Bran Mak Morn: The Last King (34 page)

The occultists say that we are the fifth �I believe �great sub-race. Two unknown and unnamed races came, then the Lemurians, then the Atlanteans, then we. They say the Atlanteans were highly developed. I doubt it. I think they were simply the ancestors of the Cro-Magnon man, who by some chance, escaped the fate which overtook the rest of the tribes.

All my views on the matter I included in a long letter to the editor to whom I sold a tale entitled The Shadow Kingdom, which expect will be published as a foreword to that story �if ever. This tale I wove about a mythical antediluvian empire, a contemporary of Atlantis.

1928�929

Howard writes most of his stories of Kull, king of the antediluvian land of Valusia (of which The Shadow Kingdom was the first) during this period. Most of the stories feature Kull� Pictish friend Brule, and other Pictish characters.

1929

Howard writes a long narrative poem, The Ballad of King Geraint, featuring among its many characters Dulborn, a Pict.

CIRCA MARCH 1930

The Dark Man is accepted for Strange Stories (planned companion magazine to Weird Tales).

Kings of the Night accepted for Weird Tales (submitted to Strange Stories but Wright accepted for Weird Tales).

LETTER TO HAROLD PREECE, 4 JANUARY 1930

The Welsh who broke the armies of William Rufus were powerfully built men, deep-chested and strong, but short in height. Admixture with the Silurian natives, doubtless of Iberian blood, or a strong Roman strain may have been responsible for this loss of height, as well as the change in complexion.

THE NIGHT OF THE WOLF, 1930

In this story, rejected by Argosy in a letter dated June 3, 1930, Cormac Mac Art, a 5th century Irish reiver, is witness to a confrontation between Norsemen who have built a steading on an island in the Shetlands, and a Pictish chief, Brulla, whom they beat and throw out of their hall when he orders them to leave the islands. In the climactic battle, Picts from all over the Shetlands attack the Norse settlement. In one scene, Cormac sees them stealing through the forest:

Something took shape in the shadows. A long line of figures moved like ghosts just under the shadows of the trees; a shiver passed along Cormac� spine. Surely these creatures were elves, evil demons of the forest. Short and mightily built, half stooping, one behind the other, they passed in almost utter silence. In the shadows their silence and their crouching positions made them monstrous travesties on men. Racial memories, half lost in the misty gulfs of conciousness, came stealing back to claw with icy fingers at Cormac� heart. He did not fear them as a man fears a human foe; it was the horror of world-old, ancestral memories that gripped him �dim felt, chaotic dream-recollections of darker Ages and grimmer days when primitive men battled for supremacy in a new world.

For these Picts were a remnant of a lost tribe �the survivals of an elder epoch �last out-posts of a dark Stone Age empire that crumbled before the bronze swords of the first Celts. Now these survivors, thrust out on the naked edges of the world they had once ruled, battled grimly for their existence.

LETTER FROM H.P. LOVECRAFT TO ROBERT E. HOWARD, 20 JULY 1930

It� true that the Celts share most vigourously the myth-cycle of fairies, gnomes, & little people, which anthropologists find all over western Europe (in a distinctive form marking it off from the general Aryan personification system which produces fauns, satyrs, dryads, etc.) & attribute to vague memories of contact with the Mongoloids was wholly prior to their invasion of Britain. Since these fair Nordic Celts found a smaller, darker race in Britain & Ireland, there is a tendency on the part of some to be misled, & to assume that the �ittle people�legends allude to contact with those dark aborigines. This, however, can clearly be disproved by analysis of the myths; for such myths invariably share with the parallel Continental myths the specific features (or tracks of these features) of having the �ittle people�essentially repulsive & monstrous, subterraneous in their habits of dwelling, & given to a queer kind of hissing discourse. Now this kind of thing does to apply to Mediterraneans �who are not abnormal or repulsive from the Nordic standpoint, (being very similar in features) who did not live underground, & whose language (possibly of a lost branch, but conceivably proto-Hamitic, Hamitic or even Semitic) could scarcely have suggested hissing. The inevitable probability is that all the Nordics met with this old Mongoloid stock at a very early date, when it shared the continent with the northward-spreading Mediterraneans & with the remnants of other Paleolithic & Neolithic races now lost to history; & that after the ensuing conquest the defeated Mongoloids took to deep woods & caves, & survived for a long time as malignantly vindictive foes of their huge blond conquerors �carrying on a guerrilla harassing & sinking so low in the anthropological scale that they became bywords of dread & repulsion. The memory of these beings could not but be very strong among the Nordics, (as well as among such Mediterraneans & Alpines as may have encountered them) so that a fixed body of legend was produced �to be carried about wherever Celtic or Teutonic tribes might wander.

LETTER TO H.P. LOVECRAFT, CIRCA AUGUST 1930

Your observations regarding the Mongoloid aborigines and their relation to the fairy tales of western Europe especially interested me. I had supposed, without inquiring very deeply into the matter, that these legends were based on contact with the earlier Mediterraneans, and indeed, wrote a story on that assumption which appeared some years ago in Weird Tales ��he Lost Race.�I readily see the truth of your remarks that a Mongoloid race must have been responsible for the myths of the Little People, and sincerely thank you for the information.

LETTER TO H.P. LOVECRAFT, CIRCA SEPTEMBER 1930

Thank you very much for the kind things you said about the �ran-cult.�I notice the current Weird Tales announces my �ings of the Night�for next month� issue. I hope you like the story. Bran is one of the �ings.�I intend to take your advice about writing a series of tales dealing with Bran.

LETTER TO TEVIS CLYDE SMITH, CIRCA SEPTEMBER 1930

Weird Tales announces for next month� issue my story, �ings of the Night��($120.00). Some ways this story is the best I ever wrote. Nothing very weird about it, but good battle stuff, if I do say so myself.

CIRCA OCTOBER 1930

The Children of the Night is accepted for Weird Tales.

LETTER TO H.P. LOVECRAFT, CIRCA OCTOBER 1930

By the way, I recently sold Weird Tales a short story, �he Children of the Night�in which I deal with Mongoloid-aborigine legendry, touch cryptically on the Bran-cult, and hint darkly and vaguely of nameless things connected with Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Tsathoggua and the Necronomicon; as well as quoting lines from Flecker� �ates of Damascus�and lending them a cryptic meaning which I� sure would have surprised the poet remarkably!

LETTER TO HAROLD PREECE, OCTOBER�OVEMBER 1930

Have you read my latest story in Weird Tales? I believe you�l like it; it deals with Rome� efforts to subjugate the wild people of Caledonia. The characters and action are ficticious but the period and the general trend of events are historical. The Romans, as you know, never succeeded in extending her boundaries very far into the heather and after several unsuccessful campaigns, retreated south of the great wall. Their defeat must have been accomplished by some such united effort as I have here portrayed �a temporary alliance between Gaelic, Cymric, aboriginal and possibly Teutonic elements. I have a pretty definite idea that a slow filtration of Germanic settlers had begun in eastern Caledonia long before the general overflow that swamped the Latinized countries.

Some day I� going to try to write a novel length tale dealing with that misty age: allowing myself the latitude that a historical novelist is supposed to be allowed, I intend to take a plot something like this: dealing with the slow crumbling of Roman influence in Britain, and the encroachment of Teutonic wanderers from the East. These, landing on the eastern coast of Caledonia, press slowly westward, until they come in violent conflict with the older Gaelic settlements on the west. Across the ruins of the ancient pre-Aryan Pictish kingdom, long pinned between implacable foes, these war-like tribes come to death-grips, only to turn on a common foe, the conquering Saxons. I intend the tale shall be of nations and kings rather than individuals. Doubtless I shall never write it.

As regards the pre-Aryan communities I mentioned in �he Voice of El-lil� as you know all western Europe was once inhabited by small, dark, garlic eating tribes of Neolithic culture, known variously as Mediterraneans, Iberians, Basques, Long-heads, Garlic-eaters, and in Britain, Silures or Picts. Traces of these people, conquered and subjugated by the Aryan Celts, show still in the races today in the British Isles, and these primitive peoples I mentioned are undoubtedly vestiges of the race �whence doubtless come the legends of Phoenician settlements in Cornwall and Ireland. New races of Nordic Celts or Teutons coming into the Isles, seeing these small dark men concluded that they were of Semitic blood, or Egyptians. The fact is, they preceded all other races into the west, possibly excepting a very primitive Mongoloid proto-type which was soon extinct.

This Mediterranean type underlies all races and only a few centuries is required for this people to change the physiognomy of their conquerors. Who, for instance, not knowing their real origin, would realize that the first Aryan ancestors of the Italian, the Greek, the Persian and the high-caste Hindu were light eyed blonds, almost identical with the present day Scandinavian?

But to return to the Mediterraneans of the Isles, where these tribes remained a race apart longer than anywhere else. These aborigines are popularly known as Picts, and by this name I have designated them in all my stories �and I have written a number in which I mentioned or referred to them ��he Lost Race� �he Shadow Kingdom,��he Mirrors of Tuzun Thune� �he Dark Man� �ings of the Night� to say nothing of several which I have not marketed.

Doubtless this term is in strictest sense, incorrect. I doubt very much if those ancient folk had any term that designated them as a people; Tuatha Feda, roughly, forest people, was the name given them by the Gaels of Ireland.

Bede says the Picts came to Scotland from Scythia after the Gaels had arrived in Ireland. The Gaels drove them into Scotland, rather, would not let them settle in Ireland, and later came over and dissposessed them. It is readily seen that these people were not aborigines, since the Gaels came into Ireland as late as the first century A.D.

But here arises a question: did these �cythic�people take the name of an older race among which they settled, or did they lend those older peoples their name?

It is no doubt but that the �icts of Galloway�were of a very mixed race, with Celtic no doubt predominating. But when I speak of the Picts proper, I am referring to the older, pure-blooded pre-Aryan type.

I think the following theory to be fairly logical: that Caledonia was inhabited from earliest times by a dark Mediterranean people; that the conquest of the Romans drove numbers of Cymric Britons into the heather, whence, no doubt, comes the tales of the �aledonians� large, fair haired people who fought with war-chariots. No doubt these tribes mixed a great deal with the natives.

Then, in the press of Roman conquest, which no doubt caused displacements of many Celtic tribes, doubtless including the Gaels, who must have come into Ireland from the mountains of Spain or Southern Gaul, another wave of Celts came into Caledonia, that race known as Picts. They may have been of Gaelic, Belgic or Brythonic type, though all evidence points to a non-Gaelic language. Or they may have been a type of Celt unclassified. Very likely it was already a mixed race, with Latin, Teutonic or even Semitic elements. This race, settling in Caledonia, possibly conquered the natives and gave its name to them.

You understand I have little or no foundation for this theory and am merely putting it forth as a supposition.

The natives of Galloway were spoken of as �he Picts of Galloway�long after the coming of the Saxons. Doubtless a strong strain of Mediterranean blood coursed in their veins, but they were a very mixed breed �besides the Pictish blood mentioned, they had strong elements of Gaelic, Brythonic, Danish and Saxon. More especially as Galloway, as the name implies (Gael-Gall, meaning a province under the control of the Gall, or foreigners) was early conquered by the Angle kings and did not regain its independence for a long time. The name Pict came to mean merely a native of Galloway. But behind that local term loomed a great shadowy realm reaching back into the Stone Age. Therefore, the term Pict as I use it, refers to that old, old Neolithic race in its purity and completeness.

According to Scotch legends, which speak of the Picts with the utmost horror and aversion, the Pictish kingdom was destroyed and its subjects wiped out by Kenith McAlpine. Doubtless the kingdom was destroyed but it is likely that the people were absorbed by the surrounding Gaelic tribes. And this kingdom was the mixed one of which I have already spoken. The old pure Mediterranean type had largely disapproved. The old pure Mediterranan type had largely disappeared. Distance lends perspective but it also distorts and foreshortens. Doubtless the legends of the Picts became mixed with the older, darker legends of the ancient Mongoloids of the Continent. These tales form the basis of the Aryan folk lore �as regards dwarfs, elves, gnomes, kobolds, demons, and the like �and twining themselves about the myths of the Picts, lent them a supernatural accent �demoniac appearance, sub-human stature, and so on. No doubt the later Picts were of more stocky build and unprepossessing appearance than the purer blooded Gaels, but I cannot believe that they were as hideous in aspect as the legends make them out.

NOVEMBER 1930

Kings of the Night is published in Weird Tales.

29 OCTOBER 1931

People of the Dark is returned by Strange Tales for rewrite. The Picts are only glancingly mentioned in this story, but the �ittle people�or �hildren of the night�are featured prominently.