Another batch of Bert Bentley pictures on The Sentinel newspaper’s website, this time of Burslem. Three show places that feature in my novel The Spyders of Burslem.

Longport train station, at which the novel’s hero first alights in Stoke-on-Trent. Bradwell Woods in the background, which also feature near the end of the novel…

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – BURSLEM – Longport station & level crossing.

The Sytch wasteland at the northern edge of the town centre, on which our hero encounters a key character, and on the lip of which sits the workshop of the steampunk tinkerer Miss Merryweather Craft. This is almost exactly how I imagined her workshops and yard, just with more outbuildings and perched higher up above the Sytch…

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – BURSLEM – Off Westport Road. The Sytch mill. The old mill house.

The underground toilets (the railings area, in the foreground of the picture) in which our hero encounters Marcel Wurmious, the local Wildean artist…

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – BURSLEM – Swan Square. Burslem Co-operative Stores.

A new computer modelling analysis of European fairy tales claims to have found one or two that date to the Bronze Age. Like all ‘big computing’ modelling of complex systems with limited and skewed data inputs, the findings should probably be treated with strong caution. The researchers also applied their model only to a subset of story types, the “Tales of Magic” from the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Classification of Folk Tales. But their key finding on age is rather interesting, nonetheless…

“Our findings regarding the origins of ATU 330 ‘The Smith and the Devil’ are a case in point. The basic plot of this tale — which is stable throughout the Indo-European speaking world, from India to Scandinavia — concerns a blacksmith who strikes a deal with a malevolent supernatural being (e.g. the Devil, Death, a jinn, etc.). The smith exchanges his soul for the power to weld any materials together, which he then uses to stick the villain to an immovable object (e.g. a tree) to renege on his side of the bargain.” [this it seems, actually refers to the sub-variant of 330, 330A]

“a Bronze Age origin for ATU 330 [‘The Smith and the Devil’] seems plausible under both major models of Indo-European prehistory [i.e.:. competing theories that complex metal-working was brought into Europe with large migrations from either the Pontic-Caspian steppe (north-east of the Black Sea) or from Anatolia (south of the Black Sea)].”

ATU 328 “The Boy Steals the Ogre’s Treasure” (the basis of “Jack and the Beanstalk”) is a story nearly as ancient, according to the model, and was presumably a story type that emerged when complex metallurgy enabled newly-portable treasure hoards, along with new trade routes that imported cut gem-stones and amber.

Though not magical, I’d imagine that “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is perhaps even more archaic. Due to its sheep-herding subject matter it quite possibly pre-dates the emergence of complex metallurgy. My thanks to Nathan Fleischman for pointing out that this tale has been included as a tale type in Classification of Folk Tales as “Shepherd Who Cried ‘Wolf!’ too often” (ATU 1333), even though it is commonly casually attributed to Aesop. Presumably the inclusion is due to its popular fame in Europe since the 15th century, and now apparently also in India (presumably introduced by the British Raj?). I imagine that the listing implies nothing about its age or antiquity.

But what of the dates? One might at first think that Aesop had his “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” tale from Ancient Greece during the fabled Aesop’s lifetime, said to be circa 620 and 560 B.C. Though here we must be cautious, as ‘Aesop’ is more likely to have been a formulaic ‘once upon a time’ name. A name to whom any time-served fireside fable could be attributed, and which was later elided with a slave of the same name.

The early fairy-tale authority Joseph Jacobs states this fable can only be shown to derive from Babrius, who was later in time. Jacobs accepts as plausible the research suggesting that Babrius was probably a Roman who had adopted Greek ways and had become fond of versifying old Greek fables. Jacobs offers…

“Ultimately derived from Babrius: though only extant in the Greek prose Aesop. Gitlbauer has restored it from the prose version in his edition of Babrius, number 199.”

(Regrettably “199” does not translate thus, and is ‘Fathers and Daughters’. Nor is Gitlbauer’s index any help re: wolf/wolves (λύκος/λύκοi) and his cross-referencing to a “Halmianam” edition, which means the earlier author Halm, is of no help either. Similar numbers to 199 were tried in Gitlbauer, assuming a slip of the pen by Jacobs, and I even tried some footnote text. Nor is there any other edition of Gitlbauer. I eventually translated the whole thing and found it’s 161 not 199, and that Gitlbauer unhelpfully indexes it only as παῖc ψεύςετηc (Playing liar). Anyway, here’s my translation.).

Does this bring us any closer to dates? Well, the dates that scholars try to pin on Babrius are variable, and the 9th Ed. of the Britannica observes that various “dates have been assigned to him from 250 B.C. to 250 A.D”. The modern Britannica plumps confidently for “flourished 2nd century A.D.”, yet the modern Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome has his writing “dating probably to the third century A.D.” So we’re more or less back to around-about the dates of the first occurrence in an edition of Aesop, which is said to be in the Collectio Augustana, aka Augustana Collection in the 2nd century A.D. Though I read that “scholars have suggested many different dates for it” and it cannot be dated either internally or externally. Ho hum… so both sets of dates are very hazy.

Either way on dates, and assuming that the fable was gathered in an eastern Mediterranean sheep-market rather than invented in a scriptorium in Rome, then it is still from what is culturally the Ancient Greek world. Thus the fable seems likely to have emerged from the millennia-deep folk-culture of teaching-fables taught to shepherd-lads, though it cannot now be reliably placed as far back as ‘five centuries before Christ’ by attributing it to Aesop.

Another selection of Bert Bentley pictures, courtesy of The Sentinel newspaper. Several in this batch show Stoke train station, and in a suitably gothic mode, which is a setting of a scene early on in my novel The Spyders of Burslem…

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – STOKE – 1963/64 – Stoke Station

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – STOKE – 1963/64 – Stoke Station

BERT BENTLEY ARCHIVE – STOKE – 1963/64 – Stoke Station

In the middle picture it looks like there’s litter on the line, but actually it seems to be dappled sunlight. Similarly, in the bottom picture what looks like litter actually seems to be either snow or recent rain puddles.

New on Archive.org, the concise survey English fairy poetry from the origins to the seventeenth century (1912)…

William P. Holden’s erudite 1963 edition of Beware The Cat is now available online. An excellent introduction, and then a solid transcription of the Elizabethan English version of the novel. It’s effectively the first novel in English, and certainly the first horror novel. My ‘modern English’ adaptation and abridgement of Beware The Cat is available in my book Tales of Lovecraftian Cats (horrible pun intended). The story has many macabre and fantastical elements, and the main tale opens in North Staffordshire.

Entering the Public Domain on 1st January 2016, by hitting the ’70 years after death’ limit on copyright in the UK and Europe:

It’s a fairly good year for English fantasy…

* Charles Williams, a prolific writer now best known as part of the circle around C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. Wrote a string of mystical English adult novels in which the numinous or uncanny enters the ordinary English world. Non-fiction books include learned studies of The English Poetic Mind and Witchcraft.

* Maurice Baring, a wide-ranging British author. He also produced occasional stories of delicate fantasy, macabre travel-adventure, some supernatural fiction, and at least one book of children’s fairy-stories. Should anyone be considering running off a modern volume of his more fantastical stories, note that he also wrote an introduction to a 1949 one-volume Bodley Press edition of Saki which discussed Saki’s “vein of macabre, supernatural fantasy”.

* David Lindsay, the Scottish science-fiction and fantastical novelist, now best known for the early sci-fi novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920).

* E. R. Eddison, known for the influential 1932 pre-Tolkien fantasy novel The Worm Ouroboros, along with his adaptations of the Norse sagas.

American pulp culture is represented by:

* Achmed Abdullah, a popular pulp-era mystery/adventure writer. Now best known among movie history buffs, for his novelisation of the major movie The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and his Academy Award nomination for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935).

* Malcolm Jameson, Golden Age pulp sci-fi writer for adolescents. Little read today but quite possibly the inventor of the ‘time loop’ sci-fi genre plot, now so popular in contemporary movies. His John Bullard of the Space Patrol series was immensely popular during the Second World War, and Bullard was said to have been the first sci-fi genre character to successfully gain mass recognition in America.

London low-life is well covered, and by those who grew up amid it all:

* Thomas Burke, recorder of low life in the East End and the Limehouse in London. First in Nights in Town: A London Autobiography (1915), then in melodramatic stories a year later in his Limehouse Nights (1916) and later books.

* Arthur Morrison, another author writing “unflinching” realist novels of slum life in the East End of London, including Tales of the Mean Streets and A Child of the Jago. He was later an author of detective stories, featuring the mild-mannered Sherlock-alike character Martin Hewitt in Martin Hewitt, investigator (followed by more Hewitt book collections, Chronicles of, Adventures of, and The Red Triangle). Morrison apparently rose from a childhood in the London slums to become an incredibly wealthy collector of Japanese art.

I also spotted a few artists with a 1945 death date…

* The great American illustrator N. C. Wyeth, creator of some especially vibrant pirate, Arthurian, and wild-western genre illustrations, among many other types of illustration.

* Kathe Kollwitz, a German expressionist artist specialising in intimate views of human suffering.

* Ludwig von Hofmann, Berlin Secessionist and German expressionist artist of light and scale. Became known in America via his huge murals for the Chicago and Saint Louis World’s Fairs.

A podcast on the environmental history of the soughs of the mining areas of the Peak District…

Under the Peak District […] is a subterranean network of drainage tunnels, the so-called soughs that were used to drain the lead mines of the region [and thus] prevent [17th century deep] mines from filling up with water drains or ‘soughs’ were cut through the hills to a neighbouring valley. The construction of soughs changed the hydrological [meaning, water flow] landscape of the Peak District, both below ground and above.”

Picture: My photo of a Peak sough in winter.

So if you’re up there walking, and you feel thirsty… it’s probably not a good idea to drink the nice sparkly water that’s draining out of old lead mines.

Just released is Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, a major new compendium of articles and interviews on the (mostly British) ‘folkloric macabre’ and its re-inventions and adaptations over the last fifty years, 1960-2010.

500 pages, at a very reasonable £15 and all profits go to The Wildlife Trusts. There’s also a folkhorrorrevival.com website, though there’s nothing there yet.

John Coulthart.com has the full listing of the book’s table of contents.

A new analysis of the mysterious chalk Folkton Drums has been published in Antiquity journal as “Digital imaging and prehistoric imagery: a new analysis of the Folkton Drums” (though sadly it’s behind a paywall). Here’s the abstract:

“The Folkton ‘Drums’ constitute three of the most remarkable decorated objects from Neolithic Britain. New analysis using Reflectance Transformation Imaging and photogrammetry has revealed evidence for previously unrecorded motifs, erasure and reworking. Hence these chalk drums were not decorated according to a single, pre-ordained scheme, but were successively carved and re-carved over time. Such practices may have been widespread in the making of artefacts in Neolithic Britain. The study of these drums also demonstrates the ability of these new techniques not only to record visible motifs, but to document erased and reworked motifs clearly.”

And here’s a British Museum picture of one of the sides of one of the drums. Now… if one knows the complex duality of meaning of Anglo-Saxon symbolism, and also the ancient British regard for a ‘sacred’ trinity occurring within a natural landscape (the meeting of three watercourses, for instance), then one might hazard a ‘reading back’ of such archaic understandings into these more distant Neolithic drums. For instance, just taking one side of a drum, one might read it thus…

Obvious meaning: the human face. The drums were found in a child’s grave.

A possible deeper and simultaneous meaning: The three diamond-shaped “fields” in the lower section suggest that this picture can be read as a landscape view. The notion that this is a symbolic landscape then leads one to see the central symbol as being that of large hawk, swan or sea-bird gliding down a symbolic valley landscape, with the three cultivated fields (or perhaps fish-ponds) situated below the bird. The two ‘eye’ dots might then be understood to symbolise the two full moons that marked out a Neolithic month. The bird would thus be a potent symbol of the fleeting nature of action/life within the eternal cycle of the sky (of course, we already know that birds — especially waterbirds — had a special place in ancient British mythologies). The ‘mouth’ might then be understood as the outlet of a natural spring, and the herringbone patterns either side of it might then symbolise the rainwater stored within the hills, water which fed down into the spring mouth. A landscape trinity of sky / valley hillsides / cultivated lowland is then, in this reading, clearly demarcated by the deep lines that cross in a clearly-incised ‘X’. The picture, understood in this manner, becomes a poignant evocation the fleeting natural cycle within a landscape — and thus a fitting grave item.

The remains of John Dee’s famous library re-assembled…

“A never seen before selection from 100 surviving books once owned by the man known universally as Dr Dee will go on display in ‘Scholar, courtier, magician: The lost library of John Dee’ at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) in January 2016.”

The British Museum’s crystal scrying ball will be there too. That it was once Dee’s is now apparently questioned by some academics, but it’s undoubtedly of the right age and is very similar to the sort of ball he would have used.

“From the collection of the British Museum comes a crystal ball for researching the occult and conversing with spirits”

It would be nice if the library could also be reassembled online, in the form of Web links to digitised scanned copies of all the books known to have been in Dee’s library. I’m not aware that anyone has yet done that.

I became interested in the history of Dee’s library through researching a commissioned scholarly essay in 2012, which is available in my book Lovecraft in Historical Context: a Third Collection of Essays and Notes as “What could Lovecraft and his circle have known of Doctor John Dee?”

A fantastic regular blog from the Buxton Museum & Art Gallery, Collections in the Landscape shows how items in the collection relate to the landscapes of the local area.

Picture: “Fairfield Race Course” (1825) by H. Kingsley.

Some of the scenes from British legend and folklore/folk-life, as seen in the many Minton tiles in the basement of the former Stoke town public library, Stoke-on-Trent. Presumably it was once a children’s activity room in the Library? Creative Commons Attribution, although the designs are of an age to be in the public domain.