The Last King, page 27
Later we sold them to the Juts at Brunanbuhr.
Endnotes
*1 Sea of Silent Waters = Pacific Ocean
*2 Neandertals
*3 Cro-Magnons
*4 Mediterranean Sea
*5 To avoid confusion I have used the modern terms for places and clans. – AUTHOR
Appendices
ROBERT E. HOWARD AND THE PICTS: A CHRONOLOGY
CIRCA 1918–1919
Howard discovers, in a ‘Canal Street library’ in New Orleans, a book in which he first learns about the Picts. (See excerpts from Letter to H.P. Lovecraft, ca. January 1932, and Alvin Earl Perry, A Biographical Sketch of Robert E. Howard [1935], below.)
UNTITLED ESSAY, CA. 1920–1923
Howard wrote this report on the history of the Picts, possibly for school. An initial page or pages are clearly missing, and are presumed lost.
which has characterized them through all the ages. The cavemen that were left took refuge in deep forests and mountainous wilds from which they occasionly emerged to steal cattle, burn and murder and furnish the basis for tales of a later ages, telling of giants and ogres.
Later on the great Celtic race swept over Europe and the Picts in their turn fled to the forests and caves, furnishing the basis of fairy tales of gnomes, elves and other fairies.
But that was not until a much later date. The Picts scattered all over Europe. Some are still found in the mountains of the Pyrenees. But they made their longest stand in the British Isles and it is there that we are interested in them.
The Picts of Britain underwent several complete changes in appearance and manner. There is no greater difference between the first Picts and the Indian than there was between the first Picts and the Picts who opposed Hengest.
I have already described the Picts who first came to Britain. This type remained unchanged for several hundred years. The people remained peaceful, gaining their food by agriculture and becoming more and more civilized and more skillful artizans.
Then came the great Celtic invasion and the laborious work and progress of half a thousand years was overturned and undone in an instant for that is a Celtic characteristic. The dawning Pictish generation was nipped in the bud.
The Picts could not stand before the race of warriors skilled in the work of metals and the make and usage of weapons, but vastly inferior to the Picts in artizanship.
So they fled to the northern mountains. Many descendants of the early cavemen lurked in the mountains and Pictish cunning concieved a plan of utilizing together the great strenth and brute courage of the aboriginals with the shrewdness of the Picts, to the discomfort of the Celtic invaders. So hunter and artizan banded themselves together against the warrior and the ancient enemies were united. So when the Celts grew tired of Britain and marched north, they met with so many unpleasant surprises, mostly in the shape of ambuscades and night attacks that they retreated back into Britain and it was not until the Brythonic invasion, years later, that the Celts ever gained a foothold in Scotland, though many went on into Ireland.
Living close together and fighting as one nation, naturally lessened the mutual contempt and hate and the Picts and aborigines began to intermarry.
For some reason or other the Picts as Silurian that fled to Wales did not unite with the cave-men’s descendents and the early types of Picts remained unchanged, except as, later they were altered by intermarriage with the Celts, fleeing before other invaders. And to this day in mountains of western Wales are still to be found traces of the ancient Pictish type.
The first Celts to invade Britain were Gaels with brown hair, grey eyes and tall rather spare forms. They came from Gaul, especially Brittany, where the people today have much Celtic blood in them.
The next invaders were also Celts but differed from the Gaelic Celts in many ways.
They were tall, like the Gaels but with larger, heavier bodies. As a rule they had blue eyes and red or yellow hair. The came mainly from what is now Belgium and the Netherlands and were called Brythons from which the names Britain and Briton were derived. Possibly they had some Teutonic blood in them. They overcame the Gaels as the Gaels overcame the Picts and the Gaels retreated into Wales and Scotland.
LETTER TO TEVIS CLYDE SMITH, 5 OCTOBER 1923
I’m writing a book which doubtless would make you tired and would sound like a lot of fool stuff to most folks, but as I am writing it for my own amusement, the opinion of other people about it don’t interest me, as I know of.
The book takes in lots of territory and a lot of characters. Some of the characters are Ammon the Amalekite, who was a famous swordsman, Swift-Foot, the tree-man, Tostig the Mighty, a viking and something of a villian, Hakon, a Norseman and crafty as a fox, Bran Mak Morn, who was the greatest chief the Picts ever had, and many others too numerous to mention.
DECEMBER 1924
The Lost Race is returned to Howard by Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright,
for revisions.
From Post Oaks and Sand Roughs, 1928
This is a thinly disguised autobiographical novel, based on Howard’s life over the previous four years. ‘Steve’ is Steve Costigan, Howard’s alter-ego; ‘The Forgotten Race’ is The Lost Race; ‘Bizarre Stories’ is Weird Tales.
As for ‘The Forgotten Race,’ he [the editor of ‘Bizarre Stories’] had found several faults with it, in that it left too much to the imagination and left some important facts unexplained. Steve perceived that even the readers of other magazines were not supposed to have any intellect or imagination of their own. However, the editor professed himself ready to take the story if the changes and additions which he suggested were made....Yet he [Steve] somehow felt a sinking of the heart when he contemplated rewriting ‘The Forgotten Race.’ Once a story was completed, he was through with it, eager to start something else, and he wished to look on it again only in print. He doubted his ability to make the tale come up to standard, even with the editor’s remarks to guide him, and, dreading a second refusal, delayed several days before he made the changes. He sent off two more stories with it when he returned it. These two came back, but Bizarre Stories accepted the revised story, offering $30.00, payable on publication.
7 JANUARY 1925
The Lost Race is accepted by Weird Tales.
LETTER TO TEVIS CLYDE SMITH, 14 JANUARY 1926
In this letter Howard sketched out the two waves of Celtic migration into Britain. Referring to the first wave, the Gaels, he says: From Ireland they spread to Britain, chasing the Picts into Scotland and Wales. And: Some of the Lowland Scotch, and Welsh and most of the Cornish are Brythonic, though the Cornish are mixed a lot with Pict and Gael.
LETTER FROM FARNSWORTH WRIGHT TO ROBERT E. HOWARD, 16 MARCH 1926
Dear Mr. Howard:
I thoroughly enjoyed MEN OF THE SHADOWS, but I fear I can not use it in WEIRD TALES. It is too little of a “story,” despite the vigorous action in the opening pages. It is rather a chronicle of a tribe, a picture of the evolution of a race; and thereby it lacks the suspense and thrill that a story of individual conflict and hopes and fears and drama would have.
I do not know of any magazine that would take a story like this, unless possibly FRONTIER. But if you send it to FRONTIER, I suggest that you first clarify the conflict between Bran Mak Morn and the wizard, on page 11, for the reader is left in the dark as to what happened, as to what Bran Mak Morn did to cause the wizard to give up.
JANUARY 1927
The Lost Race is published in Weird Tales.
CIRCA 1928
Howard writes The Little People.
LETTER TO HAROLD PREECE, 20 OCTOBER 1928
About Atlantis – I believe something of the sort existed, though I do not especially hold any theory about a high type of civilization existing there – in fact, I doubt that. But some continent was submerged away back, or some large body of land, for practically all peoples have legends about a flood. And the Cro-Magnons appeared suddenly in Europe, developed to a high state of primitive culture; there is no trace to show that they came up the ladder of utter barbarism in Europe. Suddenly their remains are found supplanting the Neanderthal Man, to whom they have no ties of kinship whatever. Where did they originate? Nowhere in the known world, evidently. They must have originated and developed through the different basic stages of evolution in some land which is not now known to us.
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.
1928–1929
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’s 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’s 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’s 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’s 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 “little 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 “little 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 – “The 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 “Bran-cult.” I notice the current Weird Tales announces my “Kings of the Night” for next month’s issue. I hope you like the story. Bran is one of the “Kings.” 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’s issue my story, “Kings 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, “The 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’s “Gates of Damascus” and lending them a cryptic meaning which I’m sure would have surprised the poet remarkably!
LETTER TO HAROLD PREECE, OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 1930
Have you read my latest story in Weird Tales? I believe you’ll like it; it deals with Rome’s 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’m 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 “The 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 – “The Lost Race”, “The Shadow Kingdom,” “The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune”, “The Dark Man”, “Kings of the Night”, to say nothing of several which I have not marketed.
