Maps of the Lost volume 3
...from where earth becomes water
calling the little folk
What tradition tells you is that if you strip the bark from three wands of hazel, write the true name of a beautiful fairy on each piece, and them bury them nine inches in the ground on the top of a hill known to be a fairy hill, the following Friday at moonrise, the fairy you have called by name will appear on the hill, and be bound to you.
What the tradition unfortunately omits to tell you is that although she will indeed appear, so will her nine brothers and they are not happy about your intentions towards their sister, not one bit, and hazel bark will not be the only thing buried in pieces on the hill.
Notes from the Cartographer
A big thank you to all of you for reading this, and welcome to the new subscribers.
A lot of our folklore and folk stories are set in remote inland places: isolated villages, lonely moors, dark fells, strange wells in the wood where someone leaves fresh flowers, the dark and tangled forest where something moves alongside you in the undergrowth.
But I love the sea. No, scratch that, I’m obsessed with the sea and the coast, and I have a real fondness for stories and legends that play out there. Which is why I was delighted to see this article from David Barnett (who popped up in last month’s newsletter with his older article on Folk Realism).
How ghosts came to haunt the English coast
“It is where land meets the sea, where earth becomes water, solid becomes liquid, the eternally unmoving becomes the constantly shifting. It is a place of elemental, almost alchemical change.”
It’s one of the Independent’s premium long read articles, but you can register for free and get one free article. He explores the haunted coastline, and the article features the thoughts of writers like MR James, Ramsey Campbell, Jenn Ashworth, Robert Aickman, Alison Moore, and others. Well worth a read.
Speaking of Jenn Ashworth, if you like this kind of thing, check out the anthology she edited published by Bluemoose Books- ‘Seaside Special: Postcards from the Edge’. Bluemoose are a great small publisher, and like many could do with support in these difficult times.
While we’re walking the littoral, you might also like this article on ‘Tides in Folklore and Literature’. From the Norse Edda, to Dickens, to the Haidas tribe of the North American Pacific coast, to Walt Whitman, and onwards.
“People can’t die, along the coast,” said Mr. Peggotty, “except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in – not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide”.
I spend a lot of my weekends doing beach cleans (shout out here for Sea Shepherd and our marine debris campaign, the great Surfers Against Sewage and the Two Minute Beach Clean folks), and am always fascinated by what the tides wash up. Did you know that if a pair of trainers goes into the sea in the North Sea, the left foot will likely wash up on the east coast of the UK, and the right foot of the pair on the west coast of Holland or Germany? Utterly off the usual topic for this newsletter, but this film about the beachcombers of Texel is fascinating, funny, and sad. From abandoning the relics of a lost relationship (including sex toys), through messages in bottles, to the sea returning the dead, it’s only 13 mins but is well worth that time.
I’ll come back to the folklore and eerieness of the coasts another time, and look at some of my favourite weird films set there.
a-courting he will go
There's a beautiful pond in a small glade in rural Suffolk, much beloved by ducks and frogs and many insects which hover and dart over its waters. It is much deeper than anyone knows.
Once every five years, a man with weed-green hair will crawl from the pond, blinking until he gets used to the sunlight. Then he will stand, unsteady, as he gets used to gravity's pull unsupported by the water.
When he's ready, he will walk away to the nearby villages until he finds a new wife to take back down into the water.
between the maps
There are many secret maps of Staithes, because it is an enchanted and haunted place. These maps overlay each other in time and place and tide. If you find the master guidebook, you can travel between the maps, and the places and times that they represent. But never ever travel at slack water. You’ll be stuck between the maps for ever, and unlike the paper, over time you will turn to dust.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
This section of the newsletter is about inspiration and further reading, books and films and links that may have nothing in common other than that in my mind they live in the same neighbourhood as Maps of the Lost. A neighbourhood where you can knock on any door and they'll understand that you need to borrow a cup of salt to make a circle with, very urgently.
Last month I sang the praises of the beautifully-produced zine Weird Walk, and this month I’m sticking with zine culture and the fantastic Hellebore. It’s also a gorgeous, shiny, well-designed physical object, and the two issues so far have been chock full of great content. In their own words, Hellebore is:
a collection of writings and essays devoted to British folk horror and the themes that inspire it: folklore, myth, history, archaeology, psychogeography, witches, and the occult.
(photo credit: Hellebore)
The ‘Sacrifice Issue’, published at Samhain, featured stone circles, crop sacrifices, folk magic, bog bodies, Medieval dooms, lost hearts, re-enchantment, and a great interview with Ronald Hutton on folk horror. It’s follow-up, the Beltane ‘Wild Gods’ issue explored secret cults, ancient rituals, demonic processions, nocturnal bacchanals, dark faeries, and Cornish zombies, and a great interview with Alan Moore (who, as we all know, knows the score) on folk horror, the visionary experience, and the wild gods of England.
But you’re all reading it already, aren’t you? Aren’t you? If not, given that you’re reading this newsletter, you’ll love it.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain').
In 1733 the villagers of Renwick in Cumbria were demolishing the old church, when a fearsome, hideous bat-like creature flew up from the ruins. This was a cockatrice, and the villagers were much afraid, and shut themselves up in their houses. All that is, apart from one John Tallantire, who took a rowan branch and fought and killed the cockatrice with it. John was rewarded and exempted from tithes for the rest of his life.
(I always relish how so much folklore shows that rowans are magic and wondrous 😀)
A secret for a secret
A reclusive man in Devon claims to have captured a mermaid. If you bring him a secret he does not already know, he will take you into his basement to let you see her. When he pulls back the wooden lid of the tank to let you look, do not follow his suggestion that you stroke her beautiful golden hair. Do not let him feed her on the cheap.
Secrets the Wind Whispers
I love audio/radio drama in general, and spooky/weird audio drama most of all. There’s something about how intimate and close a narrative is when it’s whispered in your ears, and a truly scary piece of audio drama has one great advantage over film or TV: your mind makes the monster. Your imagination sees the horrors. For me, this always results in something scarier than CGI or make-up could ever do.
Julian Simpson writes/produces/directs for TV, film and radio (New Tricks, Spooks, Hustle, Doctor Who), and I’ve long been a fan of his stand-alone audio dramas that have been broadcast on Radio 4. It’s got even better recently though, with the BBC commissioning two series so far of his adaptations of Lovecraft stories, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and The Whisperer In Darkness. They’re not straight adaptations though, and are all the better for this: they’re set in the modern day, within a framing device of a Serial-but-weird podcast series, and best of all Julian weaves in lots of other mythology as well as his own mythos that was gradually accreting in his standalone dramas.
So yes, Lovecraft, but also Rendlesham Forest and Jack Parsons and the Babalon Working, and Orford Ness and numbers stations, Crowley and his foreshadowing of the classic big-eyed alien, Black Shuck and the Woolpit green childen, and much much more, all put together with terrific BBC production values.
Highly recommended. I can’t wait for the adaptation of A Shadow Over Innsmouth, which is coming next, hopefully in December. Have I mentioned how much I like weird stuff set on the coast? Have I?
Start with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, as although Whisperer could be listened to as a standalone, you’ll enjoy it much more as a follow-up.
Here’s the trailer for Whisperer, and a brief trailer for Charles Dexter Ward.
the light at the end
In the Pennines, maybe in Yorkshire, maybe in Lancashire (it's disputed, as all these things are), there's a short tunnel where a railway carrying coal from a mine long gone used to run. The hill is not high but it is steep, and when you peer into the tunnel you can see the light at the other end, so it makes a tempting short cut.
But don't take it. Scale the hill, even if your legs ache and your lungs burn. There's a beautiful view from the top. Well, a middling view.
If you go through the tunnel, it is a very long walk, and to get to the light that you see at the other end is a longer walk than most people's lives run for, and certainly a longer walk than yours will do, because of the thing that will come out of the walls one hour in.
Beyond This Point There May Be Dragons
You’ve been reading Maps of the Lost. Or have you? It’s hard to tell. Maybe this is all just a dream. Or a prophecy, or a forewarning. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always welcome, as I’d really like to shape this newsletter to be what you’d like to read and hear. So, ideas, suggestions and comments welcome. You can just reply to this email if you like.
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Thanks for reading,
Iain.
iainrowan.com
twitter.com/iainrowan