BeastieScotInktoberFest: #7 - Sianach

(With profuse apologies to Edwin Landseer)

In Gaelic Scotland, where deer were and continue to be prevalent, there are indications of deer worship in the Lochaber region. The sianach is a deer-monster in Scottish Gaelic oral tradition.
 - James MacKillop, Myths and Legends of the Celts

Much more mysterious than the established creatures so far, the Sianach ("monster") is a huge, carnivorous deer alluded to in Highland Gaelic oral tradition. It is difficult to pin down the earliest documentation of this being: most of the sources I can find specifically mentioning sianach as a deer-monster are fairly recent. Other descriptions include has sharp, jagged teeth, and glowing hooves and eyes. Given the presence of supernatural horses, cattle, cats, and dogs, it seems at least plausible that dangerous supernatural deer be a feature of Scottish folklore.

Yet the concept of toothy, flesh-eating deer is far from outlandish. There are cases of modern deer consuming eggs, cattle, and even human remains. The Musk Deer of Southern Asia are distinctive for their enormous fangs more suited to a vampire than Bambi. Scotland itself was once home to the great Megaloceros, with fossils found in Ayrshire, Galloway, and other corners of the land:

Perhaps this legend can be traced back to the Ice Age: the earliest humans in Scotland, already embattled by the climate, had to deal with all sorts of creatures. But they came to expect big cats and canines to try and eat them: what would they make of a gigantic deer, driven to desperation by starvation, chewing on one of their fallen clansmen? Deer are dangerous prey as it is.

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #6 - Tarbh Uisge

Clanronald told us, as an instance of Highland credulity, that a set of his kinsmen - Borradale and others - believing that the fabulous `water-cow' inhabited a small lake near his house, resolved to drag the monster into day. With this view they bivouacked by the side of the lake in which they placed, by way of night-bait, two small anchors such as belong to boats, each baited with the carcase of a dog slain for the purpose. They expected the `water-cow' would gorge on this bait, and were prepared to drag her ashore the next morning, when, to their confusion of face, the baits were found untouched. It is something too late in the day for setting baits for water-cows.
 - Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott: Diary, Letters & Articles

The Tarbh Uisge, "Water Bull," has many of the hallmarks of its more notorious & malevolent kindred spirite, the Each Uisge ("Water Horse," the Kelpie's dangerous cousin). It, too, is a resident of the waters of Scotland; it usually manifests in its male form, as evidenced by its Gaelic name; and is known for its shapeshifting qualities. A curious aspect to their physiognomy is their ears: unlike the familiar ears of normal cows, the Water Bull lacks external ears entirely - possibly an adaptation to its underwater domain, as seen in pinnipeds and cetaceans.

Where water horses tend to menace female humans, it's the cattle which are at greatest threat to water bulls. The offspring of a union between water bull and land cow are marked by their stunted ears: these unfortunate calves are named Corc-Chluassask (Split Ears) or Carechluasach (knife or short ears):

But while the waters of the south can only boast of their kelpy, those of the north are the habitation not only of the uirisg, but of the water-horse and water-bull (An t'Each Uisge,  'san Tarbh Uisge) as well. These last are painted on  that tablet of the popular mind consecrated to super-  stition, as, upon the whole, upon the whole, of the same shape and form as the more kindly quadrupeds after whom they have been named, but larger, fiercer, and with an amount of `devilment' and cunning about them, of which the latter, fortunately, manifest no trace. They are always fat and sleek, and so full of strength and spirit and life that the neighing of the one and the bellowing of the other frequently awake the mountain echoes to their inmost recesses for miles and miles around...

Calves and foals are the result of occasional intercourse between these animals and their more civilised domestic congeners, such calves bearing unmistakable proofs of their mixed descent in the unusual size and pendulousness of their ears and the wide aquatic spread of their jet black hoofs; the foals, in their clean limbs, large flashing eyes, red distended nostrils, and fiery spirit. The initiated still pretend to point out cattle with more or less of this questionable blood in them, in almost every drove of pure Highland cows and heifers you like to bring under their notice.
 - Alexander Stewart, Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe: The Natural History, Legends and Folklore of the West Highlands (1885)

From a more mundane perspective, one could suppose that it was an explanation for crop ear among cattle:

Like many mythologies Celtic mythology embraces the existence of a mysterious creature called a water-bull ( ref. Maier ). The survival of legends through the oral tradition in Scottish Gaelic folklore makes it impossible to date the arrival of water-bulls, or the Tarbh Uisge, which for centuries appeared unpredictably in and around the sea and lochs of the Hebridean Islands and West Highlands of Scotland. However, the folklore has preserve comment on both behaviour and appearance of the Tarbh Uisge. Seemingly the Tarbh Uisge itself is rarely seen, it emerges from the water at night and covers ashore cows, and the resulting progeny are very easily identified as those sired by a water-bull. Such a mythical bull is called Tarroo-Ushtey in the Isle of Man, and there are also water-bull myths in Germany, but the Hebridean Tarbh Uisge is distinct in that it is given specific attributes: Tarbh-Uisge is a large black bull with velvety fur, he has no ears and his calves have slotted ears. 

When the explorer Martin Martin, on his journey to the Hebrides in 1695 visited the Isle of Skye he documented this legend writing " There are several calves that have a slit at the top of their ears; and these the natives fancy to be the issue of a wild bull that comes from the sea or fresh lakes; and this calf is by them called corky-fyre "(Martin ). In the extensive collection of “Popular Tales from the West Highlands” (Campbell) an island resident reported in 1862 that he had "often seen bulls feeding about the lake sides with the cattle, and the cows often had calves. They are `corcach´, short-eared, a cross between the water-bull and a land-cow ". And A. Carmichael, who collected Gaelic songs, rhymes and legends in late 19th century, wrote “These notch-eared cattle - ` Torc Chluasach ' - are frequent in the Western Isles and are spoken of as `Slioc a Chroidh Mhara', the descendants of the fabled sea cattle."

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #5 - Kelpie

When thowes dissolve the snawy hoord
An' float the jinglin icy boord
Then, water-kelpies haunt the foord
By your direction
An' nighted trav'llers are allur'd
To their destruction.
 - "Address to the Devil," Robert Burns, 1786

The legends of the doings of the water kelpie all point to some river god reduced to a fuath or bogle. The bay or grey horse grazes at the lakeside, and when he is mounted, rushes into the loch and devours his rider. His back lengthens to suit any number; men’s hands stick to his skin; he is harnessed to a plough, and drags the team and plough into the loch, and tears horses to bits; he falls in love with a lady, and when he appears as a man, and lays his head on her knee to be dressed, the frightened lady finds him out by the sand amongst his hair. “Tha gainmheach ann,” “There is sand in it,” she says, and when he sleeps he makes her escape. He appears as an old woman and is put to bed by a bevy of damsels in a mountain sheiling and he sucks the blood of all, save one, who escapes over a burn, which, water horse he is, he dare not cross. In short, these tales and beliefs have led me to think that the old Celts must have had a destroying water god, to whom the horse was sacred, or who took the form of a horse.
 - Popular Tales of the West Highlands, J.F. Campbell

Kelpies are among the most well-known & well-documented of Scottish mythological terrors, featuring in literature, art, sculpture, and beyond. Campbell's supposition that it is the folk memory of a great, dangerous water deity is pretty compelling considering the importance of horses in old Celtic folklore.

Most modern cultural depictions of Kelpies tend to eschew the more supernatural elements like the human transformation: they tend to be either weird aquatic equines, seaweed-strewn Hippocampi, or plant monsters. For my part, if we're going that route, I quite like the idea of some ancient prehistoric relative that developed a taste for meat: as Andrewsarchus is essentially a sheep in wolf's clothing, perhaps there's some hitherto undiscovered species of carnivorous horse.

Nonetheless, the human form aspect is one of the most important parts of the Kelpie myth, as surely as it is for werewolves and Selkies. As such, I figured I'd reflect that in the picture (ho ho).

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #4 - Beithir

A serpent, whenever encountered, ought to be killed. Otherwise, the encounter will prove an omen of evil. The head should be completely smashed (air a spleatradh) and removed to a distance from the rest of the body. Unless this is done, the serpent will again come alive. The tail, unless deprived of animation, will join the body, and the head becomes a beithir, the largest and most deadly kind of serpent.

The big beast of Scanlastle in Islay was one of this kind. It devoured seven horses on its way to Loch-in-daal. A ship was lying at anchor in the loch at the time, and a line of barrels filled with deadly spikes, and with pieces of flesh laid upon them, was placed from the shore to the ship. Tempted by the flesh, the "loathly worm" made its way out on the barrels and was killed by the spikes and cannon.

 - Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, John Gregorson Campbell, 1900 

The Beithir is one of many serpentine creatures one can find in the folklore of Scotland - all the more unusual, since the moors & glens aren't exactly the ideal habitat for reptiles. The fact that one beast devoured seven horses (which I hinted towards in the illustration) suggests it was a mite larger than Scotland's modern reptiles, like the adder or the slow worm.

Being a fan of The First Fossil Hunters, I also look towards prehistoric inspiration: could the Beithir be some long-embedded memory of the great ophidians which terrorised humanity's ancestors? The Titanoboa of Columbia has a lot of press nowadays, but before its discovery, the 30ft+ Gigantophis slithered through what is now Egypt some 40 million years ago. Scottish mythological enthusiasts will know the importance of Egypt in Scotland's cultural memory.

The Beithir might also be known to Dungeons & Dragons fans as a possible inspiration for the Monster Manual II's Behir, another serpentine beastie ready to gobble up any unwary adventurers.

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #3 - Baobhan Sith

Wouldn't be long until vampires started baring their fangs in BeastieScotInktoberFest. There are a number of bloodsucking horrors in Scottish folklore, but I thought this creature - which sometimes has the hind legs of a deer, and other times transforms into a raven, & depicted here with wild frizzy hair because reasons - offered a nice inversion of the usual male vampire grasping a gasping, chest-baring female victim.

After the break, a story of the Baobhan Sith...

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #2 - Fachan

... A "FACHAN" is thus described: - "Ugly was the make of the Fachin; there was one hand out of the ridge of his chest, and one tuft out of the top of his head, it were easier to take a mountain from the root than to bend that tuft."
 - Popular Tales of the West Highlands

He held a very thick iron flail-club in his skinny hand, and twenty chains out of it, and fifty apples on each chain of them, and a venomous spell on each great apple of them, and a girdle of the skins of deer and roebuck around the thing that was his body, and one eye in the forehead of his black-faced countenance, and one bare, hard, very hairy hand coming out of his chest, and one veiny, thick-soled leg supporting him and a close, firm, dark blue mantle of twisted hard-thick feathers, protecting his body, and surely he was more like unto devil than to man.
 - Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories, Douglas Hyde

There are a number of ways one could imagine the Fachan, but I felt the Celtic Druid theory was so strong & interesting a possible explanation that it was the best route to lean into, and save something more monstrous and frightening for another beastie. To that end, I was heavily inspired by the illustration which appeared in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, and borrowed the twenty-tailed, fifty-headed flail from the desert creature of Glen Eite.

BeastieScotInktoberFest: #1 - Gigelorum

Gigelorum. - The Giolcam-daoram, or Gigelorum, is the smallest of all animals. It makes its nest in the mite's ear and that is all that is known about it.
 - Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, John Gregorson Campbell

 Having been a fan of Water Bears long before Ant-Man and Star Trek Discovery made them cool, I figured that this micro-animal would make a great model for "the smallest of all animals" - albeit with a wee bit of Highland flair.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

I am the symbol of Creation and Destruction
I am the beginning and the end.
With my tail in my mouth
I am the Circle of Eternity.
Wisdom is in my eyes
And the dusk of wisdom lurks amid my coils.
My track circles the world
And I loop my coils around the Universe.
My head waves among the stars
And the nations fall prostrate before me.
Coiled, head upright, I am the spirit of the sea.
The world-shaking dinosaur was my henchman
And the flying dragons were my footmen.
The ancients knew me.
They reared shrines and altars
And I taught them dim, dusky wisdom...
 - Robert E. Howard, "Serpent"

It's obvious why there's such a divide between critics and audiences for Godzilla: King of the Monsters - because it isn't the kind of film most critics would like. This isn't a film you go to see for dialogue, character arcs, or plot points: it's a film to experience spectacle, and ponder what it's about. You will undoubtedly be disappointed by the human characters, the script, and the story - the "people" and "events" which take up the runtime - but that's not the point of a Godzilla film. It's fair to criticise those elements, of course, and there's no real barrier to a monster film having excellent characters, script, & plot: it's just their absense is not a mortal failure. To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: when it comes to monster movies, great critics discuss themes; average critics discuss plot; small critics discuss characters.

Since this is going to delve deep into the mythology of the Monsterverse, I'd wait until after you've seen the film - and I do recommend you see it - until reading.

Narrative Rebellion: The Last Song, Or, How A Song of Ice & Fire & A Game of Thrones Should End (But Probably Won't)

What A Song of Ice and Fire was always about for me.

So, that's the end of A Game of Thrones. I've written about it a few times on the blog, often quite sceptically, but generally more against the pundits than the show itself.

I, like I'll wager a great many other people, had my own idea about where the series was going. I'm sure many of us had our own theories about how the great struggle for the Iron Throne was going to end. Now, while 25-year-old Aly might've gone into rage over some of the decisions made over the course of the series - by Martin & the showrunners alike - 35-year-old Aly has mellowed out somewhat. I've realised that not only is it OK if a story makes decisions you find bad or terrible, it can be an essential creative spark.

When J.R.R. Tolkien experienced Shakespeare's Macbeth, he couldn't help but be deeply disappointed in its treatment of the Weird Sisters' prophecies: Birnam Wood didn't actually march on Dunsinane, a bunch of soldiers just tied sticks to their bodies to make it look like the forest was marching. Similarly, the entire justification for MacDuff killing Macbeth based on a painful semantic point over the definition of "born" was total weaksauce. As such, two of the most important & beloved elements of The Lord of the Rings - the Ents march on Isengard, & Eowyn's prophesied defeat of the Witch-King - could be traced back to Tolkien's displeasure at Shakespeare's perceived cop out. Whether you agree on that point - wordplay like this was a popular conceit in Shakespeare's time - is somewhat beside the larger point that, rather than complain about what he didn't like about the story, Tolkien did something creative about it.

Hence, while I'm not going to sign the petition making the rounds to remake the last season of A Game of Thrones (and certainly without presuming to be J.R.R.T. to Martin's Shakespeare!), I think creating our own alternate takes is a great creative outlet for any frustrations one might have, as well as possibly inspiring more productive, creative possibilities for the future.

So here's how I would've written the final stretch of A Game of Thrones.

Amis Absents

Just over five years after Steve Tompkins' death, Miguel Martins died. Deuce Richardson has a fine tribute marking the fifth year of his absence. I still miss him. I wonder what he'd think about everything that's happened over the past five years: what would he make of the new Howard collections, the Conan games and comics, even things like current affairs in his home country and the continent. There was so much we could have talked about even before - fiction, adventure, history, art, all sorts. Maybe next life.

I stepped away from a more active involvement in Howard fandom for constitutional reasons. In retrospect, perhaps it was more than that too. We were reminiscing over Steve's passing mere weeks before we got the news of Miguel's death. The memory of Patrice & me sharing a quiet moment in memory of Miguel is one that will stay with me forever. For a while, to be part of Howard fandom felt like being in the Company of Death, waiting for the next to fall, dreading to hear about someone's ill health.

Yet the Company of Death does not care what you're doing with your life. Death visited my family in the last month: my grandfather is now the last of his generation following the passing of his two surviving siblings, mere days apart. Relatives, friends, all fled - all done. The price of having a large extended family is the dry cleaning bill for your best suit.

Yet we live, and through us, their memories live. In Taoism, there is no past or future, only the present, which is in a constant state of change. When someone dies, they don't proceed to an "afterlife," but transpose themselves to the other side of the Universe (think of the Yin & Yang). Your body has simply outlived its usefulness, & your spirit carries on in some other form which we mortals cannot perceive. Sometimes the spirit dissipates & joins the Tao, sometimes your spirit is transported back to our side of the Universe in a "new life." In the meantime, those who were left behind retain some contact, as all life is connected with the Tao.

As I say: maybe next life.