Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

Seeing him post this reminded me that I have had the illustrated version gathering dust, as yet unread. [Since the first edition was published in 1975, I've only had 46 years to get round to it.]

 

So I read it, and now I'll use it as a launch point for further posts on the subject of the

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“He brought the hammer down on the stake once more, and the blood that pulsed from Barlow's chest turned black.

Then, dissolution.

It came in the space of two seconds, too fast to ever be believed in the daylight of later years, yet slow enough to recur again and again in nightmares, with awful stopmotion slowness.

 

The skin yellowed, coarsened, blistered like old sheets of canvas. The eyes faded, filmed white, fell in. The hair went white and fell like a drift of feathers. The body inside the dark suit shriveled and retreated. The mouth widened gapingly as the lips drew back and drew back, meeting the nose and disappearing in an oral ring of jutting teeth. The fingernails went black and peeled off, and then there were only bones, still dressed with rings, clicking and clenching like castanets. Dust puffed through the fibers of the linen shirt. The bald and wrinkled head became a skull. The pants, with nothing to fill them out, fell away to broomsticks clad in black silk. For a moment, a hideously animated scarecrow writhed beneath him, and Ben lunged out of the coffin with a strangled cry of horror. But it was impossible to tear the gaze away from Barlow's last metamorphosis; it hypnotized. The fleshless skull whipped from side to side on the satin pillow. The nude jawbone opened in a soundless scream that had no vocal chords to power it. The skeletal fingers danced and clicked on the dark air like marionettes.

 

Smells struck his nose and then vanished, each in a tight little puff: gas; putrescence, horrid and fleshy; a moldy library smell; acrid dust; then nothing. The twisting, protesting finger bones shredded and flaked away like pencils. The nasal cavity of the skull widened and met the oral cavity. The empty eye sockets widened in a fleshless expression of surprise and horror, met, and were no more. The skull caved in like an ancient Ming vase. The clothes settled flat and became as neutral as dirty laundry.

 

And still there was no end to its tenacious hold on the world - even the dust billowed and writhed in tiny dust devils within the coffin. And then, suddenly, he felt the passage of something which buffeted past him like a strong wind, making him shudder. At the same instant, every window of Eva Miller's boardinghouse blew outward."

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[walclark]

Merry Christmas to you and a very Happy New Year, Michael.

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You better watch out . . .

 

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Krampus isn't exactly the stuff of dreams: created as a counterpart to kindly St. Nicholas, who rewarded children with sweets, Krampus, in contrast, would swat "wicked" children, stuff them in a sack, and take them away to his lair. Early, turn-of-the-century Krampus postcards, are rare. [Most were destroyed during the World Wars.]

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According to folklore, Krampus purportedly shows up in towns the night of December 5, known as Krampusnacht, or Krampus Night. The next day, December 6, is Nikolaustag, or St. Nicholas Day, when children look outside their door to see if the shoe or boot they'd left out the night before contains either presents (a reward for good behavior) or a rod (bad behavior).

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The origin of the figure is unclear; some folklorists and anthropologists have postulated it as having pre-Christian origins. There's actually a whole race of them. They're called Perchten, and they developed out of the Alpine pagan folklore that said the long winter months needed to be scared away. Men dressed in animal masks would wander the villages to do just that.

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Krampus's name is derived from the German word krampen, meaning claw, and is said to be the son of Hel in Norse mythology. Hel isn't a huge player in Norse mythology, but her father — Krampus' grandfather — doesn't get much bigger. It's Loki.

 

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Bearing horns, dark hair, fangs, and a long tongue, with a chain and bells that he lashes about, along with a bundle of birch sticks meant to swat naughty children. He then hauls the bad kids down to the underworld.

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Edited December 26, 2021 by Flex Mentallo

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While parts of Germany and Austria dread the beastly Krampus, other Germanic regions have Belsnickle and Knecht Ruprecht, black-bearded men who carry switches to beat children.

 

France has Hans Trapp and Père Fouettard.

The legend of the Christmas scarecrow is well known in the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine. Hans Trapp, according to the story, lived in the 1400s; a rich, powerful, and merciless man who was feared by the people of Alsace. His thirst for power was so great that he turned to deals with the Devil to enhance his power and status. Hearing of this, the Pope himself excommunicated Trapp, after which he was banished from Alsace and his wealth and lands confiscated. Trapp was reduced to constructing a makeshift home in the mountains of Bavaria. Here, he continued to brood and his evil desires festered. He developed a hankering to try the taste of human flesh. Finally, he became the dreaded Christmas scarecrow: adorned in straw as a disguise, he waited on lonely roads for a victim.

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A boy aged around ten happened across his path one day, and Trapp stabbed the unfortunate shepherd’s boy with a sharpened stick. With the body safely back at his lair, Trapp sliced it into pieces and roasted it, but before he could eat, he was struck by a divine lightning bolt and killed.

Today, naughty children are warned that Hans Trapp’s spirit lingers on and that he may visit them in his scarecrow disguise if they don’t mend their ways.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

According to legend Père Fouettard was a butcher. During a particularly hard winter, three boys went searching for food and became lost. They found the home of the butcher and asked him for shelter for the night. The butcher agreed but then as soon as he had their trust, chopped the children into pieces! He planned to sell their meat in his butcher's shop. St. Nicholas then arrives, and miraculously brings the boys back to life. The butcher repents, and begs St Nick to allow him to atone for his crimes. So, he became Saint Nicholas’s companion, serving out of loyalty and gratitude.

Edited December 26, 2021 by Flex Mentallo

[Flex Mentallo]

Some of these helpers, such as Zwarte Piet in The Netherlands have attracted recent controversy.