-fighter Karaghios. He avoids being pinned down on that most of the time.
What he is, no-one is sure. He was born during Twelvetide, and may not have been baptised (the priest had a stroke during the ceremony). His girlfriend calls him a kallikantzaros, and as in stories of the imps, he has physical defects. One leg is shorter than the other, and he has a scarred face and heterochromia, appropriate goblin traits.
Conrad’s legendary status is confused between the possibilities of radioactive mutation and mythic origins. Conrad also relates to beasts and to satyrs in the Greek ruins and wildlands, which raises the Pan connection. Zelazny declared that
“I wanted to leave it open to several interpretations—well, at least two. I wanted to sort of combine fantasy and sf… either Conrad is a mutant or he is the Great God Pan. The book may be read either way.”
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume 2: Power & Light
The surname Nomikos means ‘of the law’, but it also links to Nomios, a name for a version of Pan. Nomios was Hermes’ son, and Nomios’ mother was the dryad Penelope. He was an excellent shepherd, a seducer of nymphs, and musician upon the shepherd’s pipes. True to form, Conrad plays the syrinx (panpipes), and has a way with women. Add his odd looks and his seeming immortality, and you have your possibilities.
One of Conrad’s names, Karaghiosis, has a very specific link to Greek folk traditions. Long ago we were rattling on about shadow-puppetry with Richard Mansfield of Mansfield Dark, who produce their own excellent style of silhouette and shadow puppet films ( mansfield dark and hans christian andersen: the shadow out of denmark ). It’s a theme which comes up in a number of modern stories, but its roots are ancient. Karagiozis is a shadow puppet and fictional character of Greek folklore, originating in the Turkish shadow play Karagöz and Hacivat.
Kargiozis is a man of apparently little importance, sometimes ignored or slighted, who uses his wiles to get the better of others. Both a hero and an anti-hero. Like Punch, he often has a humped back and other deformities, which links us again to the kallikantzaroi.
Sadly, the puppetry is less common these days, but the shows are still held.
All the figures that represent the characters of the shows are two dimensional and designed always in profile. They were traditionally made from camel skin, carved to allow light through the image, creating details, but are today most often made of cardboard. Traditional puppets gave off black shadows against the white screen, but some more recent puppets have holes covered with colored silk or plastic gel materials to create colored shadows.
The torso, waist, feet and sometimes the limbs, were separate pieces that were joined together with pins. Most figures were composed of two parts (torso and legs) with only one joint to the waist. Two characters, the Jew and Morfonios had joints in the neck, and had a flexible head. They were moved with a stick attached to their ‘back’, except in the case of the figure of Karagiozis, Stavrakas and a few other characters whose arms or other limbs required separate movement. The ‘scene’ was a vertical white parapet, usually a cloth, called mperntes (from Turk. ‘perde’, curtain). Between the figures and the player (who was invisible), were candles or lamps that shed light to the figures and made their silhouettes and colours visible to the audience through the cloth.
Nicked from Wikipedia to save time typing. We’re shameless
Back when we were talking about Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead, we mentioned that the source of the image of that isle is supposedly the island of Pontikonisi, just off Corfu.
By coincidence, the author Lawrence Durrell (brother of Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals) wrote about Karagiozis and the Corfu Greeks:
Their national character is based on the idea of the impoverished and downtrodden little man getting the better of the world around him by sheer cunning. Add to this the salt of a self-deprecating humour, and you have the immortal Greek. A man of impulse, full of boasts, impatient of slowness, quick of sympathy, and inventive as well as assimilative. A coward and hero at the same time…
Prospero’s Cell (1945)
And the Conrad of Zelazny’s This Immortal shows signs of these characteristics as well. We’ll leave Roger Zelazny and the Greeks with this quote from the novel:
“I’m tired of being a gravekeeper, and I don’t really want to spend from now until Easter cutting through the Tree of the World, even if I am a Darkborn with a propensity for trouble. When the bells do ring, I want to be able to say, “Alethos aneste”, Risen Indeed, rather than dropping my saw and running (ring-a-ding, the bells, clackety-clack, the hooves, et cetera). Now is the time for all good kallikanzaroi… You know.”
It’s worth a read. And possibly checking if you were baptised by a Greek Orthodox priest. Best be safe.
Back in a few days, and on a regular schedule as Twelvetide comes to an end – more lurcher madness, weird fiction and art. Do you join us, and Happy New Year, dear listener, if we don’t see you until then…
Today, a dash of Fenland history, a gentle vicar and some ghost stories, as we follow in the footsteps of M R James – in a way. Join us, dear listener, for a ramble in East Anglia and some ghostly trivia in the company of E G Swain…
It’s easy enough to chart those authors who continued the M R James tradition in the early half of last century. Some became over-specific in their horrors; others grasped at James’ style but couldn’t quite achieve his ease. And a number broke one or more of his ‘rules’.
His friend and contemporary Edmund Gill Swain, often broke a cardinal rule and yet achieved stories which shine with that careful, detailed touch which makes James so readable. So today we stand on the edge of The Fens a while, and reflect on Swain’s Mr Batchel and his landscape.
There are no real rules, of course, but M R James set out a number of points as to what he himself considered to be the requisites of a ghost story. These can be found in the introduction to the collection Ghosts & Marvels (1924), and in the preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911):
“Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage…”
“For the ghost story a slight haze of distance is desirable. ‘Thirty years ago,’ ‘Not long before the war’, are very proper openings. If a really remote date be chosen, there is more than one way of bringing the reader in contact with it. The finding of documents about it can be made plausible; or you may begin with your apparition and go back over the years to tell the cause of it… On the whole (though not a few instances might be quoted against me) I think that a setting so modern that the ordinary reader can judge of its naturalness for himself is preferable to anything antique…”
Ghosts and Marvels
“Another requisite, in my opinion, is that the ghost should be malevolent or odious: amiable and helpful apparitions are all very well in fairy tales or in local legends, but I have no use for them in a fictitious ghost story.”
More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
E G Swain (1861-1938) adhered closely to the first two points above, but pretty much ignored that last one. Swain was Chaplain of King’s College, Cambridge, from 1892 to 1905. His chaplaincy came after he had been a curate for some years in South London.
He and M R James had an amiable relationship, and shared a number of interests beyond college and religion. It’s known that he regularly attended M R James’ ghost story readings at Christmas, and his only collection of ghost stories, The Stoneground Tales, is dedicated:
TO MONTAGUE RHODES JAMES, FOR TWENTY PLEASANT YEARS MR BATCHEL’S FRIEND, AND THE INDULGENT PARENT OF SUCH TASTES AS THESE PAGES INDICATE
We gave a brief mention to this volume over a year ago ( gods and garden rollers), but felt it was time to do more justice to an unjustly forgotten writer and his geographical influences. Like James, he drew on antiquarian knowledge and folk-lore to bring a strong feeling of history, the church and the land to his tales.
The Stoneground Ghost Tales took form quite directly from Swain’s period as the vicar of the real Stanground, near Peterborough, on the edge of The Fens. He was in that position at the church of St John the Baptist from 1905 to 1916, and his collection was published in 1912. M R James had already featured parts of East Anglia in a few of his stories. Swain confined himself entirely to the area outside Peterborough, and to that part nearest to his living.
Unlike James, there are no un-named or varied narrators in Swain’s stories – only Mr Batchel, vicar and amateur antiquarian. And the wry, delightful bachelor Mr Batchel at Stoneground is, indeed, a certain version of E G Swain at Stanground.
As one of those ‘small’ heroes who seeks justice in whatever way they can, he is admirable. He brings God to the Fenland in that peculiar old-fashioned way which makes allowances for both the supernatural and the foibles of humanity. He doesn’t employ the degree of rational deduction of G K Chesterton’s more famous Father Brown, but he does share a certain mild determination with that figure. And having introduced the protagonist, we should say a little more about the backdrop to the stories.
The geography of the area is of direct relevance. Although Stanground is situated south of the River Nene, on relatively high ground, most of the Fenland lies within a few metres of sea level.
The area originally consisted of fresh- or salt-water wetlands. These were artificially drained and have to be protected continually from floods by drainage banks and pumps. Stanground itself was not immune to flooding, as happened in the August of the same year as Swain’s collection was published. Swain wrote, concerning these events:
“It may well be that Vermuyden and the Dutchmen who drained the fens did good, and that it was interred with their bones. It is quite certain that they did evil and that it lives after them. The rivers, which theses men robbed of their water, have at length silted up, and the drainage of one tract of country is proving to have been achieved by the undraining of another.
“Places like Stoneground, which lie on the banks of these defrauded rivers, are now become helpless victims of Dutch engineering. The water which has lost its natural outlet, invades their lands… and a summer flood not infrequently destroys the whole produce of (the) ground.
“Such a flood, during an early year in the twentieth century, had been unusually disastrous to Stoneground…”
The Eastern Window
In The Richpins, Swain gives a fine picture of the area at its best, with regard to an area called ‘Frenchman’s Meadow’:
“It was upon the edge of what is known locally as ‘high land’; and though its elevation was not great, one could stand in the meadow and look seawards over many miles of flat country, once a waste of brackish water, now a great chess-board of fertile fields bounded by straight dykes of glistening water.”
Only a few miles from Stanground (now a suburban neighbourhood of Peterborough) lies Wicken Fen, one of the only ‘wild’ fens in East Anglia, although it has long been under human management. The first recorded sedge harvest at Wicken was in 1414, and ever since then, sedge has been regularly cut for roofing. The area is also notable for the history of Spinney Abbey, more properly Spinney Priory.
Beatrice, the grand-daughter of the Steward of the Count of Brittany, founded the Priory of St Mary and the Holy Cross in the spinney by Wicken in the early 1300s. The priory was first endowed with three canons of the Augustinian order. In 1403 the Prior, William de Lode, was murdered by three of his own canons who stabbed him in the priory church. Only the priory cellar and few fragments of the original buildings remain.
It may be the murder of de Lode which started legends of monkish ghosts being seen in the area. Some would say that the area is a supernatural hotspot. The bank nearby called Spinney Bank, for example, is a location notorious for sightings of the mythical ‘Old Shuck’, the demonic black dog of East Anglia. For our Northern equivalents to the Shuck, see game of groans and clanking chains
St John’s church itself in Stanground was constructed some time in the 1200s and is the oldest building in the parish. The Lampass Cross, a 12th-century scheduled monument, stands in the churchyard, and is thought to date from the 11th or 12th century. It was originally in the vicarage gardens, and would have been in the latter position during Swain’s time.
These gardens are a constant presence in the stories – Bone to His Bone, one of the best tale, concerns a genuine predecessor, Vicar William Whitehead, who donated his own close of ground to these gardens. The real-life church is key as well, and even its glasswork has a role.
“The focal point of the interior is the impressive stained glass window at the east end of the chancel. This features Christ in majesty at the top, holding globes with hand raised in blessing. To either side he is flanked by his disciples, eleven of them depicted, along with Mary Magdalene. Below, we have scenes from the life of Christ. From left to right the infant Jesus lying in a manger, Jesus baptised by John The Baptist, the crucifixion, the last supper and the ascension.”
Rob’s Churches
Here is Mr Batchel’s typically deprecating take on this, which plays a crucial part in The Eastern Window:
“It is a large painted window, of a somewhat unfortunate period of execution. The drawing and colouring leave everything to be desired… The five large lights in the lower part are assigned to five scenes in the life of Our Lord, and the second of these, counting from the north, contains a bold erect figure of St John the Baptists, to whom the church is dedicated. It is this figure alone, of all those contained in the window, that is concerned in what we have to relate.”
The interconnection between fact and fiction is a constant in Swain’s ghost stories. He doesn’t go in for exploitation of the more macabre Fenland legends such as the Black Shuck, although he does include two tonsured figures in cassocks in his story The Place of Safety. He tends to choose rather smaller human stories, and eschews the viler apparitions of M R James. In The Richpins, for example, he draws on another genuine piece of history – Norman Cross.
Norman Cross was the site of the world’s first purpose-built prisoner-of-war camp or “depot” built during the Napoleonic Wars by the Navy. It was intended to provide humane confinement for prisoners of war, especially those who had limited means. The average prison population was about 5,500 men most of the men held in the prison were low-ranking soldiers and sailors, including midshipmen and junior officers, with a small number of privateers.
“Within five miles of Stoneground a large barracks had been erect for the custody of French prisoners during the war with Bonaparter. Many thousands were confined there during the years 1808-14. The prisoners were allowed to sell what articles they could make in the barracks; and many of them, upon their release, settled in the neighbourhood, where their descendants remain.”
The Richpins
Particularly pertinent to the tale is the fact that in Swain’s time, there were older folk still alive whose grandparents had witnessed the Napoleonic wars. The last British veteran of the Battle of Waterloo had died only 20 years before the publication of Stoneground Ghost Tales – Morris Shea (1795–1892), of the 73rd Foot Regiment.
The Richpins is a small reminder of that past, with a faint shiver included. As we said of Swain last year:
“His tales are not ones of loathsome horror, or doom to come. They include hauntings, but avoid being trite or overly romanticised. They… are of loss, longing and wistful souls, and all the better for it.”
Swain only ever wrote the nine tales. David G Rowlands did take up Mr Batchel’s cause and write another dozen or so stories of the vicar in the eighties and nineties. It’s a difficult task to capture quite the right tone of James and Swain, but some of them are certainly worth a read. Perhaps the best of these were included in Michael Cox’s Bone to His Bone collection for Equation in 1989. This is sadly long out of print, but old copies can still be found at a good price.
Anyway, there you have the Stoneground Ghost Tales – an essential read for enthusiasts of M R James, and of the gentler or more curious sort of ghost story. If you can’t find a second-hand copy, you can read all Swain’s stories at Project Gutenberg:
There is an unsettling shiver on the air, a darkness on the waters where the light should fall… yes, it’s Folk Horror Time once more, and today we have a mover in the movement, that gifted artist (and occasional writer) Cobweb Mehers with us to talk about everything from Goth music to sculpture and the art of the Upper Palaeolithic. We make it sound as if we know what we’re talking about, and Cobweb makes it clear that he does. It’s our big interview for this week, so we’ll get straight down to it…
greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Cobweb. Many of your areas of interest seem to overlap with ours, so we may be testing you today, quite unfairly. We first came into contact via the Folk Horror Revival movement. Did you yourself get involved with the Revival from a folklore background, a love of horror, or both?
cobweb: Initially I got involved to support a friend. Andy Paciorek (see interview with the weirdfinder general) had some very big ideas and his enthusiasm and vision was a little contagious. It was a genre I was only vaguely aware of by name but I was already very at home in that aesthetic. I enjoy a lot of the related music and films but my real interest lies more with folklore inspired art. It was through Andy’s Strange Lands book that I started to get to know him, so that was my starting point.
I’m very excited about the various projects the group is looking at for the future. There is an enormous wealth of musical, artistic, and literary talent within the group and it’s great to see people interacting and bouncing ideas around. There’s so much more going on in the background that you don’t really see on the Facebook group. It really is the start of a revival and evolution of Folk Horror and I expect to see great things come from it.
greydog: We agree with that, and are enjoying the Revival immensely. You may have noticed that despite the lure of dark forests and sacred groves, we draw a lot of inspiration from the sea and its boundary with the land. Do you have any affinity for the cold grey waters, or are you a woodsman when you seek out folk influences?
cobweb: I’m very much a sacred groves kind of person. I lean far more towards Machen’s Pan than Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, but I do have a thing for liminal zones. When I lived on the North East coast my favourite thing was to walk deserted beaches in thick fog. You’re caught between the sea and the land but both are silent and indistinct.
greydog: It’s a perfect moment. Now, you’ve spoken elsewhere of your admiration for the group The Fields of the Nephilim. As we don’t really cover enough music here (and we love their album Dawnrazor), maybe you could say a bit about this for our listeners?
cobweb: Dawnrazor was a revelation to me. I was 15 when I first heard it and it completely changed the way I saw the world. Initially it was more a case of atmosphere and style but the substance came with time. They’re a band I’ve grown up with and they’ve grown with me. I’m still finding new ideas and inspiration in their work. Fields of the Nephilim have been a catalyst for most of what I’ve done in one way or another.
When I first discovered the internet in the late 90’s I spent many happy hours dissecting their lyrics with other fans and discussing the inspiration behind songs. I established friendships with people across the world who shared my interests in the esoteric, ancient history, archaeology, and myth. Most of them I’ve since met in the flesh and count amongst my closest friends.
It was through his work on the first Fields of the Nephilim videos that I got to know Richard Stanley. While we no longer see eye to eye, it was Richard who first invited me to visit Montsegur and experience the high strangeness of the Languedoc up close and extremely personally. It’s an amazing part of the world; initially I was drawn to it as during the Middle Ages it was a melting pot of esoteric and heretical ideas from across Europe and the Middle East, but there have been people there for over thirty thousand years so there’s a lot more to it.
In the Upper Palaeolithic it was where all the coolest artists and magicians hung out and it has been ever since. I fell in love with the region and go back whenever I can to climb the mountains of the gods, visit the sacred groves, and explore lost ruins and secret caves.
greydog: Speaking of the offspring of fallen angels (cheap link), we were always disappointed that the Book of Enoch was considered non-canonical – Azazel and the Watchers etc. And then we saw your piece about the Biblical Nephilim in the Folk Horror Revival book ‘Field Studies’. What interests you about this particular theme?
cobweb: It’s a subject I’ve been obsessed with for decades. It actually predates my love of Fields of the Nephilim and is what initially made me listen to the band. The reason it interests me has changed dramatically over the years as I’ve discovered more about it. The mythology grew out of a pivotal moment in the history of civilisation. On one level it’s our way of coping with the leap from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agriculturalists.
There are definite historical events that lie behind it that are probably nowhere near as exotic as the stories, but there’s also a spiritual aspect to what happened that’s much harder to pin down and unsettlingly pervasive. What may come down to little more than an argument about sharing technology and a fear of climate change thousands of years ago still forms the basis of the way we perceive the world. We can’t forget even if we can’t quite remember what it is we can’t forget. It’s something I find endlessly fascinating.
greydog: Let’s talk about your artistic work. You’re the talent behind Eolith, which specialises in a range of striking mythic and pre-history sculptures. Is the work you do for Eolith your main day-to-day focus, or just one of many sidelines?
cobweb: Eolith Designs is the platform for any work that’s my own idea rather than for commissions. I try to make it my main focus but I get distracted by other projects from time to time. I’ve just finished a cover design for Volume 6 of Cumbrian Cthulhu (cumbrian cthulhu), which I think comes out in the Autumn, and I’ll be doing some illustrations for upcoming Folk Horror Revival fiction releases.
greydog: We believe that you contributed to the British Museum’s exhibition “Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind” a few years ago, is that right?
cobweb: Initially the British Museum wanted to sell some of my Ice Age art inspired sculptures in conjunction with the exhibition. I also offered to create a new work based on one of the pieces in the exhibition. It’s a thirteen thousand year old carving called The Swimming Reindeer and it means a lot to me personally but I’d not accounted for anyone else being as interested in it as I was. I expected to sell a dozen at most but it was insanely popular. I spent nearly a year doing little more than making reindeer and three years after the end of the exhibition they’re still selling them.
greydog: Which do you prefer, the detailed recreation of a genuine early artefact or having licence to experiment with mythological imagery?
cobweb: The Swimming Reindeer is the only sculpture I’ve done where I deliberately set out to do a detailed recreation. The British Museum sent me loads of very nice photographs and that forced me to work in a completely different way than I usually do. Even that isn’t an exact reproduction, but having seen mine in the same room as the original it isn’t far off.
The work I’ve done based on genuine artefacts has generally been a result of me trying to get inside the head of the original artists and work out why they did things the way they did. Everything is an experiment and an exploration of ideas. I do a lot of research before I start anything and I sculpt quite slowly so the process forces me to spend a long time focused on thinking about one particular thing and that is gradually distilled into the final piece.
greydog: You also do ‘flat’ art, of course. Do you find it less satisfying than sculpture?
cobweb: I probably paint and draw more than I sculpt, but I approach 2D art in an entirely different way. I use it for more immediate things; recording dreams and visions and things glimpsed at the more exotic ends of the consciousness spectrum. It’s not the kind of thing that lends itself well to going on people’s living room wall. I’ve been pondering putting a book together for a while now, as I think that would probably be a better format for them, but it’s finding the time.
greydog: We read once that you have an interest in Ugaritic studies, which would seem terribly niche except that we do too. In our case, it’s because of the Dagon/Ioannes connections and the whole Hittite and Sumerian mythology scene. This is an amazing resource for the stranger branches of fiction, including the Cthulhu Mythos writers – and bits of our own work. How did you get into the subject?
cobweb: This was another side effect of my Nephilim obsession. The Nephilim turn up in Canaanite myth as The Healers and they feature in the literature found at Ugarit. I very quickly developed a fondness for Canaanite culture and mythology. There’s a deceptive simplicity to it and a humanity that’s very easy to relate to even today. I have a particular affection for the goddess Anat; there’s a touch of genius to personifying war as a teenage girl. The Devourers are also worth looking into. They’d be right at home in a Lovecraft story.
greydog: As you know, weird fiction is at the heart of greydogtales. We’re guessing that you’re quite well-versed in that area – which writers resonate with you?
cobweb: I don’t read a lot of fiction these days but when I do it tends to be the classics of that particular genre. I discovered Lovecraft first and again that was down to Fields of the Nephilim. We’ve become overly familiar with him in many ways and he’s not taken seriously enough. He’s not the greatest writer from a technical point of view but there are still things in his work that are actually really scary even after repeated rereads.
Machen I identify much more with and I enjoy his non-fiction as well as his stories. I’d love to have met him partly because I have a lot of questions, but mostly because I think we’d have got on really well. I’m also quite keen on Lord Dunsany and have been known to dabble with Clark Ashton Smith.
greydog: And to finish with, our perennial question – what’s coming from you in the next year? Any plans or projects you’d like to share with us?
cobweb: I have a couple of new sculptures in progress that should see the light of day before too long. One is my interpretation of what archaeologists call Judean pillar figurines, because archaeologists have no imaginations. The other one will eventually be one of a pair and is an exploration of ideas about the Nephilim covering a lot of history and geography. His other half will have to wait for a while though because the big project for the rest of this year will be jewelry.
I started my artistic career making jewelry and it was always something I intended to come back to when I started Eolith Designs. I’m really just aiming to make tiny wearable sculptures in silver.
greydog: Thank you very much, Cobweb Mehers, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. If you’d like to see, or know more about, Cobweb’s sculpture and design work, have a look here:
Not forgetting the music – if you don’t know the Neph then you can listen to the Dawnrazor track itself here:
And why not try exploring the Folk Horror Revival. We think it’s great. The website’s below, and the first book’s on the sidebar.
Next time: Don’t ask. Just don’t ask. Our brains hurt, and the dogs need to go out…