One of the things the synopsis from Cromlech #3 does is that it helps us date the Bran Mak Morn stories. Readers of Karl Edward Wagner's Bran Mak Morn pastiche, Legion From The Shadows, may have noted that, aided by David A. Drake, Dr. Wagner dates Howard's completed Bran Mak Morn tales as happening between 200 and 210 AD. Howard has this synopsis describing events from 296-300 AD. From that fact one can extrapolate that the period of Bran's active kingship could run from about 275 to 315 AD, give or take a decade here or there. This gives us much more of a handle on the Bran Mak Morn adventures.This synopsis describes a story that begins with a fight along Hadrian's Wall, the Pictish fighters are being lead by Bran Mak Morn.
As things progress, Bran becomes allied with one Allectus, but Allectus has other allies, the untrustworthy Northmen. These Nordics dispise all Picts, they insult Bran Mak Morn and eventually kill his "sweetheart". The Pictish king deceives the Nordics as he leads them into a trap and wipes them out.
It is rather interesting to imagine that the sweetheart of the king who dies in this story would be the she-minstrel from "A Song Of The Race". Tragic, but fitting into the long history of Howard's Picts.
So, Bran Mac Morn wasn't completely asexual.
This brings us to the stories that take place after Bran's reign.
In the excitement over the found Bran Mak Morn synopsis that appeared in Cromlech #3, I think that Howard's fans have overlooked the fact that a synopsis also appeared in the letter of Howard's that has appeared, under the title of "Foreword", in every single Bran Mak Morn collection ever published.It may, in fact, be too brief to actually be considered a synopsis:
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 [Scotland], 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 warlike 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.He intended it to get novel length treatment.It does have that sort of sweep of history that his best historical adventures do.
I would appreciate if Howard fans who have a more extensive knowledge of history than myself (and that is probably most of you) would comment on me placing this synopsis here.
The Picts first enter this story when the Irish renegade, Turlogh O'Brien, finds 15 dead Vikings and seven dead Picts in a heap on the Isle of Swords. They had literally fought each other to the death The Picts had apparently been guarding a five foot statue that Turlogh refers to, in reflection, as "The Dark Man". Though appearing to be made of stone, the statue proves to be quite light as Turlogh picks it up and lashes it into the bow of his boat.Turlogh finds the island that is his final destination with comparative ease, even though a horrible storm is raging. It is as though the Dark Man were guiding and protecting him.
Upon the island, Turlogh hides his boat, leaving the Dark Man in it, as he heads for the Viking skali. Vikings then find the statue, which is now incredibly heavy, and bring it to the lodge ahead of the renegade.
Once inside Turlogh sees the girl he has come to rescue. Not knowing that help is near, the girl commits suicide rather than marry a Viking lord. Turlogh goes something beyond berserk, attacking the Vikings. Meanwhile, the reavers are attacked from the other side by a band of Picts, who have come to retrieve the Dark Man.
Once the battle is ended, the Pictish chieftain speaks to Turlogh:
"Ages ago we ruled. Before the Dane, before the Gael, before the Briton, before the Roman, we reigned in the western isles . Our stone circles rose to the sun. We worked in flint and hides and were happy. Then came the Celts and drove us into the wilderness. They held the southland. But we throve in the north and were strong. Rome broke the Britons and came against us. But there rose among us Bran Mak Morn, of the blood of Brule the Spear-slayer, who broke the iron ranks of Rome and sent the legions cowering south behind their Wall.Then an aged shaman, named Gonar (!), lifts the Dark Man, which is again light to the touch and is no burden to its bearer, and carries it worshipfully to the waiting boats. As the Picts leave the burning skali, Howard tells more about this king: "Bran Mak Morn loved his people with a savage love; he hated their foes with a terrible hate." (Emphasis is, of course, mine.) Even though this is a story from the Turlogh O'Brien series, there is a wealth of information given about Bran Mak Morn and the Picts: The Picts of this story and "The Lost Race" are not the misshapen ape-men that Bran ruled over — those Picts were apparently wiped out after Bran died, Bran did succeed in uniting the tribes, he did keep the Romans south of the wall, he kept the Norse and British out of Pictish territory, he did die in battle, his soul does rest in the statue of the Dark Man, the tribes did split up after his death, and the tribes in this story have to live in remote mountains — but they do not live underground. In fact, the quoted paragraphs above could almost be considered another synopsis, this one of the fall of Bran Mak Morn."Bran Mak Morn fell in battle; the nation fell apart. Like wolves we Picts live now among the scattered islands, among the crags of the highlands and the dim hills of Galloway. We are a fading people. We pass. But the Dark Man remains — the Dark One, the great king, Bran Mak Morn, whose ghost dwells forever in the stone likeness of his living self."
This could also be considered a Lost Race story. The historical Picts were finally defeated and absorbed by the Scots in the early 900s. This story takes place three years after the battle of Clontarf in the early 1100s. I suppose some groups of independent Picts could still have existed. There might have been some isolated tribes that had not been driven underground, but not many.
This story is a wonderful coda to Bran's life.
The hero, Cororuc, is a Briton who has a bit of Nordic blood in him. He is returning from a mission to Cornwall in extreme southwestern Britain. He saves a wolf from a panther, encounters some outlaws and becomes captured by some Picts. An elderly Pictish chieftain wants to execute the Briton, but another chief, one who is supposedly a werewolf (he was the wolf whose life was previously saved) of some kind, saves the Briton's life.This tribe of Picts is pure-blooded, they do not resemble their stocky brethren in the north. They are tattooed from head to foot in ocher and woad, however they are already living underground, they were driven there by the Celts. They are, curiously enough, skilled artisans, as Cororuc deduces by their cave paintings.
In a previous story, it was stated that other clans considered the Picts to be magical. We see it here in the young chief who, simply by donning a wolf's skin, can turn into a wolf.
The older chief in this story is also of interest. He is immortal for he has been cursed by a witch; yet he hasn't left that cavern since he was a youth. He plans to commit suicide when the Pictish race is extinct. He obviously has not heard of the Moon God's promise.
Even though "The Lost Race" is considered a minor story, there are some interesting details here.
The Picts are already living underground, the degeneration has begun!
The young chief's ability to turn into a wolf and the older chief's immortality are quite interesting, but I certainly wish that REH had done more with these plot elements.
Whenever Howard discusses suicide in a story, that passage draws attention to itself. The older chieftain has resolved to commit suicide when he is the last Pict, not out of depression or loneliness, but because it will be time to die. How very interesting! Howard has mirrored this attitude in other places, of people committing suicide for reasons other than depression. His thoughts on this go so very deep that I have to wonder what his complete philosophy on suicide was (as a digression, look for instance at the story "The Supreme Moment").
I feel that this story belongs in this placement because the Britons of this time have Nordic blood, and in Howard's history of the world Nordic's were rare in Britain in Bran Mak Morn's time, also the Picts are living underground in this story. Plus, beginning a Bran Mak Morn volumes with "The Lost Race" and then "Men Of The Shadows"
I am interested if placing the story here is historically impossible. What is the absolutely latest date at which this story could occur?
I had never read this story in conjunction with the Bran Mak Morn series before. What a natural it is to be included with these other Pictish stories: The antagonist are, once again, the worms of the earth, now known as the children of the night; the Picts are conspicuously featured off-stage; the statue of Bran Mak Morn, and the cult that worships it, gets a long passage devoted to it; and, as in "Worms Of The Earth", Lovecraftian references abound.The contemporary antagonist is Ketrick, whose blood-line, like the were-woman in "Worms Of The Earth" is tainted by a serpentine strain. He has amber, almost yellow eyes, that appear slightly oblique. He also has a slight and occasional lisp.
The antagonists in the flashback are the worms themselves, whose language is described as resembling the hissing of snakes. The worms have been driven into the forests by the Picts. It is further stated that the Picts drove them into hiding and obscurity. Their homes are earth domes, connected by underground tunnels. That would tend to make this flashback predate "Worms Of The Earth", as by then they were living completely underground.
A roll-call of Lovecraftian deities is taken: Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Tsathoggua and Gol-Goroth. Unless I'm mistaken, one of these names is part of Howard's addition to the mythos.
Lovecraft gets a tip of the hat as his "Call Of Cthulhu" is hailed as a particularly fine horror story.
The list of books is kept fortunately short, only the Necronomicon and Von Juntz' Nameless Cults is mentioned. The latter being another of Howard's contributions to the Mythos.
And now for the revelation about the cult of Bran:
"You remember Von Juntz makes mention of a so-called Bran cult [...] Von Juntz includes this particular cult among those still in existence. [...] the king who rules the Dark Empire, which was a revival of an older, darker empire dating back to the Stone Age; and of the great, nameless cavern where stands the Dark Man — the image of Bran Mak Morn, carved in his likeness by a master-hand while the great king yet lived, and to which each worshipper of Bran makes a pilgrimage once in his or her lifetime. Yes, that cult lives today in the descendants of Bran's people — a silent, unknown current it flows on in the great ocean of life, waiting for the stone image of the great Bran to breathe and move with sudden life, and come from the great cavern to rebuild their lost empire. [...] who were the people of that empire? [...] Picts."It is a sign of Howard's genius, flexibility and his versatility that he can take the noble, self-sacrificing king of a beleaguered people, and turn that hero into the undead fetish of a horrendous cult.
Imagine Bran's consciousness stuck inside that stone carving for 1700 years. How could it not go insane? What mad revenge could it want against the rest of humanity?
This would cause the Moon-God's prophecy to be viewed in a different light, a much more menacing one.
In a small west England inn, an American student, Joan Costigan, slams down a copy of Arthur Machen's The Shining Pyramid, declaring it to be no more than a fairy tale. In the ensuing conversation with her brother, the following facts about the Little People, upon whom Machen based his tale, are revealed: the Little People, if real, are descendants of the prehistoric people who inhabited Europe before the Celts came down out of the north. This early race is called variously Turanians, Picts, Mediterranians, and Garlic Eaters. These people, whoever they were, are ancestors of the modern day Basques of Spain, the Scotch of Gallway, and the Lapps. (This is Howard's second mention, in these stories, of the Basques being a tribe of Picts.) The rumors, or legends, about these people are that they fled to caverns under the earth and lived there, coming out only at night to burn, murder, and carry off children for bloody rites of worship (one presumes this worship is to the statue of Bran Mak Morn, but the present story doesn't say that).The impulsive young Joan is determined to spend the night amidst some ruins upon the moor. The ghost of a druid wakes her brother and sends him after her. Joan is attacked by grotesque stunted men before her brother can get to her and is rescued by the same ghostly druid that appeared before.
Though the story doesn't actually say that her attackers are 20th Century Picts, that is the obvious implication. Here is the description of their appearance: Short dwarfish shapes, stunted bodies, gnarled limbs, crooked hands, beady reptilian eyes, and grotesque square faces with inhuman features.
The race has truly fallen. Once the proud, dominant people of Brule's time, they now are distorted reflections of those they dispised, the worms of the earth! Except for the square faces in the previous description I would think that the antagonists of this piece were the worms themselves, but Howard has painstakingly set up the story so that the Picts play the bad guys.
To try to recap the history of Howard's fictional Picts seems almost a daunting task because of the wealth of diversity he has written into their history: we begin with them dwelling on islands where the rocky mountains are today, this was the time of Brule; they begin a mainland colony on the Thurian continent that becomes the sole surviving Pictish settlement when the cataclysm comes; by Conan's time they inhabited the western shores of the main continent ("The Hyborian Age" contradicts details given in "Men Of The Shadows" and other places, but that essay was a later piece, designed to help Howard flesh out Conan's world, not to add drama to the Pictish tragedy); after the next cataclysm, they roam through most of Europe before being driven off by the invading Æsir, this is the time of the reincarnations recalled by the dying James Allison; during early recorded history they live as isolated lost tribes everywhere but northern Britain, where they have intermarried with Teutonics to take on misshapen forms, this is the time of Bran Mak Morn; the isolated stories that follow show them being driven underground by the invading Celts, the misshapen half-Teutonic members of the clan perhaps dying out, the once-purebred Picts deforming from centuries living underground until they become the monsters described in "The Little People". During this whole time, they are watched over by the brooding statue of Bran Mak Morn, his soul trapped in an idol of stone, waiting to come alive again so that he can reunite his people and bring the lost empire into glory once again, so that he can fulfill the Moon God's promise and prophecy that the last man left alive will be a Pict.
Those who want to shrug Howard off as a hack pulp writer are either blind or stupid. There is a consistent background running through all the Pictish tales, a coherent history. This is high dramatic tragedy.
The Man was, and is, a genius!
Although, for years, this poem has been used as a preface to Howard's "Foreword" to the Bran Mak Morn yarns, I can think of no better way to end a discussion of the Pictish tales (try to read it as though you were reading it for the very first time):Bibliography:
How can I wear the harness of toil
And sweat at the daily round,
While in my soul forever
The drums of Pictdom sound?
Beyond The Borders, by Robert E. Howard, Baen, October 1996.
Bran Mak Morn, by Robert E. Howard, Baen, January 1996.
Coven 13, Vol. 1, No. 2, January 1970; Arthur H. Landis, Editor.
Cromlech: The Journal Of Robert E. Howard Criticism #3, 1988; Robert M. Price, Guest Editor.
Historical Atlas Of The World, prepared by Oddvar Bjorklund, Haakon Holmboe and Anders Rohr, New York, Barnes & Noble Books, 1970.
Picts, by Anna Ritchie, Edinburgh, HMSO Publications, 1989.
