Yes, it’s the return of the beasts. We regularly have guest writers, editors, artists and even performers on greydogtales, but today is a Guest Dog Day – see later below. If you’ve been following our dark and weird fiction articles, or our Lovecraftian mythology dissections, this might seem confusing. And so it is. But lurchers and longdogs are weirder than most stories, so we are unrepentant.
our most handy guide book
A while ago we provided you with the cover design for the useful book How to Find Your Lurcher. Mainly because our own two extremely fast longdogs disappear completely in the long grass and bracken on the moors.
Occasionally one will surface for a moment, like a hyperactive tuna arching from the ocean, and then disappear once more. So we have to follow the ripples and hope there’s a dog at the end of them, not something scary. Or scarier. One day we will come face to face with a feral hippopotamus, probably, one which has come out of the River Wharfe for a bracken sandwich. Yorkshire can be like that.
However, we are currently nearer home, fighting Django’s aphid infestation, in which he comes back from every walk covered in the little buggers. We’re not joking.
our terrifying new enemy
We’re not sure what spectrum greenfly use to see with, but apparently Django is lit up like a bonfire, because they gather on him in their hundreds, if not thousands. So the rare greenback lurcher has been catalogued, but cameras have not yet been to hand. At the moment the only treatment is to take him outside again and brush him until the numbers go down to a tolerable level, then rush him back in and slam the door.
Speaking of Django, we also think we’ve got a lead on his kangaroo parentage, as we found this on the net recently:
supposedly a dozing kangaroo
Compare and contrast:
supposedly a dozing django
If his ears had been sticking up, as they sometimes do, we would have been sure of it.
But back to ladybirds, conveniently the natural enemy of greenfly. We were fortuitously provided last week with some words from another lurcher victim, Daryl Green, who suggested, via Jenny Kirk, possible contents for a Ladybird Book of Lurchers. All based on painful experience, it would seem. So we thought we’d share…
chuck and jazz (whippet lurcher)
Where is my lurcher?
This is Jazz. Jazz is a dog.
He is also called a lurcher. When he was a puppy he went to obedience classes. He didn’t learn anything in the twelve weeks he was there. His mummy and daddy wasted their money. They could have spent it on wine.
our recommended alternative to obedience classes
Jazz hasn’t got a very big brain, He knows his name. He doesn’t know many other things. He doesn’t know ‘fetch’ or ‘come’. He never fetches anything and he comes when he feels like it. Not when he is called.
Jazz has long legs. He likes to run. He runs over the hill. We don’t know where he is. Rabbits and hares know where he is. They like to run too but not as fast. Rabbits and hares taste very nice.
Jazz has sharp claws. He likes to dig. He doesn’t know why he is digging. He never finds anything. He makes lots of deep holes in the cricket pitch. The park keeper gets angry.
a typical lurcher hole
Jazz loves crisps. He loves cheese and meat and shepherd’s pie and Bovril on toast. Jazz does not like dog food.
boringgggg!
Jazz enjoys visiting his friend, Chuck.
Chuck is also a dog and a lurcher. They always play biteyface. Humans don’t play biteyface. They like playing cards and drinking alcohol.
Dogs and humans are best friends. Best friends don’t have to have everything in common.
We don’t think that you can say fairer than that. Thank you, Daryl, Jenny, Jazz and Chuck.
As to playing cards, regular followers of the old greydog himself on Facebook will have seen that dogs may not be immune. In the continuing saga of The Journal of J Linseed Grant, posted every few days, such depravity has arisen a number of times, eg.
From the journal of J Linseed Grant, 18th June: “Gambling is a curse on our household. Had to increase the allowance of the Dog that is born of Kangaroo. He lost everything in an extended evening of gin-rummy with the black dog and a passing badger. The badger was sick in the umbrella stand before it left. These animals are most vexatious.”
But the world of that noted recluse is perhaps not typical. Here’s a parting shot of our own real-life pups at their most companionable:
our not-running-at-the-moment dogs, bored because we’re working
And that’s all we have time for today, as we are supposed to be writing and earning money. Ha ha. More dark fiction, horror, folklore, weird art and mad lurchers every couple of days. See you soon.
In which we poke brutally at some common weird fancies, argue and then give up because it’s easier. And we cross-question the spirits of H P Lovecraft and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Join us now for an exhaustive (brief) and in-depth (glancing) study of the Kraken and mighty Cthulhu. We might have written more, dear listener, but we know that you have washing-up to do.
we would have numbered this, but we can’t remember how many ‘stranger seas’ posts we’ve done
Today’s article is not about giant squids. Right? Everybody’s obsessed with giant squids and enormous octopuses. Maybe because they have the most astonishing eyes. Maybe because they are rubbery and thrash their tentacles, a habit not often seen in household pets or other commonly encountered creatures. Add to that the fact that there might always be an even bigger one just a little deeper… well, they had to find their way into myths and horror stories. It was inevitable.
So when many people think of either the Kraken or of H P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, they shoot straight into octopus or squid mentality. We lump these two mythological beings together today because of Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate – and because neither are quite as squid-y as you might think. Stick with us. We’re following in the footsteps of our ‘deconstruction of ghouls’ series (see ghoul versus ghul).
Cthulhu
It’s generally thought that H P Lovecraft’s early story Dagon (1917) provided the building blocks for his later Call of Cthulhu (1926). These two stories have in common the tales of suffering sailors, oceanic monstrosities, carved stones from the deep and a sense of almost indescribable horror.
(We’ll leave aside any connections with the Philistine or Phoenician fish-god, especially as theological Dagon is a confused concept and may refer to an earlier god of vegetation and grain-supply as well.)
The key monstrosity seen in Dagon, which is not specifically named as a god itself, is described thus:
“…the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds.”
The classic cyclops Polyphemus was the one-eyed son of the god Poseidon and Thoosa a sea-nymph, from Greek mythology (Poseidon in turn was the son of the Titan Cronus). His first recorded mention is in Homer’sOdyssey, and despite his aquatic parentage, he was a land-based, man-eating giant.
Nine years later in CoC, H. P. Lovecraft described a statue of Cthulhu as “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”
When the god-like being is encountered directly, it ‘lumbers’ and strikes out with those claws. Call of Cthulhu again:
“…on the masonry of that charnel shore that was not of earth the Titan thing from the stars slavered and gibbered like Polypheme cursing the fleeing ship of Odysseus.”
Eventually it takes great strokes through the ocean waters, much like any swimmer, in pursuit of the ship. In both stories the most pertinent feature is the gigantic, anthropoid nature rather than the cephalopod qualities – the realm of the Greek cyclopes and Titans.
Note also the repeated use of the term Cyclopean in such weird fiction when referring to masonry, for the cyclopes were associated with the building of massive stone works, as well as smith-craft.
By the time HPL had conceived of Cthulhu, he was clearly drifting into his own mythic world, but if we did want to go seriously Greek, then we could add in the early sea god Proteus. Another son of Poseidon, Proteus could assume any form and his flesh could be as changeable as water – observe the plasticity demonstrated by Cthulhu’s recombination after being struck by the ship in CoC.
Apart from brick-laying and gigantism, the defining characteristic that placed the cyclopes apart from others was their possession of only one eye each. To mess with our heads, Lovecraft’s own 1937 sketch of Cthulhu is a side view, and appears to show one dominant and two subordinate eyes, at least on the left side of his head. There is no obvious sign of the suction cups which might make the feelers true tentacles. The mouth-parts of squid and octopus form a distinct horny beak, but there is no indication of this in the texts for Cthulhu.
(Given that this is Lovecraft, it’s also quite possible that Cthulhu’s eyes are ambulatory, toddling around all over his head, and variable in number. We’re not going to take all this too seriously.)
What you do have is an utterly enormous man-shaped being with a questionable number of eyes and a wibbly chin whose origins may be more related to the line of the Greek Titans than to Olly the Octopus. We accept that Cthulhu will remain forever welded to squidity more than to polyphemity, because that head is a great image. When drawn by slightly better artists than the old gent…
Note: If you like delving into the origins and natural history of HPL’s beings, you might also enjoy Fred Lubnow’s great Lovecraftian Science site:lovecraftian science
polyphemus by gustave moreau, 1896
And so to our connection between these two horrors. It’s tempting to think that H P Lovecraft had poet Alfred Tennyson’s work in mind when he fleshed out his concept of Cthulhu. Tennyson (1809 – 1892) was an odd fellow. Robert Browning complained that the poet edited and revised his poems to the point of insanity, and W H Auden famously said:
“There was little about melancholia he didn’t know; there was little else that he did.”
But we like some of his verse, and this poem of his seems too relevant for HPL to have missed:
The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides: above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumbered and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green. There hath he lain for ages and will lie Battening upon huge sea-worms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1830
Unbeknownst to many, the original Kraken was devoid of cephalopod qualities. Tennyson had merely built on a growing mythology of giant squid and general fantasies of ships being pulled down into the depths by flailing tentacles. His poem is based on the 17th and 18th century manipulations of much earlier Norse legends, concerning a gigantic creature that supposedly preyed upon shipping in the sea off Northern Europe.
The squid version was first fully described by Bishop Pontoppidan in A Natural History of Norway (1752). Pontoppidan described the destructive potential of the giant beast: “…it is said that if [the creature’s arms] were to lay hold of the largest man-of-war, they would pull it down to the bottom”. The Bish also alludes to reports of a large cephalopod washed up on Norwegian shores, assuming this to be a junior Kraken of some form.
c. john coulthart
Unfortunately, the earliest legends of the Kraken off Norway and Greenland do not seem to have referred to squid. The word kraken essentially mean ‘crooked’ or ‘unnatural’.
There was certainly talk of a monster, but it was variously whale-like, or some form of giant crab-fish mutation, if it was described clearly at all. It was huge, and could be mistaken for an island. It had an enormous mouth, and was said to drag ships down not with the use of tentacles but via the wash or whirlpool formed when it submerged again.
It’s interesting to look at what else could have originated the myth of the Kraken in its original state. The early mixing of kraken and the word hafgufa in stories is curious – hafgufa means sea-steam or sea-mist. One of the characteristics of the waters around Iceland is the degree of volcanic activity. This results in land masses which rise seemingly from nowhere, areas which disappear under the sea and highly dangerous currents around active areas. The sea bubbles and steams, as if something huge lies below.
The mythology of vanishing islands is a subject in itself, and other accounts of sea-monsters which appeared to be islands are common, from Nordic to Arabian tales. See for example the tenth/eleventh century Old English poem, The Whale:
“…a kind of fish, the great sea-monster which is often unwillingly met, terrible and cruel-hearted to seafarers, yea, to every man; this swimmer of the ocean-streams is known as the asp-turtle.
His appearance is like that of a rough boulder, as if there were tossing by the shore a great ocean-reedbank begirt with sand-dunes, so that seamen imagine they are gazing upon an island, and moor their high-prowed ships with cables to that false land, make fast the ocean-coursers at the sea’s end, and, bold of heart, climb up.”
Other suggestions are of course whales themselves, moving under or just on the surface and not fully visible, and the nature of tidal islands and sandbanks.
So the Kraken as a multi-tentacled monster or gigantic squid is basically a crooked version in itself, confabulated by naturalists and fantasists until it became the thing it is today. Not squid-y at all.
We should have stopped there, but it seemed mean not to mention a few of the Kraken appearances in media while we have it with us. So you can indulge yourself with films such as these:
clash of titans, 1981
a) Clash of Titans, both the 1981 and 2010 versions. Their Kraken is a mixture of giant fish-man and octopoidal thing. The earlier one is most humanoid; the later one is more bestial and incorporates crab-like features as well. How these monsters of the Northern ice-seas ended up in the Mediterranean is a mystery we cannot fathom.
b) Kraken (2006), with the lovely Victoria Pratt. Not a terribly lovely film, though. Not enough Kraken, and this time it really is just a boring old giant squid.
c) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. A proper full-blown squid Kraken, but with the mouth and teeth of a sand-worm from Dune. Shai Hulud!
In books, China Miéville’s novel Kraken (2010) features a cult devoted to the worship of the creature, whilst John Wyndham’sThe Kraken Wakes (1953) rather disappointingly has no Kraken in it at all, but underwater aliens instead. Shame.
cover to sub-mariner #27, july, 1970. sal buscema, wikipedia
As for comics, Marvel’s Commander Kraken was a self-styled modern-day pirate who first encountered and fought Namor the Sub-Mariner. Namor used the Kraken, a gigantic octopus, to defeat his foe.
art jordi bernet
Far darker and more interesting, but typically not in English, is the Spanish Kraken comic (1983-1984?). Here, the Kraken is a mythical monster haunting the darkness, evil incarnate according to some, and the most dangerous creature of the sewers and underworld. But we haven’t got a copy, so we can’t tell you any more.
We are over-oceaned and must stop. What was I supposed to say? Oh yes, buy my books, sign up to greydogtales immediately and be kind to your lurchers. That covers most things…
Today on greydogtales – where to take your dead bodies, some traditional songs and some cool photographs. We’ll explain. If you grow up between the North Sea and the North York Moors, you have thoughts. We’ve written about some of those thoughts before, especially in connection with the sea and the whale-roads. But the moors have their roads as well, long stretches of bleakness where the sky clings to the land, punctuated by steep drops down into forgotten dales. Imagination and a good gear-box will take you many places.
mardale-shap, c. alen mcfadzean
Last time we revealed the new Folk-Horror Revival book Corpse Roads, and before we wander off into related matters, we should probably remind people what a corpse road is. There are plenty of other resources on the subject, but in brief, it was the route by which small and isolated communities took their dead to a consecrated burial place. Coffin-road and course-road are the same thing. Similar tracks are the German geisterwege (ghost road) and totenwege, and the Dutch doodwegen (death road).
There were two main reasons for such processions. The first was that a collection of farms and outlying homesteads had no church at all in their vicinity. The other was that only one local church was able to provide full burial rites. In either case, the corpse road developed over years or centuries as the route for that last journey.
mardale-shap, c. alen mcfadzean
Some were little more than worn tracks, others were paved and cleared enough that a cart could be used to convey the dead. In cases where a cart couldn’t be used, the corpse road might have large stones every so often on which the coffin could be rested and the bearers could have a quick cigarette or a swig of fortifying drink.
Anyhow, on Tuesday we mentioned the Lyke Wake Dirge, which is where we are heading today. This is a song deeply rooted in the Yorkshire of our childhood. Unlike many re-inventions of the Victorian period, it’s generally agreed that this dirge is a genuine relic of earlier days. Versions are known from at least the 1600s, and it may even be a Christianised version of folk ritual. It’s essentially about the passage of the soul from life to death, and the consequences of your actions.
The Lyke Wake Dirge
THIS ae nighte, this ae nighte,
—Refrain: Every nighte and alle, Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
—Refrain: And Christe receive thy saule.
When thou from hence away art past
To Whinny-muir thou com’st at last
If ever thou gavest hosen and shoon,
Sit thee down and put them on;
If hosen and shoon thou ne’er gav’st nane
The whinnes sall prick thee to the bare bane.
From Whinny-muir when thou may’st pass,
To Brig o’ Dread thou com’st at last;
From Brig o’ Dread when thou may’st pass,
To Purgatory fire thou com’st at last;
If ever thou gavest meat or drink,
The fire sall never make thee shrink;
If meat or drink thou ne’er gav’st nane,
The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
—Every nighte and alle, Fire and fleet and candle-lighte,
—And Christe receive thy saule.
‘Lyke’ is the corpse, as in lychgate, a sort of covered entrance to a churchyard where in older times the corpse was rested before proceeding to the grave. You can also see it in the Northern European term leichenweg (corpseway), ‘leichen’ coming from the Saxon word for corpse. For fantasy and games fans, lich comes from the same root.
The meaning of ‘fire and fleet and candle-lighte’ is debated. It seems most likely that it refers to the basics of home or hospitality – either hearth, floor and light, or possibly hearth, salt and light (taking fleet as a mistaken corruption of selt/salt). The other interpretation, that fleet is a mis-spelling of sleet, doesn’t quite fit. ‘Whinnies’, by the way, are thorns.
There are a number of melodious recordings of the dirge set to music, but we prefer the direct version by The Young Tradition:
What isn’t certain is whether or not the Lyke Wake Walk, which crosses the moors from Osmotherley in the west to Ravenscar on the Yorkshire coast, actually follows any of the moors corpse roads. The walk was created in the fifties, but it does join up many ancient paths.
We live nearer the Dales nowadays, and the nearest definite corpse road is probably the Old Course Road in Calderdale, a track which winds around the Heptonstall hillside. Some of this one is paved, and would take a coffin-cart.
There are other good examples of corpse roads across Dartmoor and in Cumbria and the Lake District. It so happens that we know a great site which has covered the Mardale corpse road, and as it’s not your usual folk-lore or weird fiction site, we’ll give you the lowdown.
mardale-shap, c. alen mcfadzean
Alen McFadzean is a walker of extraordinary energy and adventurousness, seeing as we think a stroll across the relatively flat Baildon Moor with the longdogs is quite enough nowadays. His website, Because They’re There, covers many of his long-distance adventures, and some of the photographs are stunning.
We’re with him today though because of his excellent post on the Mardale to Shap corpse road in the Lake District. Not only has he posted superb shots of the route, but his article also considers the corpse road history and concept, so it’s well worth a look. Alen has allowed to use a few photos here, but you’ll find many more, and lots about the subject, in the article here:
Hello, dear listener. Today we celebrate the release of the ace Folk-Horror Revival book, Corpse Roads. Firstly because it’s an amazing 500 plus pages of poetic and photographic goodness; secondly because we’re interested in corpse roads, and thirdly, because it’s what we do. We even have some of the poetry from within to share with you.
The Revival’s first book, Field Studies, was one of those great dip-into books with everything you needed to know about Folk-Horror – its roots, ancient lore and its use in media and contemporary works. This new book focuses on poetry, with numerous photographic illustrations to intensify the feel. We don’t want to spoil it, so what we’ve done, with the publisher’s permission, is to show you some shots of the book to give you the overall feel, and reprinted eight poems from within, classic and contemporary, which hint at why you might want to get your own copy.
The term ‘corpse road’ always triggers two vaguely connected thoughts for us. One is the Lyke Wake Dirge, which we’ll mention more in a later post (we grew up by the North York Moors).
urra moor, c. mick garratt
The other is the film adaptation of one of Clive Barker’s short stories, Book of Blood (2009). The latter is because of a particularly evocative refrain used in the film:
‘The dead have highways. Highways that lead to intersections, and intersections that spill into our world. And if you find yourself at one of those intersections, you should stop and you should listen, because the dead have stories to tell.’
There are many such stories, in verse form, in the tome in question, so here we go. ALL IMAGES ARE CLICKABLE FOR MUCH LARGER VERSIONS. Please note that 100% of sales profits from this book are charitably donated to The Wildlife Trusts.
‘Long before our first book, Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, was completed, the eyes of our minds were looking further down the path, gazing into the gathering mist, trying to define shapes from the shadows, wondering, ever wondering at further possible tomes to come.
‘There were many other lonely paths, wooded avenues and wind-beaten causeways to explore. There were songs to be sung, stories to be told, flickering images to be seen, and our intention holds fast that in the time that will come all too fast, we will mark mention of these in ink upon paper.
‘In traversing the borderlands between this and other worlds, other murmurs fell upon our senses, of that liminal terrain that lies between tracks and tales, between stories and song ~ the world of poetry.
‘So in order to collect the lyrical words of the dead, down Corpse Roads we trod, taking note of the territory we passed through, for it is the landscape that fed the inspiration of these past word-smiths.’
The book is divided between sections such as Poetry of the Dead, Poetry of War and Poetry of the Living, with separate chapters being given to particular poets who have contributed.
Ancestors
Amerind around the eyes
Cheekbones which speak to the past,
When I was wild.
My soul still knows
In my heart beats an animal;
A feral beast
And an eagle flying free.
Speak of the North!
A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies.
There’s an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,
Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;
Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,
And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.
There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there’s moss about the pool,
And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:
In the silent sunken pathways springs a herbage sparse and spare,
Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.
There is not a living creature in the lonely space arouna,
And the hedge-encompass’d quiet never echoes to a sound.
As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find
When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;
I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,
As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.
Then a sadness settles o’er me, and a tremor seems to start –
For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes – the garden is my heart.
All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal in its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.
by John Clare (1793 – 1864)
At Crossroads
Bury the head in the east road, the body in the west.
Stuff the mouth with garlic.
Take the wrong path, lose your life.
Choose: Odin, Mercury, Hecate, Mephistopheles.
Oedipus met his destiny here.
Faust summoned his.
Nothing confuses a devil like choices.
Know that you can save your soul if you are cunning.
Some gathered in the moonlight, sacred grounds.
Others built gallows, dug graves.
And I dreamed of a deep snowed field, and a black stag,
And a man that was almost me, hunted with a black spear,
Snowfall unmaking footprints, as shadow hunted shadow,
Each waiting for the other to fall prey to hungers hollow.
She lays out wishbones, boiled and polished,
or painted gold with leaf-green ribbons
at each empty sitting. Soon they will snap
like twigs, like innocence, teaching the power
of will, and dominion over bird and beast,
a feast for winter.
Upstairs, the tooth fairy,
black-mouthed at the window, sucks dreams
scented with violets and mothballs from a room
bare of all but stripped beds and damp pillowcases.
And outside, splints pitch from coarse loam,
catching pale moonlight. Sleep, little one, sleep:
the night is big and lonely, your garden’s growing
pale.
I have kissed corpses,
at the breaking of day,
half buried in bushes,
flesh rotting away.
For the greener the moss,
the greater my hunger,
where there’s well nourished soil,
the lost are there under.
I feed on the remnants,of life gone before,
crawling through forests,
feasting on gore.
A tree or a rambler,
just something past living,
join the circle of life,
their goodness they’re giving.
So pluck my fruit from me,
and devour with knives,
the recycled bodies,
of all the lost lives.
Special thanks to Andy Paciorek and Folk-Horror Revival for letting us have full access to the book.
(We have a number of Folk-Horror related interviews on the site which might also interest you, including a huge two-parter with artist, writer and editor Andy Paciorek, plus artist Cobweb Mehers, writer/photographer David Seniorand artist Paul Watson. You can start here: folk horror interviews or click Folk Horror in the tag cloud, left)
That’s us done for today. You may notice that we now have a separate section for Occult Detective Quarterly news (top right) – click the text or the image up there to find out more. – and subscribe if you want to be kept up to date. See you again soon, we hope…
