The Czech-Polish border splits the ridge of the Giant Mountains. This is the domain of Rübezahl. Originally a weather giant, their appearance evolved along with their mythology. At once Wise Woman, and wizard-like monk, Rübezahl became guardian of the mountains.  

—-

In 1561 the German cartographer Martin Helwig created a beautifully detailed map of Silesia (a historical region of Central Europe, mostly now Poland, but also including parts of the Czech Republic and Germany). On the Riesageberge mountain range (now known as The Giant Mountains) Helwig drew a strange figure: a shaggy-legged, stag-like creature, standing on two feet and holding a tall staff in its hands. Beneath it he wrote “Rübezahl”.  

“Over all the vast under-world the mountain Gnome Rübezahl was lord; and busy enough the care of his dominions kept him. There were the endless treasure chambers to be gone through, and the hosts of gnomes to be kept to their tasks. Some built strong barriers to hold back the fiery rivers in the earth’s heart, and some had scalding vapours to change dull stones to precious metal, or were hard at work filling every cranny of the rocks with diamonds and rubies; for Rübezahl loved all pretty things. Sometimes the fancy would take him to leave those gloomy regions, and come out upon the green earth for a while, and bask in the sunshine and hear the birds sing. And as gnomes live many hundreds of years he saw strange things.”  

This is the opening paragraph from “Rübezahl” – a tale recorded in Andrew Lang’s The Brown Fairy Book (1904). Lang’s is a retelling of an old Silesian story, first recorded in print by Johann Karl August Musäus in his Volksmärchen der Deutschen (“Folktales of the Germans“) published in 1791. In the story we learn that the being known as Rübezahl kidnaps a beautiful princess, trying to keep her entertained by using his magic to transform turnips into likenesses of the friends and family she has left behind. As the enchanted vegetables wither their human forms also grow soft and weak however, so Rübezahl is forced to quest for more and more turnips. Eventually the princess makes good her escape while Rübezahl is busy counting all the turnips in a field, and this is where his nickname comes from: rübe (“turnips”) zählen (“count”) – Turnip Counter. As such, the name is actually an insult, and a reminder of a time when the creature was outsmarted. More respectful terms of address include Lord of the Mountain, Treasure Keeper, Lord John, and Prince of the Gnomes.  

It is believed that the creature or deity thought to inhabit the Giant Mountains began its life as a Weather Giant, like the Norse jötnar (also known as Trolls). The Norse Pagan God Odin was said to be a descendant of the jötnar, and soon the giant Rübezahl seems to have taken on the manner and appearance of his cousin; becoming a bearded, monk-like figure dressed all in grey (and the inspiration for Tolkien’s Gandalf the Grey). Able to change shape at will, Rübezahl would sometimes take the form of animals and birds. Sometimes he becomes a she and takes on the mantle of Wise Woman, or the guise of a helpless old woman in distress in order to test the heart of the human they have encountered. Strangely though, no extant tales of Rübezahl seem to even hint at the bizarre, demonic stag-like form as depicted by Martin Helwig in the 16th century.

Look, I’ll address this head-on. Yes, that’s Alan Moore, Leah Moore and John Reppion. I wasn’t asked to do that (John never asks for me to do anything, it’s all me) but reading the tweet, laying the panels out and thinking “I need a weather giant, a wise woman and a wizard-like Monk” and it suddenly occurred to me that it would be both perfect and funny.

I started colouring it with the sky with a view to full colour, but I’m a bit up against it here at the moment and then I thought I’d use the same blue for the giants – as I wanted them to feel ephemeral rather than big solid giant then realised I didn’t really need any colour (phew, that saved some time).

Sometimes I wish I had more time to attack these things, but you don’t always get what you wish for. 

Saturday the 26th of November, 1977. Just gone ten past five in the afternoon. Southern TV (UK)’s news anchor Andrew Gardner is relating the day’s headlines when the picture begins to wobble. The signal interrupted. A strange, unearthly voice begins to relate a message:

This is the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. For many years you have seen us as lights in the skies. We speak to you now in peace and wisdom as we have done to your brothers and sisters all over this, your planet Earth. We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disaster which threatens your world, and the beings on our worlds around you.

This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments.

Be still now and listen, for your chance may not come again. All your weapons of evil must be removed. The time for conflict is now past and the race of which you are a part may proceed to the higher stages of its evolution if you show yourselves worthy to do this. You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace and goodwill. Small groups all over the planet are learning this, and exist to pass on the light of the dawning New Age to you all.  

You are free to accept or reject their teachings, but only those who learn to live in peace will pass to the higher realms of spiritual evolution. Hear now the voice of Vrillon, a representative of the Ashtar Galactic Command, speaking to you. Be aware also that there are many false prophets and guides operating in your world. They will suck your energy from you – the energy you call money and will put it to evil ends and give you worthless dross in return.  

Your inner divine self will protect you from this. You must learn to be sensitive to the voice within that can tell you what is truth, and what is confusion, chaos and untruth. Learn to listen to the voice of truth which is within you and you will lead yourselves onto the path of evolution. This is our message to our dear friends. We have watched you growing for many years as you too have watched our lights in your skies.  

You know now that we are here, and that there are more beings on and around your Earth than your scientists admit. We are deeply concerned about you and your path towards the light and will do all we can to help you. Have no fear, seek only to know yourselves, and live in harmony with the ways of your planet Earth.  

We of the Ashtar Galactic Command thank you for your attention. We are now leaving the plane of your existence. May you be blessed by the supreme love and truth of the cosmos.

The Vrillon Hoax, as the broadcast interruption became known, is now regarded by many as a very sophisticated (for the time) bit of hacking. Those responsible have, strangely, never come forward however. The source of the signal remaining a mystery to this day.  

Children know that ghosts are real. That faeries dance in waste-ground scrub. Playground whispers re-tell centuried tales. The untenanted house remains haunted. Clowns should never be trusted. He said, she said, they said. From ancestors’ lips into babes’ ears.  

—-

Children are natural storytellers. They weave tales, but they also absorb them in a way adults often fail to. Mistakes in re-tellings are corrected by older kids, or by kids with older siblings from whom they have already heard the stories. Because of this Children’s Folklore – the folklore of the playground – survives through the oral tradition. Games and rhymes acted and chanted out in modern tarmac school yards are survivors from generations, sometimes centuries past.   

Lizzie Borden took an axe  

She gave her mother forty whacks,  

After she saw what she had done,  

She gave her father forty-one.  

Lizzie Borden got away,  

For her crime she did not pay.  

This 19th century children’s skipping rhyme (Jump Rope rhyme) records the murder of Sarah and Andrew Borden at the hands of their daughter (a crime for which Lizzie Borden was acquitted) at Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892. The grisly words are still chanted in school yards across America on a daily basis, one-hundred and seventeen years after the crime was committed.  

In November 2018 BBC Radio Four aired a programme called “A Sailor Went to Sea Sea” in which singer-songwriter Emma Lee Moss (aka Emmy the Great) explored the world of modern playground clapping games and rhymes. These included Yankee Doodle Dandy (itself based on a 15th century Dutch harvest song), which, despite originating in 18th century America, has become a popular clapping game in Japanese playgrounds.   

Much of what we call Childlore is, however, unknowable to adults. It shrinks away to nothing under the harsh lens of academic or critical analysis. Children see things and believe things which we, the grown ups, are positive they cannot be right about, even though we saw and knew them too when we were kids. The internet gives us a strange glimpse into some of those ideas though, because it amplifies rumours which adults pick up from children.  

In the 1980s there were school yard whispers of Killer Clowns across America, the UK, and beyond. I remember them first hand, but they were mostly just child to child tales barely noticed, or quickly dismissed by any adults who caught a whiff them. In 2016 however, we had what was called The Great Clown Panic in which, spurred on by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, hundreds of creepy clown sightings were reported around the globe. Why? Because it’s very easy to take a picture of yourself or your friend in a clown costume and post it out there for millions of people to see. Hoaxing has never been so simple and effective. 

Although these clown hoaxes were not perpetrated by children, those responsible were certainly immature in the truest sense of the word; they were functioning at a level above that of childish magic, and awe, and below that of genuine adult responsibility and stoic realism. Many were, in truth, trying to recapture that thrill of believing, by making others believe. Yes, it was crass and often deliberately nasty, but there is something tragic about the idea that the closest those people could get to the wonder and reverence of knowing monsters were real as a child, was to become the monsters themselves.  

In the Japanese city of Himeji stands a hilltop castle. In its grounds is a well. A haunted well. Okiku was the beautiful servant of a Samurai. Murdered by her master for rejecting his advances, Okiku’s ghost is said to rise screaming from the well every night. 

Onryō (怨霊) is a Japanese word meaning “vengeful spirit” or “wrathful spirit”. More than mere apparitions, these angry ghosts are capable of affecting the physical realm and causing harm, or even death, to the living. It is recorded (and widely believed) that Genbō, the Japanese scholar-monk and bureaucrat of the Imperial Court at Nara, was murdered by the vengeful ghost of his enemy Fujiwara no Hirotsugu in the year 746. The onryō has become a staple of J-Horror, featuring in internationally successful films such as The Ring and The Grudge, but many Westerners may not have realised that ghosts of Sadako Yamamura and Kayako Saek are based on a traditional Japanese folkloric archetype. The way onryō are usually depicted – with long black hair, often partly obscuring their face, flowing white burial robes, pale faces and dark rimmed eyes – comes from the Japanese Kabuki theatre tradition, in which actors often had to change roles quickly and find a simple and effective visual shorthand for different character types.   

Himeji Castle is regarded as one of the finest surviving examples of Japanese castles of its era. Constructed on the site of a fort in the 13th century, the castle was extensively expanded and remodelled in the 15th. The story goes that a beautiful young servant named Okiku once lived and worked in the castle for the samurai Aoyama Tessan. Aoyama found Okiku very attractive, but the servant spurned her master’s advances. In a deeply unpleasant plot to force Okiku to submit to his desires, Aoyama hid one of his family’s ten prized delft plates, and accused the servant of losing or breaking it. When Okiku could not find the tenth plate and was forced to admit this to her master, he gave her a choice: she could suffer death, or she could become his lover. Still Okiku refused the advances of the samurai and so, in a fury, Aoyama threw her down the castle’s well, to her death. Soon after, the onryō of Okiku began to haunt the castle, rising from the well. Tearfully, her voice could be heard counting “One… two… three…”, but when it came to the missing tenth plate the ghost would let out a terrible scream.  

In some versions of the folk-tale the ghost of Okiku is laid to rest by being presented with the tenth plate, and her haunting of Aoyama Tessan brought to an end. In others the samurai is harrowed to death by the vengeful spirit. Okiku’s Well still stands in the grounds of Himeji Castle, and stories persist of Okiku’s spirit rising from its depths nightly, still searching for the lost plate. And counting. “One… two… three…”

Just a quick one by way of an apology to all you lovely supporters on here. 

This week is half term so we have three young boys in the house all week and, to add to that, today is my our eldest’s 10th birthday. So, sorry to say, I haven’t had time to do a little mini article this week yet. 

I hope I can get something on here for you tomorrow, but I’m very sorry that Early Access hasn’t really been worth it’s while so far as my output is concerned this week. Massive Apologies. 

this one makes me think of a metal concept album, or something. 

The lighthouse in panel 1 is in the Orkneys, and looks spectacular – Noup Head lighthouse.

Panel 2, The Orkney’s isn’t great for many crops (maybe because of the Nuckalavee or maybe cus it’s so cold, wet and windswept…)

Panel 3, fairly open description of the monster, not sure I captured what I wanted, but you know, that’s the way it goes sometimes.

The Nuckelavee is a being much dreaded in the Orkney Isles. A sea demon whose breath blights crops, yet even more terrifying on land. Skinless, veins pulsing with black blood, muscles writhing, some say it rides a horse. Others that the horse-thing is part of it

In her book The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, the renowned Folklorist Katharine Mary Briggs proclaimed the Nuckelavee the nastiest of all the demons of Scotland’s Northern Isles. Living in the sea which surrounds the Isles of Orkney, the Nuckelavee was once often blamed for crop failures (Nuckelavee’s Blight), and animal and human illnesses, all caused by the demon’s foul, and poisonous breath.  

This Orcadian Devil’s direct opposition is The Mither O’ the Sea – a life-giving Mother Goddess who bestows the blessings of Spring and of the fruits of Summer upon the islanders. Much more powerful than the Nuckelvee, she generally keeps the demon in check. Sometimes however, the Nuckelvee is able to venture on to land and it is then that the true horror of the creature may be glimpsed.  

In 1891, the Orkney Folklorist Walter Traill Dennison tracked down an islander named Tammas who had seen the Nuckelvee in the flesh, and lived to tell the tale. Tammas was, apparently, reluctant to tell his tale to Dennison, but with much encouragement did so in the end.  

The lower part of this terrible monster, as seen by Tammie, was like a great horse, with flappers like fins about his legs, with a mouth as wide as a whales, from which came breath like steam from a brewing-kettle. He had but one eye, and that as red as fire.  

On him sat, or rather seemed to grow from his back, a huge man with no legs, and arms that reached nearly to the ground. His head was as big as a clue of simmons [straw ropes, a clue of which was generally about three feet in diameter], and this huge head kept rolling from one shoulder to the other as if it meant to tumble off.  

But what to Tammie appeared most horrible of all, was that the monster was skinless; this utter want of skin adding much to the terrific appearance of the creatures naked body.  

The whole surface of it showing only red, raw flesh, in which Tammie saw blood, black as tar, running through yellow veins, and great white sinews, thick as horse tethers, twisting, stretching, and contracting, as the monster moved. Tammie went slowly on in mortal terror, his hair on end, a cold sensation like a film of ice between his scalp and his skull, and a cold sweat bursting from every pore.  

Tammas eventually escaped the nightmarish creature by crossing over a rivulet running from a nearby loch – the demon, like many folkloric beasts having a strange aversion to flowing fresh water.  

Originally it is thought that the horse-thing which the Nuckelvee rode on land may have been a local variation of the Kelpie, Ceffyl Dŵr, or Bäckahäst – water-creatures which appears as horses on land to trick humans into mounting them so that they can drown and eat them. As the tales were told and re-told however, the Nuckelvee and its steed appear to have become permanently fused, resulting in monster much more bizarre and terrifying than before.  

Long ago a pregnant sow escaped butchery in Hampstead, fleeing into the sewers below. Nourished on refuse, her hoglets interbred, each generation growing more monstrous and ferocious. Only the constant flow of the subterranean river Fleet prevents their escape.

—–

In Volume Two of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour, and the London Poor, published in 1851, the author recorded a very odd piece of of London Folklore, or Urban Legend:

“There is a strange tale in existence among the shore-workers, of a race of wild hogs inhabiting the sewers in the neighbourhood of Hampstead.  

The story runs, that a sow in young, by some accident got down the sewer through an opening, and wandering away from the spot, littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal and garbage washed into it continually. Here, it is alleged, the breed multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost so ferocious as they are numerous.  

This story, apocryphal as it seems, has nevertheless its believers, and it is ingeniously argued, that the reason why none of the subterranean animals have been able to make their way to the light of day is, that they could only do so by reaching the mouth of the sewer at the river-side, while, in order to arrive at that point, they must necessarily encounter the Fleet ditch, which runs towards the river with great rapidity, and as it is the obstinate nature of a pig to swim against the stream, the wild hogs of the sewers invariably work their way back to their original quarters, and are thus never to be seen.  

What seems strange in the matter is, that the inhabitants of Hampstead never have been known to see any of these animals pass beneath the gratings, nor to have been disturbed by their gruntings. The reader of course can believe as much of the story as he pleases, and it is right to inform him that the sewer-hunters themselves have never yet encountered any of the fabulous monsters of the Hampstead sewers.”

Charles Dickens himself  (briefly) mentioned the monster pigs in a piece published in his own periodical Household Words, in 1852:  

“We have traditions and superstitions about almost everything in life, from the hogs in Hampstead sewers to the ghosts in a shut-up house.”

An article published in the Daily Telegraph, on the 10th of October 1859, also mentioned the legend:

“It has been said that beasts of chase still roam the verdant fastness of Grosvenor Square, that there are undiscovered patches of primeval forest in Hyde Park, and that Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine, which has propagated and run wild against the slimy feculence, and whose ferocious snouts will one day up-root Highgate archway, while they make Holloway intolerable with their grunting.”

Tales of Hamsptead’s subterranean monster pigs seem to be the English, Victorian predecessor of the American Urban Legends of alligators living and breeding in the sewers beneath various cities. It is worth noting however, that in March 1984 a living Nile crocodile was pulled out of a sewer in Paris (a city famed for its labyrinthine catacombs). The crocodile, named Elenore, currently lives at the Aquarium in Vannes. So, perhaps the swine are still down there somewhere, running wild against the slimy feculence…  

THIS time I’ve got it with the lettering on there. Ugh!