Author: pj

The selkie fowk (“seal people“) are shapeshifters of Scottish folklore. The merrow (“moruach” – “sea-maid“) of Irish mythology is sometimes also regarded as a seal-woman, as opposed to the more common notion of a mermaid. The 19th-century Scottish Folklorist Walter Traill Dennison insisted in his writings that selkies were distinct from mer-folk, because they could transform from their human form into seals, rather than being a permanent terrestrial/aquatic hybrid. In the old tales, this was often done by physically removing the sealskin like a garment, and leaving it in a hidden place, as in The Legend of Kópakonan, (kópakonan meaning “seal maiden“) as told in the Faroe Islands which lie north-north-west of Scotland, and about halfway between Norway and Iceland. The tale was retold as The Mermaid Wife in George Douglas’ Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales (1901): 

“A story is told of an inhabitant of Unst, who, in walking on the sandy margin of a voe, saw a number of mermen and mermaids dancing by moonlight, and several seal-skins strewed beside them on the ground. At his approach they immediately fled to secure their garbs, and, taking upon themselves the form of seals, plunged immediately into the sea. But as the Shetlander perceived that one skin lay close to his feet, he snatched it up, bore it swiftly away, and placed it in concealment. On returning to the shore he met the fairest damsel that was ever gazed upon by mortal eyes, lamenting the robbery, by which she had become an exile from her submarine friends, and a tenant of the upper world. Vainly she implored the restitution of her property; the man had drunk deeply of love and was inexorable, but he offered her protection beneath his roof as his betrothed spouse. The merlady, perceiving that she must become an inhabitant of the earth, found that she could not do better than accept of the offer.” [1] 

As in most variants of the story, the seal-woman bears the children of her human captor/suitor, but ultimately deserts both him and them when she has an opportunity to return to the sea and the seal-people. 

Folklore is like a conjuring trick sometimes; you desperately want to get to the bottom of it all, but when you do it only leaves you feeling disappointed and wishing you hadn’t. One possible origin of the seal-people legends is depressingly prosaic: In the Scottish folklorist and antiquarian David MacRitchie’s The Testimony of Tradition (1890), the author put forward the theory that the sea-skins of the selkies were exactly what they appeared to be. [2] Scandinavian fisher-folk, clad in seal-skins and paddling seal-skin lined canoes, arriving on the shores of Scotland and Ireland. Steal their boats and their weather-proof gear, and they won’t be able to leave again. Forced to stay, they might become wives and husbands – mothers and fathers – but there will always be that longing to return to their people. To don their seal-skins, and plunge into the waves from which they came. 

References 

1. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/sfft/sfft57.htm 
2. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40290/40290-h/40290-h.htm 

Well, here it is. The last of folklore thursday!

I wanted to end on something that tried to draw as much in as possible (without appearing too cluttered) like an idiot I redrew all of those monsters, you won’t be able to tell. I could have just cut and pasted them. But no. I thought redrawing them was sensible. Oh well.

I am smugly pleased with where the last caption has ended up. Treasures, and weapons, fit only for heroes. Yes. Yes, take a bow me and John. We’re the heroes here. 

From a silly little idea, to a full years worth of weekly comic strips. I’m glad we did it. I’m glad we’re doing something new.

Nothing next week, folks. It’ll be the first week off, I think we’ve had. (We’ve come very close to missing a week, but never have done). But we’re ending on three pages of art and comics for you this week, so I hope you feel you’re getting your monies worth.

There’s a fair few nods to previous strips in there, I hope you can spot them all. And I hope you beg my indulgence if I couldn’t get everything in.

Thanks for joining us. See you in a couple of weeks with something new!

And we’re coming to the end, so time to revisit some old friends 😛

The look of the selkies here is a bit of fail on my part (seeing how the sausage is made is what you expect from me, by now, surely?) based on a thing I saw on twitter of a 3d artists approach to doing mermaids – they looked like women covered in silk – merged with it and I like it, I though something similair but silky hair. Instead it looks like a partially drowned chewbacca. Oh well.

Still nice to come back to the Zaratan. If you joined us late, the Zaratan was the very first strip we did as the folklore Thursday. I did it, had so much fun, I coloured it expecting to never colour any more, and here we are, 50+ full colour strips later.

A slightly different angle, and a bit less cartoony than the last time, but it’s nice to see him.

Don’t forget, we’ll be continuing the patreon- but instead of folklore thursday we’ll be doing a page a week on another subject. At least initially, before we come round to a project we’ve been thinking as our follow up, just before the pandemic hit and changed everyone’s plans.

You are, of course, welcome to unsubscribe from the patreon, but I’d really appreciate if you stick round. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the new thing just as much (and maybe more so!) 

Out in the ocean west of Ireland lies Hy-Brasil. Whispered of for centuries, the island was first marked on a map in the C14th. No longer though, for Hy-Brasil is enchanted. Visible only every 7 years. Last sighted in 1872, its next appearance will be in 2026.

—-

On the ocean that hollows the rocks where ye dwell,

A shadowy land has appeared, as they tell;

Men thought it a region of sunshine and rest,

And they called it Hy-Brasail, the isle of the blest.

From year unto year on the ocean’s blue rim,

The beautiful spectre showed lovely and dim;

The golden clouds curtained the deep where it lay,

And it looked like an Eden, away, far away. 

— From Hy-Brasil – Isle of the Blest by Gerald Griffin, taken from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (1888) [1]

In 1325, an Italian-Majorcan cartographer named Angelino Dulcert included the island of “Bracile” off the west coast of Ireland on his latest nautical chart, and in doing so he created the oldest surviving cartographic record of the island of Hy-Brasil. Already spoken of for centuries, the island’s name is thought to derive from the Irish Uí Breasail meaning “descendants of Bresail clan“, who were themselves the descendants of the ancient High Kings of Ireland. The island was often depicted on those early maps as a perfect circle, bisected by a large central river. 

Under the heading Hy-Brasail in Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1898), we find the following information:

“The people of Aran [a group of three islands located at the mouth of Galway Bay, on the west coast of Ireland], with characteristic enthusiasm, fancy, that at certain periods, they see Hy-Brasail, elevated far to the west in their watery horizon. This has been the universal tradition of the ancient Irish, who supposed that a great part of Ireland had been swallowed by the sea, and that the sunken part often rose and was seen hanging in the horizon: such was the popular notion. The Hy-Brasail of the Irish is evidently a part of the Atlantis of Plato.” [2] 

Many sources tell of a Captain John Nisbet having landed on Hy-Brasil in 1674, finding the island populated by strange, huge black rabbits and a lone man who lived in a castle. This account however, is taken from a satirical pamphlet written and distributed by Irish author, playwright and bookseller Richard Head at the time. [3]

It is possible that Old Irish tales of Hy-Brasil stem from folk-memory, and tales passed down over generations. 120 miles (220 km) west of Ireland lies Porcupine Bank – a sea-shoal which, thousands of years ago, would have been visible above the waves. 

REFERENCES

1. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/yeats/fip/fip56.htm
2. https://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/teia/teia24.htm 
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Head

What does Hy-Brasil look like, what shape is it? What’s on it? I have no idea, so you’ve got to make these things up, I suppose.  I Shaped out an island, in panel one, and started figuring out some geography, I wanted volcanos (But it made no sense) and then I thought it’d be fun to have some cliffs – cliffs that face Ireland, so the only way to land is the long way round. And then I started planning little things I could put on the island, but of course, we’re seeing it from a distance, so they’re nothing but notions and nods to that. An Irish Wakanda, maybe. Easter Island heads, a couple of stone circles, maybe an Ancient Greek temple. All in there somewhere (maybe).

Oh and a c crop circle.

Panel 2, this is from the some google searching and the map of hy-brasil.

Panel 3 our map begins to fade.

Panel 4 – a bearded Liverpudlian (John) and a short Norn Iron (me) chap, make their way across the sea in 2026 to find the island… maybe… 

And that’s it. No long to go now for the end… well, let’s call it the end of this chapter… news soon…

AT LAST! CHARLES FORT makes an appearance!

My frustration with my abilities as a colourist has never felt more evident. I also tried, and failed, a kind of Burroughs Cut-up technique to see if I could shake something out of my head, because I like to draw a line from the first drawing to the last (it doesn’t have to be a very obvious line, and – clearly – John’s writing has it’s own through line, but sometimes, when I’m working at it, I’m trying to deliver a different narrative flavour than simply illustrating the tweet – I don’t always succeed, but I always try!)

So, lots of things not going to plan.

Plus this one took bloody ages (hey, if I can’t moan to you, then who, gentle reader, can I moan at?)

In the end, I stuck to John’s order. I did originally want to show Charle’s face, but I thought it would make sense for him to be scribbling some notes down while caught up in a shower of something non-rain-like, but I quickly abandoned that notion, and switched angle to him in his room alone, watching the rain and documenting the various Fatrotskies that he knows of.

We then cut to a montage of different kinds of Fatrotskies (I mean, Charlies, that word is a mouthful, I’m not sure it’s helpful)

And finally the festival. Relying a bit heavily on photos, I wanted the carnival to feel like celebration though I admit I’m also leaning a bit on a piece John McCrea painted about 3 decades ago, of the twelth of July parade, where he spray painted colour everywhere and then picked out pieces from it.

Anyway, hope you like it… two more weeks to go, right… ?

Willows grow down by the riverside, twig-fingers trailing in the slivery water. They drift like fog-clouds across the marshes, Fae whispering in their branches. Bowed, they weep among gravestones in the cemetery. Where willows grow, ghosts are always to be found.

—-

“My emotion, so far as I could understand it, seemed to attach itself more particularly to the willow bushes, to these acres and acres of willows, crowding, so thickly growing there, swarming everywhere the eye could reach, pressing upon the river as though to suffocate it, standing in dense array mile after mile beneath the sky, watching, waiting, listening. And, apart quite from the elements, the willows connected themselves subtly with my malaise, attacking the mind insidiously somehow by reason of their vast numbers, and contriving in some way or other to represent to the imagination a new and mighty power, a power, moreover, not altogether friendly to us.” 

– from The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood 

There are over 400 species of willows – also known as sallows and osiers – ranging from mighty trees to low-growing, creeping shrubs. Willows grow in the tropics, in the arctic, and almost everywhere in-between. 

Perhaps the most familiar species is the Weeping Willow – a tree native to Northern China but which, thanks to millennia of trade between East and West, is now found across the world. With its long, slender branches, drooping with cascades of small, green leaves, the Weeping Willow appears to “hang its head” in grief. 

The Weeping Willow’s scientific name, salix babylonica, was given in 1736 by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus. The name is a reference not to the origin of the tree, but Psalm 137 in The Book of Psalms; 

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept/when we remembered Zion./There on the willow trees/we hung up our harps.”

(Yes, I read it to the tune of the Boney M song too) It should be noted, however, that there were no Weeping Willows in Babylon, and that the trees mentioned in the Psalm are believed more likely to have been poplars. 

The Qingming Festival (more commonly known as Chinese Memorial Day or Ancestor’s Day in English) is a traditional Chinese festival observed by the Han Chinese people of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Malasia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and by the Chitty people of Malaysia.[1] During the festival (which takes place on the 15th day following the Spring Equinox) families visit graves of their ancestors where they pray and leave offerings. Willow branches are traditionally used to sweep the gravesites and tombs, but willow is also fixed above doors and gates during Qingming in the belief that it will prevent other spirits wandering abroad from entering where they are not wanted. It’s interesting to note that in English folklore fixing willow leaves or branches above a doorway was believed to act as a protection against witches. [2]

Speaking in 2018, Hesheng Zhang – a teacher from Western China, who now teaches in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA – contributed a piece of oral Chinese folklore (passed down to him from his parents) to the Dartmouth Folklore Archive project:

“Scholartree often makes Chinese people imagine ghosts. Do you know Yin and Yang? We think scholartrees represent Yin and willow trees represent Yin as well. We think death is Yin, so we do not plant scholartrees around the house or else a ghost may come.”

Because these trees were traditionally used as grave-markers, their association with the dead, with death, and with Yin, has become deeply ingrained over thousands of years. Willows become a kind of magnet for Yin, and for ghosts themselves. [3]

References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingming_Festival

[2] https://www.icysedgwick.com/willow-folklore/

[3] https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/folklorearchive/2018/11/11/scholar-tree-willow-tree/

Folk Magic & Healing, by Fez Inkwright  https://liminal11.com/product/folk-magic-healing/  

It came from outer space. December 13th, 1795: an “extraordinary stone” arrived in Yorkshire, England. At 28X36 inches, weighing 56 lb, the Wold Newton Meteorite remains the largest ever recorded in Britain. A monument still stands in the field where it struck. 

—-

In a field in England,  in the East Riding of Yorkshire to be more precise, amid the grass and  nettles there stands a lone curious 24 foot (7.3 metre) red brick  obelisk. Constructed more than 200 years ago, the column has,  appropriately enough, something of a cartoon space-rocket about it. A  plaque set into one face reads

Here On this Spot, Dec. 13th, 1795 Fell from the  Atmoſphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE In Breadth 28 inches In Length 36  inches and Whoſe Weight was 56 pounds.

The “EXTRAORDINARY STONE” arrived during a thunderstorm and landed  two fields from Wold Cottage, which was at the time home to a magistrate  named Major Edward Topham. It was Major Topham who would go on to have  the obelisk constructed in 1799. The stone created a hole 3.2 feet (1  metre) in diameter, embedding itself firmly into a layer of chalk  bedrock beneath the soil.

Topham’s shepherd was within 450 feet (137 metres) of the point of  impact. Nearer still was labourer John Shipley, who signed a deposition  published alongside a reprinted letter by Major Topham in the Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1797 stating that

He was within eight or nine yards of the stone when it  fell, saw it distinct seven or eight yards from the ground, and then  strike into the earth, which flew up all about him, and which alarmed  him very much.

The Wold Newton Meteorite was the largest ever observed to fall in  Britain, and is the second largest recorded in Europe (the largest being  the Ensisheim meteorite which in 1492 landed in a wheat field in what  was then Alsace). The great scientist and occultist Sir Issac Newton –  not yet seventy years in his grave when the stone landed in Yorkshire  -had famously stated that

To make way for the regular and lasting motions of the planets and comets, it is necessary to empty the heavens of all matter.

In other words, that there was no room in his model of space for free  floating objects such as meteorites. Having formulated the Law of  Universal Gravitation, Newton’s ideas were generally taken pretty  seriously. Consequently when the Wold Newton Meteorite was put on  display in London in 1797 many took pleasure in deriding it as a fake,  or at best a piece of debris thrown into the air by a volcanic eruption  (which was, needless to say, unlikely in Yorkshire). The then president  of the Royal Society of London, Sir Joseph Banks, was interested,  however. Working with the chemist Edward Howard, Banks compared samples  from the Wold newton meteorite with others and found what he considered  remarkable similarities. When his results were published, though many  were still dubious of admitting exactly what they proved, it did mark  the beginning of a new era of scientific interest in meteorites. English  naturalist, illustrator, and owner of a private museum James Sowerby  acquired the meteorite from Major Topham in 1804. It was sold on to the  British Museum in 1835. The Wold Newton Meteorite, now believed to be  4.6 billion years old, is still on display at the Natural History Museum in London today.

In addition to almost killing a farm labourer and kickstarting the  modern scientific study of meteorites, the “EXTRAORDINARY STONE” which  fell to Earth two centuries ago was also the catalyst for some of the  most inventive and influential crossover fiction of the twentieth  century. If you’re are a fan of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels, Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or even Bryan Talbot’s Grandville, or Showtime’s Penny Dreadful  then you have the Wold Newton Meteorite to thank. All these worlds  filled with characters from different novels, films, and TV series owe a  huge debt (acknowledged by both Newman and Moore, I might add) to the  writing of Philip Jose Farmer.

In Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke  (1972) Philip Jose Farmer presented the life story of Edgar Rice  Burroughs’ Tarzan as if he were a real person. In the book it was  revealed that two carriages, travelling along the road at the time, were  within 20 feet (6 metres) of the Wold Newton Meteorite when it landed.  The people travelling within were exposed to a burst of ionizing  radiation from the stone which caused mutations within themselves and  consequentially their future offspring. Ancestors of Lord Greystoke  (Tarzan), Solomon Kane, Captain Blood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry  Flashman, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty (AKA Captain Nemo),  Phileas Fogg, The Time Traveler from The Time Machine; Allan  Quatermain, A.J. Raffles, Professor Challenger, Richard Hannay, Bulldog  Drummond Fu Manchu, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, The Shadow, Sam Spade, Doc  Savage, his cousin Pat Savage, Monk Mayfair, The Spider, Nero Wolfe, Mr.  Moto, The Avenger, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, Lew Archer, and Travis  McGee, were among those present. According to Farmer then, the strength,  intelligence, and general superhuman qualities of all these pulp heroes  and villains are the result of the impact in that muddy Yorkshire field  in 1797. The connected roster of characters has become known as The  Wold Newton Family.

Wold Newton Universe is a term created by author Win Scott Eckert in the late 1990s. Eckert became fascinated with Farmer’s cross-over fiction after reading Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and went on to collaborate with the man himself on the Wold Newton novel The Evil in Pemberley House which was published shortly after Farmer’s death in 2009. Eckert sums up the concept of the Wold Newton Universe thusly:

It is theorized here that there are many other  characters, heroic and otherwise, who also exist in the Wold Newton  Universe; some, although of course not all, may actually be members of  the Wold Newton mutant family, not described by Mr. Farmer.

All fiction then, may be imagined to co-exist in the same fictional  universe and therefore all fictional characters may be assumed to have  the possibility of encountering each other given a suitable opportunity.  We’re used to the idea in comics perhaps more than we are elsewhere but  Universal Studios had Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, werewolves and  more, all appearing together on the silver screen back in the 1940s. In  2012 we were informed that Prometheus and Blade Runner officially take place in the same fictional future; a future where the aliens from the Alien films already do battle with the predators from the Predator films.  Marvel (now owned by The Walt Disney Company) are pushing their own  shared universe superhero films as hard as they can, and DC (owned by  Time Warner Incorporated) are starting to do likewise. Cross-over  fiction is big business these days but not so much in Wold Newton  apparently.

Wold Cottage, the former residence of Major Edward Topham, is now an award winning Bed & Breakfast  and though their website does mention the meteorite, perhaps  unsurprisingly, it makes no connection between it and Farmer’s work. I  did email to ask whether they were aware of Philip Jose Farmer’s writing  and The Wold Newton Family but have, as yet, received no response.

The full Wold Newton Family Tree (as published in Tarzan Alive) can be viewed at www.pjfarmer.com, as can The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage (as published in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, 1973).

REFERENCES
http://www.woldcottage.co.uk/meteorite/
http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp2.htm
http://woldnewtonresource.wikia.com/wiki/Wold_Newton_Meteorite
http://web.archive.org/web/20070809201913/http://www.meteoritearticles.com/historyarticle.html
Asteroids, Meteorites, and Comets by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

[This piece originally published on Daily Grail, February 2015]

The previous colours didn’t sit right with me at all. Now, the risk with a recolour is there will, of course, be people who prefer the original – and if I can beg your indulgence, the original is still here, but so is the recolouring. Which is, if nothing else, at least consistent.