object:1f.lovecraft - The Very Old Folk
author class:H P Lovecraft
subject class:Fiction
genre class:Horror
class:chapter
Thursday
[November 3, 1927]
Dear Melmoth:
. . . So you are busy delving into the shady past of that insufferable
young Asiatic Varius Avitus Bassianus? Ugh! There are few persons I
loathe more than that cursed little Syrian rat!
I have myself been carried back to Roman times by my recent perusal of
James Rhoades neid, a translation never before read by me, and more
faithful to P. Maro than any other versified version I have ever
seenincluding that of my late uncle Dr. Clark, which did not attain
publication. This Virgilian diversion, together with the spectral
thoughts incident to All Hallows Eve with its Witch-Sabbaths on the
hills, produced in me last Monday night a Roman dream of such supernal
clearness and vividness, and such titanic adumbrations of hidden
horror, that I verily believe I shall some day employ it in fiction.
Roman dreams were no uncommon features of my youthI used to follow the
Divine Julius all over Gallia as a Tribunus Militum onightsbut I had
so long ceased to experience them, that the present one impressed me
with extraordinary force.
It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town
of Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year
must have been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled
by a senatorial proconsul instead of a prtorian legate of Augustus,
and the day was the first before the Kalends of November. The hills
rose scarlet and gold to the north of the little town, and the
westering sun shone ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and
plaster buildings of the dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus
some distance to the east. Groups of citizensbroad-browed Roman
colonists and coarse-haired Romanised natives, together with obvious
hybrids of the two strains, alike clad in cheap woollen togasand
sprinklings of helmeted legionaries and coarse-mantled, black-bearded
tribesmen of the circumambient Vasconesall thronged the few paved
streets and forum; moved by some vague and ill-defined uneasiness.
I myself had just alighted from a litter, which the Illyrian bearers
seemed to have brought in some haste from Calagurris, across the Iberus
to the southward. It appeared that I was a provincial qustor named L.
Clius Rufus, and that I had been summoned by the proconsul, P.
Scribonius Libo, who had come from Tarraco some days before. The
soldiers were the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion, under the military
tribune Sex. Asellius; and the legatus of the whole region, Cn.
Balbutius, had also come from Calagurris, where the permanent station
was.
The cause of the conference was a horror that brooded on the hills. All
the townsfolk were frightened, and had begged the presence of a cohort
from Calagurris. It was the Terrible Season of the autumn, and the wild
people in the mountains were preparing for the frightful ceremonies
which only rumour told of in the towns. They were the very old folk who
dwelt higher up in the hills and spoke a choppy language which the
Vascones could not understand. One seldom saw them; but a few times a
year they sent down little yellow, squint-eyed messengers (who looked
like Scythians) to trade with the merchants by means of gestures, and
every spring and autumn they held the infamous rites on the peaks,
their howlings and altar-fires throwing terror into the villages.
Always the samethe night before the Kalends of Maius and the night
before the Kalends of November. Townsfolk would disappear just before
these nights, and would never be heard of again. And there were
whispers that the native shepherds and farmers were not ill-disposed
toward the very old folkthat more than one thatched hut was vacant
before midnight on the two hideous Sabbaths.
This year the horror was very great, for the people knew that the wrath
of the very old folk was upon Pompelo. Three months previously five of
the little squint-eyed traders had come down from the hills, and in a
market brawl three of them had been killed. The remaining two had gone
back wordlessly to their mountainsand this autumn not a single
villager had disappeared. There was menace in this immunity. It was not
like the very old folk to spare their victims at the Sabbath. It was
too good to be normal, and the villagers were afraid.
For many nights there had been a hollow drumming on the hills, and at
last the dile Tib. Annus Stilpo (half native in blood) had sent to
Balbutius at Calagurris for a cohort to stamp out the Sabbath on the
terrible night. Balbutius had carelessly refused, on the ground that
the villagers fears were empty, and that the loathsome rites of hill
folk were of no concern to the Roman People unless our own citizens
were menaced. I, however, who seemed to be a close friend of Balbutius,
had disagreed with him; averring that I had studied deeply in the black
forbidden lore, and that I believed the very old folk capable of
visiting almost any nameless doom upon the town, which after all was a
Roman settlement and contained a great number of our citizens. The
complaining diles own mother Helvia was a pure Roman, the daughter of
M. Helvius Cinna, who had come over with Scipios army. Accordingly I
had sent a slavea nimble little Greek called Antipaterto the
proconsul with letters, and Scribonius had heeded my plea and ordered
Balbutius to send his fifth cohort, under Asellius, to Pompelo;
entering the hills at dusk on the eve of Novembers Kalends and
stamping out whatever nameless orgies he might findbringing such
prisoners as he might take to Tarraco for the next proprtors court.
Balbutius, however, had protested, so that more correspondence had
ensued. I had written so much to the proconsul that he had become
gravely interested, and had resolved to make a personal inquiry into
the horror.
He had at length proceeded to Pompelo with his lictors and attendants;
there hearing enough rumours to be greatly impressed and disturbed, and
standing firmly by his order for the Sabbaths extirpation. Desirous of
conferring with one who had studied the subject, he ordered me to
accompany Asellius cohortand Balbutius had also come along to press
his adverse advice, for he honestly believed that drastic military
action would stir up a dangerous sentiment of unrest amongst the
Vascones both tribal and settled.
So here we all were in the mystic sunset of the autumn hillsold
Scribonius Libo in his toga prtexta, the golden light glancing on his
shiny bald head and wrinkled hawk face, Balbutius with his gleaming
helmet and breastplate, blue-shaven lips compressed in conscientiously
dogged opposition, young Asellius with his polished greaves and
superior sneer, and the curious throng of townsfolk, legionaries,
tribesmen, peasants, lictors, slaves, and attendants. I myself seemed
to wear a common toga, and to have no especially distinguishing
characteristic. And everywhere horror brooded. The town and country
folk scarcely dared speak aloud, and the men of Libos entourage, who
had been there nearly a week, seemed to have caught something of the
nameless dread. Old Scribonius himself looked very grave, and the sharp
voices of us later comers seemed to hold something of curious
inappropriateness, as in a place of death or the temple of some mystic
god.
We entered the prtorium and held grave converse. Balbutius pressed his
objections, and was sustained by Asellius, who appeared to hold all the
natives in extreme contempt while at the same time deeming it
inadvisable to excite them. Both soldiers maintained that we could
better afford to antagonise the minority of colonists and civilised
natives by inaction, than to antagonise a probable majority of
tribesmen and cottagers by stamping out the dread rites.
I, on the other hand, renewed my demand for action, and offered to
accompany the cohort on any expedition it might undertake. I pointed
out that the barbarous Vascones were at best turbulent and uncertain,
so that skirmishes with them were inevitable sooner or later whichever
course we might take; that they had not in the past proved dangerous
adversaries to our legions, and that it would ill become the
representatives of the Roman People to suffer barbarians to interfere
with a course which the justice and prestige of the Republic demanded.
That, on the other hand, the successful administration of a province
depended primarily upon the safety and good-will of the civilised
element in whose hands the local machinery of commerce and prosperity
reposed, and in whose veins a large mixture of our own Italian blood
coursed. These, though in numbers they might form a minority, were the
stable element whose constancy might be relied on, and whose
cooperation would most firmly bind the province to the Imperium of the
Senate and the Roman People. It was at once a duty and an advantage to
afford them the protection due to Roman citizens; even (and here I shot
a sarcastic look at Balbutius and Asellius) at the expense of a little
trouble and activity, and of a slight interruption of the
draught-playing and cock-fighting at the camp in Calagurris. That the
danger to the town and inhabitants of Pompelo was a real one, I could
not from my studies doubt. I had read many scrolls out of Syria and
gyptus, and the cryptic towns of Etruria, and had talked at length
with the bloodthirsty priest of Diana Aricina in his temple in the
woods bordering Lacus Nemorensis. There were shocking dooms that might
be called out of the hills on the Sabbaths; dooms which ought not to
exist within the territories of the Roman People; and to permit orgies
of the kind known to prevail at Sabbaths would be but little in
consonance with the customs of those whose forefathers, A. Postumius
being consul, had executed so many Roman citizens for the practice of
the Bacchanaliaa matter kept ever in memory by the Senatus Consultum
de Bacchanalibus, graven upon bronze and set open to every eye. Checked
in time, before the progress of the rites might evoke anything with
which the iron of a Roman pilum might not be able to deal, the Sabbath
would not be too much for the powers of a single cohort. Only
participants need be apprehended, and the sparing of a great number of
mere spectators would considerably lessen the resentment which any of
the sympathising country folk might feel. In short, both principle and
policy demanded stern action; and I could not doubt but that Publius
Scribonius, bearing in mind the dignity and obligations of the Roman
People, would adhere to his plan of despatching the cohort, me
accompanying, despite such objections as Balbutius and
Aselliusspeaking indeed more like provincials than Romansmight see
fit to offer and multiply.
The slanting sun was now very low, and the whole hushed town seemed
draped in an unreal and malign glamour. Then P. Scribonius the
proconsul signified his approval of my words, and stationed me with the
cohort in the provisional capacity of a centurio primipilus; Balbutius
and Asellius assenting, the former with better grace than the latter.
As twilight fell on the wild autumnal slopes, a measured, hideous
beating of strange drums floated down from afar in terrible rhythm.
Some few of the legionarii shewed timidity, but sharp commands brought
them into line, and the whole cohort was soon drawn up on the open
plain east of the circus. Libo himself, as well as Balbutius, insisted
on accompanying the cohort; but great difficulty was suffered in
getting a native guide to point out the paths up the mountain. Finally
a young man named Vercellius, the son of pure Roman parents, agreed to
take us at least past the foothills. We began to march in the new dusk,
with the thin silver sickle of a young moon trembling over the woods on
our left. That which disquieted us most was the fact that the Sabbath
was to be held at all. Reports of the coming cohort must have reached
the hills, and even the lack of a final decision could not make the
rumour less alarmingyet there were the sinister drums as of yore, as
if the celebrants had some peculiar reason to be indifferent whether or
not the forces of the Roman People marched against them. The sound grew
louder as we entered a rising gap in the hills, steep wooded banks
enclosing us narrowly on either side, and displaying curiously
fantastic tree-trunks in the light of our bobbing torches. All were
afoot save Libo, Balbutius, Asellius, two or three of the centuriones,
and myself, and at length the way became so steep and narrow that those
who had horses were forced to leave them; a squad of ten men being left
to guard them, though robber bands were not likely to be abroad on such
a night of terror. Once in a while it seemed as though we detected a
skulking form in the woods nearby, and after a half-hours climb the
steepness and narrowness of the way made the advance of so great a body
of menover 300, all toldexceedingly cumbrous and difficult. Then with
utter and horrifying suddenness we heard a frightful sound from below.
It was from the tethered horsesthey had screamed, not neighed, but
screamed... and there was no light down there, nor the sound of any
human thing, to shew why they had done so. At the same moment bonfires
blazed out on all the peaks ahead, so that terror seemed to lurk
equally well before and behind us. Looking for the youth Vercellius,
our guide, we found only a crumpled heap weltering in a pool of blood.
In his hand was a short sword snatched from the belt of D. Vibulanus, a
subcenturio, and on his face was such a look of terror that the
stoutest veterans turned pale at the sight. He had killed himself when
the horses screamed... he, who had been born and lived all his life in
that region, and knew what men whispered about the hills. All the
torches now began to dim, and the cries of frightened legionaries
mingled with the unceasing screams of the tethered horses. The air grew
perceptibly colder, more suddenly so than is usual at Novembers brink,
and seemed stirred by terrible undulations which I could not help
connecting with the beating of huge wings. The whole cohort now
remained at a standstill, and as the torches faded I watched what I
thought were fantastic shadows outlined in the sky by the spectral
luminosity of the Via Lactea as it flowed through Perseus, Cassiopeia,
Cepheus, and Cygnus. Then suddenly all the stars were blotted from the
skyeven bright Deneb and Vega ahead, and the lone Altair and Fomalhaut
behind us. And as the torches died out altogether, there remained above
the stricken and shrieking cohort only the noxious and horrible
altar-flames on the towering peaks; hellish and red, and now
silhouetting the mad, leaping, and colossal forms of such nameless
beasts as had never a Phrygian priest or Campanian grandam whispered of
in the wildest of furtive tales. And above the nighted screaming of men
and horses that dmonic drumming rose to louder pitch, whilst an
ice-cold wind of shocking sentience and deliberateness swept down from
those forbidden heights and coiled about each man separately, till all
the cohort was struggling and screaming in the dark, as if acting out
the fate of Laocon and his sons. Only old Scribonius Libo seemed
resigned. He uttered words amidst the screaming, and they echo still in
my ears. Malitia vetusmalitia vetus est . . . venit . . . tandem
venit . . .
And then I waked. It was the most vivid dream in years, drawing upon
wells of the subconscious long untouched and forgotten. Of the fate of
that cohort no record exists, but the town at least was savedfor
encyclopdias tell of the survival of Pompelo to this day, under the
modern Spanish name of Pompelona. . . .
Yrs for Gothick Supremacy
C IVLIVS VERVS MAXIMINVS.
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