IBC126 An Inhabitant of Carcosa

Join us in Ye Olde Book Shoppe for an Ambroce Bierce double bill! Our stories are Haita the Shepherd and An Inhabitant of Carcosa. We talk Dod Grile, death, Hastur, Carcosa, Robert Chambers,  Carcassone, Petra, and the lynx.
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SPEAKER_01 0:19

Greetings, folks, and welcome to episode 126 of the Insmouth Book Club Podcast. As you can see, we brought you directly to the Ye oldy Innsmouth Bookshop. We're gonna go in the back room, get all comfy because we're diving into an Ambrose Bears double bill. I'm one of your hosts, Tim Mendies.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

And I'm the other one, Rob Hoyton. Yes, we are. And might I just add, what a sweltering day it is here in Innsmouth. How how are you bearing up under the heat, sir, given your your tendencies?

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Oh no, I'm not I'm not doing very well at all. It's horrible. The fact I've actually had to put clothes on to be, you know, presentable in public is killing me, frankly. I have spent the last few days in the nude.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I can confirm for listeners that he does usually record here in the nude. And uh, well, you know, there's some things you just can't get used to, isn't there? It's that funny scaly bit that no, no, let's not oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, don't don't don't discuss my scales in public. I was gonna say if you're hot in Innsmouth, you can just nip in the C for a quick dip, can't you? But not really advisable, is it? Not really advisable.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

What's even worse than that is the the the aroma, the uh pungent aroma of uh sweltering pilchards. It's uh yes, uh not exactly pleasant.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Certainly distinct, isn't it? So before we get into our two stories today, a couple of news items. Uh there's some music news, sir. I understand.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Indeed, yes. Um I'm out gigging again next weekend on the 5th and 6th of June. On the 5th, we're playing up at Coventry at Arch's venue as part of Necroscope, which is uh uh a really long-running goth night with live bands and stuff like that. There's three bands on with a headliner, and then we're playing down in Ipswich in Suffolk on the Saturday at the Smoke House. That's gonna be an experience. I haven't been to Ipswich since I was a teenager.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Oh, yeah, you'll be trekking across the fens then to get out that way.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I just have images of us getting stuck in a bug or something because we we don't have the best of luck when it comes to travel. So, yeah, if you're in any of those two areas and you fancy a knight of gothic rock, can come and join us. And uh I believe you've been out and about recently.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah, despite the heat, I've had a uh out on a couple of jaunts. Well, one was to Wellingborough Tabletop Gaming Club, who celebrated their first anniversary with a full day of gaming. And I had a stall there, met and had a chat with some great people, and also put on an introductory game of We Want the Gold, my skirmish game. That went down very well. By the way, we we did the haunted graveyard scenario, but I'm continuing work on my Innsmouth build at the moment. Innsmouth is expanding as it tends to do. What started as a four by four board now extends about six feet in every direction. Nice. I'm not manic, honest.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

You're gonna need your own room, aren't you, at this rate by the time we get to the ILF.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

I'm I'm hoping oh yeah, just that big room would do. Yeah, the big one. Yeah, I'll take this space. And on Sunday, I popped over to Chaossium Con. I had a stall there and had a great time. That's uh I think it's four days chaosum goes over. Of course, that's all Chaossium Gaming, Paul of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, Pendragon, and various other games. Had a great chat with some of our friends there. Andy Lyon had a good chat with him, Helena Nash also was there. Uh Matt Sanderson and Paul Fricker managed to catch up with both of those gents as well. Matt Sanderson was very easy to spot uh amidst the sea of black t-shirts. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Nice. So zero for camouflage, but yeah, very fetching, very fetching. And uh Chaossium will be having a stand again at ILF 26 this year on September the 19th, where they'll be running some demo games as well, of course, as selling all those good old cooler Cthulhu scenarios and the like. Wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

One question Matt Sanderson's shirt. Did it hurt the eyeballs? Is it one of those that should have came with a volume knob to turn it down a bit?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

I think it was it was more like if you stared at it for too long, the pattern started moving. Oh, is it like one of those magic eye pictures? Yeah, it's but but a magical eye on the end of a tentacle kind of job.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Oh, right. Oh god, yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Oh, and someone, oh, it was Andy actually came up to me and said, Good morning, Mr. Oddly Moist. Nice, I like it, I like it. Yep, I like that. Okay, so Ambrose Bierce, today's author, and we're looking at Haita. Haitia the Shepherd. We've we've had a discussion already about pronunciation, I've already got it wrong. Haisha, I was going with that. Haisia. Haisha the Shepherd, I was going with that. Yeah. And an inhabitant of Carcosa. Both pretty short stories or mood pieces as much as anything.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, I think you could say Inhabitant was a prose poem, really. And um and Haisia the Shepherd's more of a parable than anything, I would say.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah, definitely. But in both cases, there's several rabbit holes that we can go down. So I think what we're gonna do, we're gonna go through normally we comment as we go through the stories, but what we're gonna do today is look at each story and then do the discussion after each one, because uh I think it's easier that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah, I think it will be, and uh just because the way they're structured as well, like I say, because like but not especially in Habaton, it's only like two or three pages long, isn't it? It's uh but it's incredibly effective. It does remind me of things like Abominations of Yondo and things like that, you know, Smith's prose poems. You can see where Smith got it, can't you really?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Very much, very much in in so many ways, I think. Yes, absolutely. And uh yeah, I think we're we're looking at in a way with Beas, kind of the connection between Poe and then the start of the cosmic horror writers with uh Mr. Chambers sort of in between as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Yes, yes, definitely. Because I mean I would I would definitely suggest that things like the damned thing, which we have covered before on the IBC, uh, is one of the earliest, because that's a kind of cosmic horror kind of thing. It's uh certainly nothing of this uh this world. It's uh, you know, I'd say that was sort of a precursor.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Very true, very true. I mean, yeah, I I think uh a sort of almost prototype colour out of space, isn't it? That's uh in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah, so yeah, as Tim mentioned, there we have covered Mr. Beast before with uh the damned thing. That was episode 57, all the way back in December 2022. Well, we we might have been in lockdown then, I can't remember. It's around that time, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 7:33

No, I think it was just after, wasn't it? I think that was I think it was after lockdown, but you're blime.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yes, indeed. So we have covered BS's bio before, but I'm just gonna mention a couple of things here. So Ambrose at Gwyneth Beers, 1842 to 1914, was born in Meegs County, Ohio. He was of Puritan stock, good old Puritan stock. That can go one way or the other, can't it? Especially in in Lovecrafty and stuff. But he was very critical of Puritan values and people who made a fuss about genealogies. I think a couple of notable things about him was at the start of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union Army and had quite an extensive military career. Yeah. Which included the Battle of Shiloh, which I gather was a particularly bloody affair. And in fact, in June 1864, he sustained a traumatic brain injury at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. In his day, he was very well known as a journalist. This is in San Francisco. He wrote for several newspapers and periodicals, and he was known very much for his biting satire. Uh he also gained fame when he exposed uh there was a big sort of railway company plot going on to defraud the taxpayer.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Also, something I either didn't mention last time or forgot was that he spent time in the UK as well. Yeah, he's incredibly well travelled.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

I'm not entirely sure all the places he went, but if you look through his bio, it's like, oh, he was down in Mexico, oh, he's over in Brazil, then he was then he was over in the UK. Crikey got about a bit.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, in fact, his first book, The Fiend's Delight, which was a compilation of his uh of his articles, was published in London in 1873 by John Camden Houghton under the pseudonym Dodd Gryll. D-O-D-G-R-I-L-E. I've absolutely not a clue what that means. Is it an anagram or something? Or or what? Anyone who knows that they'd be very interested. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

I'll have to do some digging into that because I'm it's gotta be a reason. Knowing Bears, there will be a reason for it. Because that was very much his thing, wasn't it? Wordplay. I mean, just look at the devil's dictionary.

SPEAKER_00 9:51

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that was 1872 to 1875, he was living in England. And yeah, the devil's dictionary you remember you mentioned there, that's probably his most well-known work. Satirical definitions of English words, which lampoon cant and political double talk. I kind of think Douglas Adams of his day, in a way. Very yeah, that's actually quite a good parallel.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, it was that kind of satire and humour, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

And it still bites as well, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 10:24

I mean, when you read that, it's I love I love the devil's dictionary, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah. So you mentioned Mexico there as well, and and this is where we get the uh the big mystery surrounding Beers, which we've referenced a few times here and there on this show and on Strange Shadows. October 1913, Beers, aged 71, departs from Washington, DC for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December, he had passed through Louisiana and Texas, then through El Paso into Mexico, which at the time was in throes of revolution. He joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca. His last known communication with the world, and there is some controversy over this apparently, was a letter he wrote to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December the 26th, 1913, which he closed by saying, as to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination, and he was never seen again.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

One of the interesting things is that apparently before that he expressed desire that if he was gonna die, that he wanted to do it by firing squad.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yes, and and that's kind of well, there was an official investigation by the US Consul. They questioned Pancho Villa's men and various other locals. And apparently the tradition down there, later documented by the priest James Linnett, states that Bias was executed by a puertista firing squad in the town cemetery, but there's no real evidence, there's there's no definitive evidence one way or the other. And we know various rumors arose, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Oh, this is what I love about it, because obviously he was part of the San Francisco circle with George Sterling and uh Samuel Loveman, and by proxy, uh Clark Gashton Smith, although they never met, but they had friends in common kind of thing. And Smith and Loveman, yeah, because I've got the letters born under Saturn between the two, and in those letters they talk about hearing rumors and speculating about what happened to old man Bearce. Right. And there was the yeah, my favorite is that he ended up in the j down in the jungle somewhere, um, being worshipped as a leopard god with a leopard headdress and being being worshipped as some kind of tribal god or elder or something. That's that's my favorite. The beast who's like, oh, you know what, I'm gonna go and start a cult.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

It's been a long held personal ambition of mine, I think.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Revered as a leopard god. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, they got more and more outlandish, outlandish as it went along. Yeah, there's some great ones. But um, I like how like you mentioned the Civil War and all that, because that all that kind of made its way into Beers' work. I mean, one of his most famous stories is an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which was people being executed during the Civil War. And all that, you know, and it's believed that these are all events. Because he did uh he did a collection, which we'll get to, we'll mention again in a moment, called Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. And it was all sort of ghost stories and weird stories centered around the Civil War.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yeah, and it in fact is uh his war stories have been called the greatest anti-war document in American literature. So, you know, first hand witness accounts basically. So, yeah, very interesting writer. And one, well, I I I suppose the name is around today, but I wonder if it wasn't for Lovecraft and Co. if if he would be as well known today.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, I do wonder that. But but is yeah, because interesting because he has actually had some adaptations of his work. Because I mean we watched the adaptation of the damned thing. That's right, yeah. And there is a Polish, no, it's but no, it's Russian. There's a Russian adaptation of the damned thing as well called Proclatinja. That's right, yeah, yeah. And and there was, was it um, I think it was Boris Karlov's thriller, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 14:36

That did Al Creek Bridge. That's definitely been done, yeah. But uh Al Creek as well has become like a school standard, isn't it? In a lot of cases uh a lot of people wrote that very, very sad and tragic story, and I think we can see some echoes of that, certainly in in Habit of Carcosa.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So it's uh this is a very similar kind of setup, yeah. So Haisha the Shepherd, published in San Francisco, I believe. Indeed, it was first published in The Wave, which was a magazine, a journal slash magazine. Uh, it was published on January the 24th, 1891. The Wave was a San Francisco-based journal with the tagline, I like this, a journal for those in the swim.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Now, how insmouthian is that. I know, right? Oh my word. Oh, I forgot to pinch that for ILF. Yeah, it's brilliant, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Now it was uh it was a literary and political journal. So yeah, no surprise that Beers was a contributor to it. He contributed articles to it as well and things like that. Uh it also featured quite heavily contributions from many of that circle, the Sterling circle, DeCastri's, Sterling, all them guys, they all ended up in this because it was, I guess it was kind of the countercultury thing, almost in a way.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Very definitely. We're in that sort of just sort of post-romantic. Uh obviously, we've we've got sort of modernism and uh all that sort of stuff coming along, but we're in that little middle bit. I always think of these guys as the forerunners of the beatnicks and the later hippie movement in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

I would definitely say so, yeah. Yeah, you could see that, can't you? A direct line from these guys to swinging San Francisco in the 60s, can't you? You could it's a direct line, yeah. Yeah, Ken Casey and all that kind of stuff. Now, I had a look, and you can actually find set quite a few scans of these magazines on the Internet Archive. So, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna be having a look. So it was quite an interesting little little publication, really. So Haiti the Shepherd was then reprinted later that year in Bears' collection, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians. And then again in 1893, in Can Such Things Be, which is probably his best known collection of horror weird stories. Yeah, that's but that's the one that's got the damned thing in it and all that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

Yeah. So Haisha the Shepherd, as the title suggests, centres around Haisha, who is a young shepherd. So far so good. And it opens thus. In the heart of Haisha, the illusions of youth had not been supplanted by those of age and experience. His thoughts were pure and pleasant, for his life was simple and his soul devoid of ambition. He rose with the sun and went forth to pray at the shrine of Hastur, the god of shepherds, who heard and was pleased. After performance of this pious rite, Aisha unbarred the gate of the fold, and with a cheerful mind drove his flock afield, eating his morning meal of curds and oat cake as he went, occasionally pausing to add a few berries cold with dew, or to drink of the waters that came away from the hills to join the stream in the middle of the valley and be borne along with it, he knew not whither. So first thing, incredibly long sentences. Oh, of course.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

It is of the time, isn't it? Well, I I did that because um if you remember, way back when, for one of the first bonus episodes, I did a reading of Bears' collection, Some Haunted Houses.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

So I had to read like seven or eight of Bears' stories, and there was one or two in there that were essentially just like giant sentences.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Now we've we've got two names here already, two H names, Haisha, who is the shepherd, and Hasdua the god. So what do we know about those? I think Haisha is uh a made-up name. I've not been able to find anything about it. Uh so I'm not sure what his influence there. And Hasta, of course, has has gone on to have uh maybe more meaning than Beas intended at the start. Who knows? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Indeed. Well, we'll get more into that in a bit because yeah, it it's quite interesting how it sort of morphed and then came full circle. And it's kind of surprising who brought it full circle back to being a god.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

So, yeah. We've got this uh Sylvan setting, I suppose we'd call it, and it's almost pan-like, isn't it? It this young shepherd is sat there playing sweet music on his reed pipe. And this is nice, as he's playing the music, he gets occasional glimpses of the minor sylvan deities. It it's very um fairy tales, isn't it? Classic fairy tale.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah, and this is what sets up essentially the gist of the whole story is this one line here. He played so sweet music upon his reed pipe that sometimes to the corner of eye he got accidental glimpses of the minor Sylvan deities leaning forward out the cops to hear. But if he looked at them directly, they vanished. That is a very important line, because that is essentially the gist of the whole story.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

That's exactly right, isn't it? Because he is thinking from that that if you want something and you chase it and you look for it, you're never gonna get it. And there's something in this case being happiness, of course. So this is his life basically, he passes one day like another, save when the storms uttered the wrath of an offended god. Then Haisha cowered in his cave, his face hidden in his hands, and prayed that he alone might be punished for his sins and the world saved from destruction. That's kind of an interesting outlook, isn't it? That he is the sinner when he's just a simple shepherd. I'm not gonna go there.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah, okay. Moving swiftly on. Moving swiftly on. Yeah, I like I like this because um because basically he's got great intentions, hasn't he, Heisha? Because he beseeches his God. It is kind of the O Hasta, so he prayed, to give me mountains so near my dwellings and my fold, that I and my sheep can escape the angry torrents, but the rest of the world thou must thyself deliver in some way that I know not of, or I will no longer worship thee. So he's almost giving Hasta uh an ultimatum here.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, I mean this is quite old testament in a lot of ways, really. Read a lot of the Old Testament. It's that there's that stand-up arguments, you know. Well, you might be God, but listen to me, young man. Yeah, it it is.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

I mean, that's what that's what I mean. It is a parable, it's almost a bibli, it's almost biblical the story, the way it's done. And I guess that was Bierce's entire intention, knowing knowing what he was like.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh As a sort of contrast to the flood, uh Noah has to knowing that Haisha was a youth who kept his word, spared the cities and turned the waters into the sea. By that I think he means that the waters are drained into the sea rather than creating the sea. The sea's already there, but the uh the flood waters are drained out into the sea.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

Yeah. I think I think that's yeah, I think that's it turned out into the water into the sea kind of thing. But but I kind of like the other implication that this is a kind of creation story, that it's all centered around a shepherd who just bimbling about.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Yes, yes. But this is where I I suppose that now this element of happiness comes in, and it is that Garden of Eden thing, in a way, isn't it? Yeah, you want fun, I think you've got this lovely simple life. But as you sit there and think, it is it really that good? You know, is there something missing? And he he talks about the holy hermit who dwells at the head of the valley, a four hours' journey away, which seems like the other side of the continent in context, doesn't it? Because he doesn't go out of the valley here. Yeah, he eventually arrives at the stage where he first became conscious how miserable and hopeless was his lot. And he's asking the eternal questions, isn't it? Where am I from? What am I for? How can I be happy when I don't know how long this is all gonna last? The the the eternal questions asked through the ages. Yeah. This is where he goes a bit goth, do you think? It turns a bit gothier.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

Pretty much, yes. I was just gonna say, pondering these things, Haiti became melancholy and morose. He no longer spoke cheerfully to his flock, nor ran with alacrity to the shrine of Haster. So yeah, he's he's gone goth. It's his goth phase, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

His reed pipe when applied to his lips gave out no melody, but a dismal whale. The Sylvan and riparian intelligences no longer thronged the thicket side to listen, but fled from the sound, as he knew by the stirred leaves and bent flowers. There's that interesting thing as well, there, isn't it, with the fay folk or the sylvan deities, that they're they're drawn to innocence.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

Once you get that lack of that's uh we're referring back to Blake again, aren't we? Loss of innocence. Indeed. Yeah. That's when wickedness and greed and lust come in.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

And Arthur Mackin. Yes, yes. That's when Arthur Mackin appears. Yes, this is exactly what happens here, because it says he relaxed his vigilance and many of his sheep strayed away into the hills and were lost. Those that remained became lean and ill for lack of good pasturage, for he would not seek it for them, but conducted them day after day to the same spot through mere abstraction, while puzzling about life and death of immortality he knew not. So this is that whole thing. It's it it dials straight into 90% of the stories that we cover. Seekers of knowledge, forbidden knowledge, things that you're best not best off not thinking about.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's uh the old one again, no digging here, isn't it? Exactly, you know, exactly. Everything's fine, just look accept it, you know, you've got nothing to worry about.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Well, it's the is this sort of whole concept of I think why it it inspired Chambers, because that is the sort of core of Chambers' work.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

And it's that same sort of meditation, life, death, and all that kind of thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 25:37

You know? Well, having just covered the demo swell deeds last time, I think we get a very clear parallel with that now.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Because at some point he just sits down and says, in effect, stuff the gods, I'm just gonna do what I'm do what thou wilt, maybe. Indeed. And as he does that, suddenly as he spoke a great brightness fell about him, causing him to look upward, thinking the sun had burst through a rift in the clouds. But there were no clouds. No more than an arm's length away stood a beautiful maiden. So beautiful she was that the flowers about her feet folded their petals in despair and bent their heads in token of submission. So sweet her look that the hummingbirds thronged her eyes, thrusting their thirsty bills almost into them, and the wild bees were about her lips. And such was her brightness that the shadows of all objects lay divergent from her feet, turning as she moved. I mean, to be honest to me, that sounds quite terrifying. Oh yeah. This is Galadriel, right? In full Galadriel mode. It is, yeah, in fur full scary fairy mode. Yeah. Oh nice. And he naturally falls before her in adoration, but she's said, Don't worship me, I'm not a goddess. But if thou art truthful and dutiful, I will abide with thee. And so, yeah, but parallels of the demo as well, Dee, so you're you're in this state of approaching despair, or perhaps you've reached despair, and this vision suddenly arrives.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

And it's another parallel, because what does our narrator in that do? He makes a complete hash of the first meeting, doesn't he? With his like cruel, just like a woman, you know. And Haiti here starts basically prostrates himself and starts worshiping her, doesn't he? I pray thee, lovely maid, tell me thy name and whence and why thou comst. Asking questions again.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

And that's it, isn't it? Yes, we get a giant shadow sweeping across the valley with the speed of a vulture. The maiden's figure grew dim and indistinct, and her voice seemed to come from a distance. Presumptuous and ungrateful youth, must I then so soon leave thee? Would nothing do but thou must at once break the eternal compact. And she's gone. This kind of turns him around a little bit though, doesn't it? Because he goes back to his sheep now. It's almost like he's got something concrete to fill his time and to focus on. Yes. And he even goes back to worshiping Hasta because he pours his heart out in gratitude to Hasta for allowing him to save his flock. And when he awakes the next morning, she's back again. And she says she's come back because he did his duty. Not only that, but he thanked Hasta for staying the walls of the night. So she has come to him again. Will thou have me for a companion? And I thought that this was quite nice. I don't know if that's the word. Who will not have thee forever? replied Haisha. Oh, never again leave me until I change and become silent and motionless. Haisha had no word for death. Wow. That's that's the thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 28:52

I like that. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It's um it wasn't there isn't there a tribe? Or like there was a tribe somewhere that didn't have a word for death. Or am I just making that up? It kind of rings a bell. It rings a bank bell something, yeah. It does, yeah. Back of my mind, yeah. If any of dear listeners, if any of you know what I'm banging on about, please let me know because I have a dim remembrance in the back of my mind, it was mentioned in a film or something, or mentioned in something that there was uh like uh an isolated tribe somewhere that had no word for death.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

Right. I don't even know the etymology of the word death. If we had time, that would have been a nice little rabbit hole to go down, actually. Maybe we'll look at that in the bonus episode. It's quite an odd word, isn't it? Death. Uh yeah, well, that's that's something we can look at in the future, perhaps. Uh how various cultures express that. But here he has no concept of that. This this is very much it reminds me a little bit of uh Taoism. You know, people just live in the moment, they've got no thought of anything else other than what's going on now. This is true mindfulness, which is a horrible modern term that's overused, but there we go.

SPEAKER_01 30:11

Yes. And he's kind of basically he's all sort of over excited again, isn't he? Now, because this next line says, I wish indeed, he continued, that thou were of my own sex, that we might wrestle and run races, and so never tire of being together. Such innocence, I know that's what I mean. It's the it that innocence, isn't it? Like as most people would be like, Woohoo!

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Yes, uh not one of our stories, is it? No, no. But he's still got this idea, he's still throwing himself at her feet and asking if she will accept all the devotion of his heart and soul, after Hastir be served, of course. So, you know, he's kind of laying out his priorities. But alas thou art capricious and wayward. Before tomorrow, son, I may lose thee again. Promise that however in my ignorance I may offend, thou wilt forgive and remain always with me. Now it goes a bit funny, doesn't it? Yes, it does. Scarcely had he finished speaking when a troop of bears came out of the hills, racing toward him with crimson mouths and fiery eyes. The maiden again vanished, and he turned and fled for his life. Nor did he stop until he was in the cot of the holy hermit, whence he had set out. So now we get the third character in the story, the hermit. It is not like thee to weep for bears, tell me what sorrow hath befallen thee that age may minister to the hurts of youth with such balms as it have of its wisdom. And this also was giving me uh this one comes up quite a lot, it seems, Robert Howard, the Frost Giant's daughter. You do mention that one quite a lot. I I can't remember it, I'll have to read it again. Yeah, we we should cover it sometime. I mean it's it's it's a great liminal space story. Um and it is this figure again that beguiles. I I don't think well, again, interpretations here. I don't think this is so siren like as the Demo as well deece or the frost giant's daughter, or is it, you know, maybe it is. But the the old holy hermit has got some thoughts on this, right? Yeah. I know the maiden, I have myself seen her as of many. Know then that her name, which she wouldn't even permit thee to inquire, is happiness. Thou saidst the truth to her that she is capricious, for she imposeth conditions that man cannot fulfil, and delinquency is punished by desertion. She cometh only when unsought and will not be questioned. One manifestation of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression of misgiving, and she is away. How long didst thou have her at any time before she fled? A single instant, answered Haisha, blushing with shame at the confession. Each time I drove her away in one moment, and then the final line, Unfortunate youth, said the holy hermit, but for thine indiscretion, thou mightst have had her for two. Nice. Is that cynical? The best you can hope for is to be happy for a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_01 33:19

Yeah, well that that is very much in keeping with Bears' outlook of life, I think. You know? Because I mean this is kind of I guess this sums up his view that happiness is fleeting and comes when you least expect it. And if you question it, you lose it. That's essentially it. You can't argue with that really, can you?

SPEAKER_00 33:39

No, you can't, you know, you really can't. Yeah. It's uh because the minute you sit down and start thinking, oh, I I've got this. I mean, if I've got this, does that mean someone else hasn't, or something else happened to someone that I got this? And what if this what if this happens? What if that happens, and yeah, it's gone in an instant, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Yeah, that's it. As soon as you as soon as your brain starts with the what ifs, that's it. So don't question it, run with it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:07

And it's kind of interesting that happiness here is in the form of a a beautiful woman, an unearthly woman, yet there's no hint he maintains that innocence, isn't it? So this is not that siren-like quality, perhaps in the same way. I don't think she's trying to allure him, she's just stating the facts.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Yeah. It's not a lust, is it? It's uh it's very much just uh you know contentment, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Or I think I think that's it. I think that's exactly it. You find someone whose company you you are content in. Indeed, yeah, which is different, is different from lust and all the rest of it, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Yeah, yeah. So I think the first thing we need to dive into is Haster, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 34:57

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

I think how I'm gonna how I'm gonna start this off is because I'm I'm reading from the Haster cycle, which is the Chaossium fiction, one of the cycle books. And they're very, very good. And what they tend to do is they'll take the core things of a mythos entity, and they'll also throw in at the beginning like potential uh sort of origins. So in the Innsmouth cycle, you've got the harbour master from chambers and things like that as a potential and fish head by Ermin Cobb, yeah, as potential inspirations on Lovecraft. But on this, it was kind of it is kind of more simple, but they're done in kind of chronological order. So I'm just gonna read you the first stories in this. So first story is Haiti the Shepherd, second, Inhabitant of Carcosa, then we go into Repairer of Reputation's Yellow Sign Robert Chambers, right? And then from that, interestingly, we go into the novel of the Black Seal, Arthur Macken, and into the Whisperer in Darkness. So it's the direct line to Lovecraft. And what I wanted to bring up is that obviously in this Haster is a god, the god of shepherds. Not a lot else is known other than quite a benevolent god by all accounts in this put this sort of incarnation. Is a is a god who listens, isn't he? He, she, they it yeah, and then in the work of chambers, Haster is because it's the name of a falconer in Demo Celtice, and isn't it a place as well?

SPEAKER_00 36:44

Yes, yes, it has been, yeah, it has been known as a place, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

And in Lovecraft it's not really explicit, really. I think it's sort of because in the in the introduction to this, Robert M. Price argued, yeah, it's one of those introductions where he spends a lot of it just bitching about August Derleth. Um, and he's saying about that, obviously, that Derleth brought it back to being a god, he brought it full circle. Because he did. It was him that categorically said Pasta is a god, yeah, and then he made him part of the Cthulhu's mythos, part of the you know, about a cycle and his take on it. Um, but he argues that Lovecraft never said that he was a god, but he mentions it in the same he mentions him after Niil Athatop in the conversation of the me go, and then later, and then in the next breath, there's another conversation which they name places. So Haster isn't in with the places, he's in with the entities. Yeah, so I would disagree with Robert M. Parkson.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah, yeah, and there's this tie-in as well, which we're gonna see in the next story with Alderbaran and Hades and all the these uh astronomical elements of well, which that again seems to have its origins in BS because we get those mentions quite clearly. It does, yeah. So we don't know uh again. This is the big advantage we have with Lovecraft, and to a large extent, Smith, right, is they wrote letters to each other and many other people, yeah, in which Lovecraft will have said, Oh, yeah, when I came up with whatever, I was sort of thinking of this, or have you read this by so and so? So it's quite clear to pinpoint his influences. With going back as far as I know, with Beerce, we don't have that same information. Uh, if people know different, then no doubt they'll let us know.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

I think that is a book, there is some letters. Um, because Loveman and Sterling were collecting Bierce letters, but I think they were and I think they were released at, but I think it was only like a chat book or something, right? A very short press. And I don't think it's ever been reprinted because it was it was uh a selection of letters from Bears was done as sort of uh an in memorium by Sterling was put out because Smith was saying that he got his copy of it. Uh yeah. So so I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

I mean that's something I'd have to look into. And it is quite a big change, isn't it? We we go from Haster the pastoral god, Haster the pastor, who is listening to his worshippers and says, All right, well, I won't drown your sheep then, and you've you've been a good shepherd. I mean, there's uh biblical parallel as well, right? The shepherd and sheep and all the rest of it, and just the way it was written, the language, the and thou, and verily, it's kind of thing. Uh, but where how do we get from that into this very sinister almost Nyalathatep type figure that's uh sort of wreathed in decadence and despair?

SPEAKER_01 39:51

It's quite a change. Well, that's the filtering through the chambers lens, isn't it? Because of the being associated with the king in yellow, and then the two later the two becoming interchangeable, you know, has to is the king in yellow, you know. That that's the implication that that Lovecraft and and Derlith and people like later authors, specifically like Carl Edward Wagner, you know, he did a he did like we need to cover that River of Nights Dreaming. Tremendous story. Yeah, and um, yeah, and Richard A. Loophoff, even like Ramsay Campbell has mentioned that sort of you know, in his mine on Mine of Yogoth mentions that you think with the with the Lovecraft tie-in with the me go, I think he can't be anything but something sinister. It's it's almost Chinese whispers, isn't it? Because it started off as one thing and then each author's tweaked it slightly until Derleth came along and basically codified it.

SPEAKER_02 40:55

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

Now my my knowledge of Greek myth is not that great, it's been a long time since I studied any of that. But do is this similar to Pan? Because Pan lately, well, certainly from Macken onwards, is uh terrifying, right? I mean, I guess the whole thing, the panic and all the rest was from that. But was Pan originally more of a I don't want to say benevolent so much, but maybe benign, yeah, just a uh a manifestation of nature, and and then it turned into some terrifying entity.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

Yeah, I think you might be right there, because I mean it's again again with like all these kind of things, like the green man, you know, it can be seen, it can be seen in a sinister light if you look through certain lenses, especially through like a Christian lens and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, so very interesting. But uh, well, as we'll see in this in the next story, Ambrose Beers started a ball rolling that was uh it's like a snowball that that gathered size of momentum as it went downhill.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Yeah, it's really interesting to think that from that from this story that we're going to be covering next, we go all the way to true detective.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

Yeah, without a pause, right? I mean, there it is. It's just yeah, yeah, yeah, quite incredible, really. Okay, so shall we switch over to an inhabitant of Carcosa? And uh, is it a similar publication history to this?

SPEAKER_01 42:21

Pretty much almost exactly, except it was first published in the San Francisco newsletter of December the 25th, 1886. Does that make it a Christmas ghost story?

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Oh, you that sparks arguments in this house because I maintain that um Die Hard is a Christmas movie. So do I. It is. It's set at Christmas. Well, you you can argue with my wife as well about that while I'm staying. But it is now I have a machine gun ho ho ho. It's got Christmas presents at the start, it's snowing.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

The dead guy of the Santa hat with the ho ho ho come on. It's the only Christmas movie I'll watch. Oh, nightmare before Christmas. Oh, yeah. And Lethal Weapon as well. That's a Christmas movie. Yeah, yeah. I was just like trying to throw out feelers to Mark Gators. Come on, do this. Oh, yeah, yeah. Now, now, yeah, I would definitely I would be behind that. Yeah. Because this is the sort of story you could do well because it doesn't then involve any special effects, and you could get through it in 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

So you could probably do both of these, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But uh, yeah, it like Haisia the Shepherd, it was then reprinted in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and in Cansoops Things Be.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

And this opens with uh a quote. A quote from a person or entity, we'll get onto that in a moment, called Harley. And this is the opening quote For there be diverse sorts of deaths. Somewhere in the body remaineth, and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude, such is God's will, and none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey, which indeed he hath, but sometimes it hath happened in the sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay. So very biblical style again. Yes. And it does remind me that funny enough this came up the other day in totally unrelated conversation, was the life of Brian. And they did put it the things that were made of wicker, but they knoweth not where they put them, and long did they search it for them. Blessed are the cheesemakers. I think he refined is referring to manufacturers of all dairy products.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Yes, indeed.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

So that's our opening. So straight away we're getting the impression that this story is very much about death. Yes. Yeah. And possibly resurrection. This then sets our scene for the person who is pondering these words, who has basically sort of woken up in a strange environment, doesn't know where he is, doesn't know how he got there, has some memories of who he was. It's almost a little bit outsider-ish, isn't it? Or vice versa. It is. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

And you can because obviously Smith was inspired by Ambrose Bears. I mean, I think that's no argument there. And you can see this in this descriptive passage here. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain covered with a tall overgrowth of seer grass which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind, with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting suggestion. Protruding at long intervals above it stood strangely shaped and somber coloured rocks, which seemed to have an understanding with one another, and to exchange looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and there appeared as leaders in this malevolent conspiracy of silent expectation.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Nice, very nice. That's good, isn't it? Isn't it? Put me in mind of Avery that, actually. Yeah. The rocks are feeling a feeling of the rocks looking at each other. Very I've got a very odd sense of that down there.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

It's a very uncanny place, isn't it, Avery? It's somewhere I want to visit again at some point soon. But yeah, it's uh yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

So it's a dismal landscape. It the air is raw and chill, and he gets a sensation that his consciousness of these facts was rather mental than physical. He has no physical feeling of discomfort. No birds, no beasts, no insects, dead trees, grey grass. Uh it's sounding quite liminal, isn't it, at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Yeah, well, what I was gonna say was this would be a good one to bring up with Babamilla. Yes. Because this to me is this classic haunted landscape. Genius loci, you may say.

SPEAKER_00 47:28

Totally, totally. And it it sort of works out that he's in a graveyard, though the graves themselves no longer exist as either mounds or depressions. So a very ancient graveyard, some scattered blocks, uh, everything is fallen down and decayed and is neglected and deserted. And not unnaturally, he thinks, how came I hither? And he gets this vague memory of being prostrated by a sudden fever, and that my family had told me that in my periods of delirium I'd constantly cried out for liberty and air, and had been held in my bed to prevent my escape out of doors. So he thinks, Well, have I sort of broken three for three and got outside? And then we get it. Clearly, I was at a considerable distance from the city where I dwelt, the ancient and famous city of Carcosa.

SPEAKER_01 48:22

There we go. There we go, there it is.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

I don't know if it's of course we have that association, but to me that mention that line is more creepy than anything we've seen so far, which is creepy enough.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Something I just want to quickly bring up because it just made me smile to myself, is it again, it this just gives more indication of Beers's very biting view of the world. You know, he has a very biting cynical view of things. Scattered here and there more massive blocks showed where some pompous tomb or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. I love that line. Nice, that's great. Exactly, yes. Well, I wanted to I wanted to get into that in a bit because yeah, there is some parallels with Ozzy Mandius.

SPEAKER_00 49:10

Yeah. So he starts calling out the names of his wives and sons, walking around the crumbling stones. We do get uh a couple well characters, animals and and a character up here. A wild animal, a lynx, is approaching, and the thought came to me if I break down here in the desert, this beast will be at my throat. So it's odd that he's mentioned desert there when we well, I suppose you you can have that kind of grassland in a desert. I uh a desert doesn't necessarily look like the Sahara, right? That's always our image. Yeah, no, it's more like the savannah, you know. Yeah, the actual definition of desert is is not necessarily what people think. So he he does you know what you should do with a cat, make yourself look big, shout and wave your arms, and the thing just totally ignores him. A moment later a man's head appeared to rise out of the ground a short distance away. He was ascending the further slope of a low hill, whose crest was hardly to be distinguished from the general level. His whole figure soon came into view. He was half naked, half clad in skins, his hair was unkempt, his beard long and ragged. In one hand he carried a bow and arrow, the other held a blazing torch with a long trail of black smoke. So a character that is quite out of time in the narrator's natural setting, which we imagine is contemporary to when the story was written. We've got nothing to base that on particularly, but I don't know. You just remember the description sounded a bit like me after a heavy night out. Half naked and covered in animal skins with unkept hair and beard. That bow and arrow, that would work well from your balcony, wouldn't it? It would actually, yeah. And uh although he's surprised by the appearance of this figure, he of course goes up and says, Hello, God keep you. Good stranger, I am lost. Direct me, I beseech you, to Carcosa. And this man ignores him, but then breaks out into a barbarous charm in an unknown tongue, passing on and away. So we we can speculate as to what is going on there in a moment.

SPEAKER_01 51:25

Now this is an interesting passage now, because again, it's just got some lovely atmosphere or like in it. An owl on the branch of a decayed tree hooted dismally and was answered by another in the distance. Looking upward, I saw through a sudden rift in the clouds Aldabaron and Alhaides. In all of this there was a hint of night. The lynx, the man with the torch, the owl. Yet I saw. I saw even the stars in absence of the darkness. I saw but was apparently not seen nor heard. Under what awful spell did I exist.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Yes, it is uh it is very strange.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

It's very Poe as well, isn't it? It's i i it is very much that bridge between the gothic and the weird, I think.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Because there's elements of this of this in Poe, and we've already mentioned the outsider. Again, that could be a a paragraph from the outsider almost, couldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 52:24

Yeah, and several of Smith's stories.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Yeah, yeah. So he sits down uh with his back to a great tree. Uh he's a little bit overwhelmed by what's going on, but he's very alert, almost preternaturally or supernaturally alert. I could hear the silence, that's a lovely phrase. And as he sat down against his tree, you notice the the tree has grown around a slab of stone. This is such a nice image. And it tells us of well, a certain amount of age certainly that the tree has grown around the stone. And he can just make out what is written on the stone, because a a sudden wind pushed some dry leaves and twigs from the uppermost face of the stone, and there he reads God in heaven, my name in full, the date of my birth, the date of my death. A level shaft of light illuminated the whole side of the tree as I sprang to my feet in terror. The sun was rising in the rosy east. I stood between the tree and his broad red disc. No shadow darkened the trunk. So he's not even casting the shadow. I thought that appearance of light is nice as he gets his own illumination. The sun illuminates as well. Nice touch.

SPEAKER_01 53:43

Yeah, I mean that that image you were saying about the stone, uh the gravestone with a tree grown around it, that actually really rang true with me. Because I was out in Amberley the other day, Saturday, and on the way there, there was a tree, a really old oak tree. And at some point in the past, raw a wrought iron cage had been built around it at the bottom, but it had grown round and through it. But you could still see like the bits of the iron embedded in the tree and the bark coming round it and stuff. It's uh yeah, it was cool. Very sort of armour-plated tree. I liked it. Ents with armour. But this this whole concept of him being dead, it's quite a well-worn trope now. So the narrator turns out to be the ghost.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

But this is one of the first times it was done. Yeah, I I was gonna say we're we're back at the roots, and the same with Lovecraft to an extent, isn't it? Where this is where the tropes are born. Yeah, very much so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:47

I mean, well, Owl Creek Bridge is another one, right? It's uh Yes. You know, it's something bierce, and yeah, he was definitely one of the first people to do that kind of thing, which would later go on to be you I mean, famously the film The Others and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 55:03

Yeah, and Sixth Sense, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Oh, sixth cents, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:07

And the story finishes with this A chorus of howling wolves saluted the dawn. I saw them sitting on their haunches, singling in groups, on the summits of irregular mounds and tumuli, filling a half of my desert prospect and extending to the horizon. And then I knew that these were the ruins of the ancient and famous city of Carcosa. And an interesting little line to finish. Such are the facts imparted to the medium Beyroe by the spirit Hoseb a la Robazan. Nice. That's how we know. That's how we know all this, because it's been relayed via a spirit to a medium. I know I like that. Uh, because I I guess we're in that time, right? The rise of the spiritualists.

SPEAKER_01 55:56

Oh, of course, very much so, around that time. Very much so. Now I just want to pick up there, like like that final line about that he was in the ruins of Carcosa. Because I've got I've got this story in another book, The Damned Things and Others, The Best Weird Fiction and Ghost Stories of Ambrose Spearce, which is annotated. And in the notes of this story, it suggests that he was in inspired by ancient Greece. The plot seems to echo an ancient Greek belief that the world regularly developed up from rural simplicity to urban splendor, and was similarly destroyed at the apex of its evolution, only to begin the cycle again eons later. Oh wow. Now, doesn't that echo like we know Smith uses a lot of Greek stuff, doesn't that make a lot of sense, especially from Smith?

SPEAKER_00 56:54

Absolutely, absolutely. And and in fact, uh Howard as well, right? The whole cycle of civilizations of rise and fall, and yeah, that's something they all seem to be quite plugged into, isn't it? Interesting. But there are um uh a few suggestions as to what the influence for Carcosa is. Yes. Uh and obviously the same as with Astur, Carcosa gone goes on to have other meanings and and and gathers meanings as as we go on in time. The I suppose the most obvious people say is Carcassonne. Yes. Fortified medieval city in the Ocitani region of southern France, which, by the way, features three col three kilometres of double walls, fifty-two watch towers, and a twelfth century chateau. Uh quite a remarkable looking place from what I've seen, the pictures, definitely on the bucket list. Yes, yeah. Although I don't want to spoil the illusion too much, but it was mostly rebuilt in the Victorian era, and as Victorians did, it was built the way they thought it should look, you know. But anyway. Um, I wanted to mention this as well, because there's a great name in here, and there's something else you'll appreciate as well. So Carcassonne became strategically identified when the Romans fortified the hilltop around 100 BC, and it was it eventually made the colony of Julia Carsacco, later Carrasso, later Carcassum. So hence the name. The name they gave this region is great. Oh, nice! Isn't that an album name? Oh, isn't it? That's brilliant. Septimania. In the fifth century, the region of Septimania was taken over by the Visigoths. Hey! Who founded the city of Carcassonne in the newly established Visigothic Kingdom. There you go. There's there's a lot of little interesting connections as I've been looking through this. Here's another one that ties us in with HPL. Uh, Carcassonne became famous for its role in the Albergensian Crusades when a city was a stronghold of the Cathars, uh, and it was besieged in August 1209. Now, someone who's done a lot of research into this, and I've heard him on podcasts, I believe he's got a book out, maybe a documentary, is Richard Stanley, who made the Colour Out of Space and was let's talk about doing a Dalitch horror. I don't know where we are on that. So, yeah, it's very interesting. If you want to look into that, the Cathar massacres were just awful things. However, other people differ. Richard L. Tierney placed BS's original version of Carcosa in the Jordan Valley. Oh yeah. This location probably owns its inception to Petra, the ancient Nabataean capital, whose ruins were discovered by Johann Ludwig Burkhart in 1812. It's situated on the portion of the Jordan Valley that borders the Arabian desert. It was immortalized as a rose red city half as old as time in a poem by John William Burgon. That poem mentioned graves like those in Beers' story. That poem is 1845, by the way. It also depicted how the Pleiades from the Taurus constellation could be viewed from Petra. Beus, of course, had other Taurus constellation stars, Aldibaran and the Hyades. And I think as we've mentioned before, Alderbaran is the Arabic name for the follower. Another poem called Petra from The Ruins of Many Lands 1849 by Nicholas Michel has the ruins of Petra being nocturnally prowled by an owl, a lone wolf, and guides bearing torches, which is an interesting parallel. Nice. So some say maybe you got the name from Carcassonne, but the actual attributes are very close to the poetic portrayals of Petra. Uh and and the the little pun at the end, given the name Petra. Tien is Jordan Valley location for Carcosa as a rock solid foundation. Little Greek puniv. Oh wow. That's very cool. Here's another connection. There's a poem called Carcassonne by Gustave Nadaud, 1820 to 1893, in his day, very famous French composer and chansonnier. I might read the poem, I'll put that up as a reading sometime. So Gustave Nadal also wrote political poems, and he followed in the footsteps of writers of the previous generation, such as Pierre-Jean de Berenger. Nice. Who listeners might remember we mentioned last time in the Demas Wellduis was the composer of the song that she sings, the hunting song. Oh, it's very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

I didn't know about that. That's what I love about these old stories. When you start digging into them, you can just find threads within threads within threads, you know, tentacles upon tentacles kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:16

So, yeah, but as you said, you know, it then takes on further meaning as as we progress through, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:24

Yeah. Because uh yeah, Carcosa then appears in Robert Chambers' King in Yellow, uh, where it becomes a ghostly city already in its lifetime. It's sort of it's sort of depicted as being between heaven and earth or something, but it's almost a purgatorial kind of thing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:41

And interestingly, yeah, I was right about Haster also being a city, because I've got this on the other page of notes, because it was a city on the shores of the Lake of Harley in the play The King in Yellow, where where Cassilda dwelled.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:58

Uh Cassilda's song. Yeah, there you go. Uh speaking of Harley, we get that mentioned at the start. That name is entirely fictional, it seems. Although some have suggested that the Harley referred to is the 19th century poet Altaf Hussein Harley, 1837 to 1914, who was a uh an Urdu poet philosopher. So the dates kind of fit.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:28

Yeah, because what wasn't there some kind of some kind of link in the death of Halpin Fraser as well, to do with with that. There's a mention in that as well of Harley, yeah, yeah. Now an interesting one I I found was Marion Zimmer Bradley notes that Harley is the Arabic name given for the constellation Taurus, which contains the Haides and Aldebaran.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Right, we're back to that Taurus constellation again. Interesting, interesting. Speaking as a Taurian. Ah, oh hello.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:02

I thought you were looking a bit bit sepier, a bit, a bit bullish. I was thinking more yellow.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:11

That's just the jaundice. It's the heat. It's the heat, I tell you. I'm going green around the gills. Yeah. Yeah, uh, I I probably mentioned it before, but once someone once uh I butted in, you know, people butt in on conversations that they sometimes. My wife was chatting to someone about astrology, and he said, uh, oh, you don't believe in all that bullshit, do you? She said, Of course not, I'm Taurian. Sent him off with a flea in his ear. Nice, nice. So uh oh, we we get the lynx as well. I thought the lynx was unusual. I mean, wolves and owls. Yeah. Yes. The lynx seem like an odd choice to me. And it kind of I mean, the lynxes were around in Europe at one time, I think. Yeah, they were. Yeah. Certainly Eurasian, which kind of fits in with the Arabic setting.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:01

They do have a prominent role in Greek, Norse, and North American mythology, considered an elusive and mysterious creature, known in some Native American traditions as a keeper of secrets. And across all those traditions, they're believed to have supernatural eyesight, capable of seeing through solid objects. So they often symbolize the unraveling of hidden truths and the psychic power of clairvoyance. Which I suppose kind of ties in with the mediumship at the end and the the the revelations of truth. I just thought it was an odd animal to choose.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

I suppose it is, but it's a very striking silhouette as well. If you've ever seen a lynx like Against the Moon or something, it's a very striking silhouette with the long ears and the tufts, and so from a from a visual perspective, one of those sitting on a rock would be a bit like, oh fuck, what's it doing there?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:54

Yeah. And I just love the fact that it ignores him. I mean, you know, there could well be reasons. For that, but a cat ignoring you is just so uh on point for cats anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:05

I was gonna say it's nothing to do with it being de being a ghost, it's to do with the fact that it's a cat.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

So what what what do we think? I mean, I suppose the obvious one is he is a ghost, or is uh a resurrected body as we got in that part at the start, or a resurrected spirit returned after obviously decades, hundreds of years possibly from his death to this is he on earth? Is this purgatory? It sounds sounds very purgatorial, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

It does, but it I mean I mean the fact that there's no shadow would suggest that it is a sort of a roaming spirit or ghost for want of a better term. And that would explain why maybe it's a bit way, maybe it's a just a consciousness that returns. Maybe he's been returning over and over and over again since his death. Wow. And the civilization has risen and fallen in that time, and he's just you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:02

Nice, I like that. So he's in like sort of the loop, you know. Uh uh Yeah, yeah, that purgatorial loop, that silent hill loop thing, you know. Which is potentially, you know, how some people might explain ghosts. They're just indeed, yeah. They're not even conscious of what's going on, they're just trapped in this ever-playing loop. Yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:21

Well, that's the stone tape stone tape theory, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:25

That then and if you think about it all the rocks and boulders, and this is kind of plays into the stone tape theory years and years and decades before that became a thing. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

Yeah, so it it you almost feel like in cosmic fiction or horror fiction terms, this is seeds being planted, isn't it? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, of course, we see this in Poe as well. Uh, but seeds that flourish in strange and unnatural ways. Indeed, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Yeah, I I like the the way it's sort of uh all sort of meandered along, and then before you know it, you're at me go and tentacles coming out of the bottom of yellow capes and all that kind of stuff, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:08

Is isn't it the better for that though? That you not think Yes, yeah. It is organic. Yes, you know, purely organic. Um and we know well, we we have letters from Smith and Lovecraft putting it, oh yeah, Cthulhu is uh Nialathatep's cousin and all this kind of stuff, which was not an attempt by them to quantify the mythos, I don't think it was just a bit of a laugh.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:31

Yeah, Smith then did expand on that with Derlith, and that's where a lot of that comes from. But I think that's what a lot of people kind of forget that that started way before with Lovecraft when he was still alive, and it started off as a bit of a giggle. Yeah. And then you know, you can argue for and against the codification of it. I mean, it is what it is, but the fact that they were all complicit in this, it wasn't just Derleth doing it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Well, this is why you know, uh it it it irks a little bit when you get the uh I think you'll find that. I think you'll find that no, I think you'll find that Lovecraft didn't give a shit. No, exactly. If it encourages people to say, yeah, do what you want. Because you know, in cosmic views, we we come back to this thing, I know we say it over and over again, it's become a cliche, but the four blind men in the dark room describing an elephant by touch. Yes, none of them can conceive of the wholeness of things. So almost whatever interpretation you want to put on it works. Yeah, yeah, because it's beyond our understanding.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:48

Well, I do find it quite interesting because one of the one of the ones that August Dirlith skewered by, especially in this introduction by Robert M. Price, is The Return of Haster, in which you know, which by all accounts he'd already told Lovecraft what he was doing, and Lovecraft was like, Oh yeah, I'd look forward to reading that. Unfortunately, Dullet didn't finish it by the time Lovecraft had died. But right Dilith was like, Well, Lovecraft was like, Oh, that sounds great, yeah, do it, kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:18

You know, I can't think of off off the top of my head, and I'm sure there's more knowledgeable people out there might be able to correct me. Was there ever a time when Lovecraft said, no, you can't use that? Not once that I can think of. I I can't doesn't we'd we'd know, wouldn't we, surely, if that was in existence.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

There's been an occasion when he's corrected like certain things, but not in a case of no, you can't do that or you're not doing it right. It's just like, oh yeah, no, but uh I've already said here that it's you know, you might want to change it to so you there's an element of consistency, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

So Cthulhu, right, has got a squid head and you've got the vague amorphous shape and and flabby little wings and all that. So that's um Yes. Yeah. But outside of that, there's no canon as such. Yeah, no. It's open to your interpretation, which I think is one reason it is spread as wide as it has, because everyone can bring their own thoughts to the table, and everyone can be creative. Just look at all the different versions of deep ones that are around.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:21

They range from Shadow Over Innsmouth onwards, uh, all these different approaches, and it's richer for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:28

Yeah, so I've I've mentioned several times a book I picked up years ago. It's called The Flock of Bahui. Uh it's by a writer under a pseudonym because it's it's uh Chinese and it's uh Chinese takes on the Cthulhu mythos that somebody basically smuggled out to somebody over here, it was translated and all the rest of it. Wow, and they're brilliant because they're so totally different, uh because of the the the culture that it's come from. And I love that that it is universal, you can put it wherever you like and it'll work. And it will be back to that whole go home, write it again, and set it somewhere that you understand and that you know about, to Ramsay Campbell, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

Yes, Mr. Mr. Campbell, yeah, yeah. Which then that's what lends it its very similitude because then you have every mythology or religion in the world is just the veneer of this underlying truth. So it's all particular people's interpretations of we saw this happen, we we saw flying things with 72 eyes. Oh, right, that's obviously an angel. Yes, not something from Yagoth. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:44

Oh god, the old testament angels are terrifying. Remember freaking me out as a kid.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

The old testament in general is actually pretty terrifying. Quite is it's the best horror story ever written, I think. Yeah, one other thought on Carcosa and what happens in this story. I'll just I'll just chuck this one in as we're finishing. Was Carcass is trying to get back to his carcass. Ah, nice, I quite like that. Yeah, when he's in the throes of his fever and ill illness, he's trying to escape the car because you're in pain, right? And terrible stuff. You want to get out of the body, but now he's out. He wants to get back to the body. I thought that was an interesting take. That's quite an interesting take, yeah. Yeah, that's the unreliable narrator, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:26

Indeed, indeed. Yeah, but I think um, yeah. And he keeps go doing it over and over again. I mean, I'm sticking with my purgatorial loop, I think. I like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

The purgatorial loop. I'm having a bit of trouble with my purgatorial loop. I've got a man coming round to fix it. Oh, I was gonna say, put the cream on it and call me in the morning. We're back to those scales again.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

Oh, we are indeed.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:00

So, time for us to depart. Did I just hear the Innsmouth ice cream van going by? I hope so. I uh I could do with a Mr. Whippy. Be careful what you wish for. Yes, well, time for us to leave. Back on to uh Mr. Sergeant's bus. I wish you'd get the AC fixed. I mean, it's just basically open the window, right? The window's propped open with a bit of cards, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:31

Yeah. It's a long, long journey to have to hold your breath. It is, isn't it? What are we gonna do next time, sir? On our next visit.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:39

I believe that next time we're gonna be doing one of our very special patron bonus episodes. Excellent. Well, I looked at one of the first Lovecraftian video games, in fact, maybe the first Lovecraftian video game, The Lurking Horror by uh Infograms, which was a text adventure. Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

Wow, that's going way back, isn't it? Oh yes, I had fun with that. Yeah. Interesting, interesting. Following that, uh uh story Tim mentioned earlier, River of Night Streaming by Carl Edward Wagner. I think we're we're we're on a little bit of a sort of Carcosa yellowy haster theme, so we'll run with that for a little while. Yeah. And this will be the second KEW story we've covered, I think. Uh we did the werewolf one, didn't we? Oh no, no, we did sticks as well, didn't we? Oh, did we do sticks as well? Right. Yeah, we did sticks as well. Yeah. Um, I also was going to mention Carcosa Publishing. Yes, indeed. That was, of course, set up by David Drake, Carl Edward Wagner, and Jim Gross because they were worried that Arkham House would fold after the passing of August Derlith. That was in 1973. I think they only put out four volumes or so, four collections, I think. But yeah, great name for a publishing house.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:55

Yeah, brilliant.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:57

So that's all to come, of course. If you want access to our bonus content and the bonus content on Strange Shadows, do check out our Patreon page and sign up and join our growing throng of bowling, yammering acolytes. Uh, and of course, you get a quarterly copy of Innsmouth News as well. The summer edition will be out probably towards the end of June. I'm gonna be away for a little bit in June, but we'll be getting that issue out, and of course, free entry to the Innsmouth Literary Festival. And uh, yeah, nice to see Andy and Helena at ChaossiumCon. Have a good chat with them. I'm I'm pretty sure they're both going to be at ILF this year, as will many other people. Tickets are on sale now via Eventbrite. We'll put the link down below. So do please go and have a look at that. I'll be putting out a list of traders. We've got some of our old favourites returning, such as Dorset Bob, with his amazing collection of weird towels and other rarities. Nice. Uh, we've got some new traders coming in this time as well. Okay, thanks again for joining us today, folks. It's goodbye from me, Rob Point. And it's goodbye from me, Tim Mendys.