This episode went live early, so here’s a bonus transcript for the week.
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I’ve discussed previously the idea that there may be worlds, in deep Arcadia, where the Faerie Aura is a negative number. To come up to speed on that discussion see the previous episode about Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance. The Dunsany stories this week are all from similar places.
I was tempted to wax philosophical here. I’ve cover Chalmers in the episode on the Extended Mind, and was going to talk about philosophical zombies,. but I’ll save fire on those. The Exhauted Places are less interesting if the humans have become, like faeries, p-zomies. Still, as an end state, you might like to look into the idea yourself.
What if these worlds are just being drained by a Faerie that has so sucked vitality from them that the humans appear to lack any motivation toward passion? They have made the humans a colony that produces more humans ,and it feeds steadily on their dreams and desires such that they never can desire to be free of it? A vast vampire feeding on a world, like the Red in Mythic Europe, but instead of feeding on the vitality of nature, it eats the creative force in humans? Can the spore of such a thing come to Mythic Europe? It appears it can send its seeds between worlds. Can Merinita magi fight it on its home ground? Can magi from the Mythic Middle Ages be thrust forward into the time of the dark mills of Blake, to resist the creature on the cusp of its victory?
This week, five stories from the Exhausted World. Thanks to Rosslyn Carlyle and Thomas A. Copeland for the Librivox recordings used in the podcast.
THE CITY
In time as well as space my fancy roams far from here. It led me once to the edge of certain cliffs that were low and red and rose up out of a desert: a little way off in the desert there was a city. It was evening, and I sat and watched the city.
Presently I saw men by threes and fours come softly stealing out of that city’s gate to the number of about twenty. I heard the hum of men’s voices speaking at evening.
“It is well they are gone,” they said. “It is well they are gone. We can do business now. It is well they are gone.” And the men that had left the city sped away over the sand and so passed into the twilight.
“Who are these men?” I said to my glittering leader.
“The poets,” my fancy answered. “The poets and artists.”
“Why do they steal away?” I said to him. “And why are the people glad that they have gone?”
He said: “It must be some doom that is going to fall on the city, something has warned them and they have stolen away. Nothing may warn the people.”
I heard the wrangling voices, glad with commerce, rise up from the city. And then I also departed, for there was an ominous look on the face of the sky.
And only a thousand years later I passed that way, and there was nothing, even among the weeds, of what had been that city.
THE SONGLESS COUNTRY
The poet came unto a great country in which there were no songs. And he lamented gently for the nation that had not any little foolish songs to sing to itself at evening.
And at last he said: “I will make for them myself some little foolish songs so that they may be merry in the lanes and happy by the fireside.” And for some days he made for them aimless songs such as maidens sing on the hills in the older happier countries.
Then he went to some of that nation as they sat weary with the work of the day and said to them: “I have made you some aimless songs out of the small unreasonable legends, that are somewhat akin to the wind in the vales of my childhood; and you may care to sing them in your disconsolate evenings.”
And they said to him:
“If you think we have time for that sort of nonsense nowadays you cannot know much of the progress of modern commerce.”
And then the poet wept for he said: “Alas! They are damned.”
THE GIANT POPPY
I dreamt that I went back to the hills I knew, whence on a clear day you can see the walls of Ilion and the plains of Roncesvalles. There used to be woods along the tops of those hills with clearings in them where the moonlight fell, and there when no one watched the fairies danced.
But there were no woods when I went back, no fairies nor distant glimpse of Ilion or plains of Roncesvalles, only one giant poppy waved in the wind, and as it waved it hummed “Remember not.” And by its oak-like stem a poet sat, dressed like a shepherd and playing an ancient tune softly upon a pipe. I asked him if the fairies had passed that way or anything olden.
He said: “The poppy has grown apace and is killing gods and fairies. Its fumes are suffocating the world, and its roots drain it of its beautiful strength.” And I asked him why he sat on the hills I knew, playing an olden tune.
And he answered: “Because the tune is bad for the poppy, which would otherwise grow more swiftly; and because if the brotherhood of which I am one were to cease to pipe on the hills men would stray over the world and be lost or come to terrible ends. We think we have saved Agamemnon.”
Then he fell to piping again that olden tune, while the wind among the poppy’s sleepy petals murmured “Remember not. Remember not.”
THE MESSENGERS
One wandering nigh Parnassus chasing hares heard the high Muses.
“Take us a message to the Golden Town.”
Thus sang the Muses.
But the man said: “They do not call to me. Not to such as me speak the Muses.”
And the Muses called him by name.
“Take us a message,” they said, “to the Golden Town.”
And the man was downcast for he would have chased hares.
And the Muses called again.
And when whether in valleys or on high crags of the hills he still heard the Muses he went at last to them and heard their message, though he would fain have left it to other men and chased the fleet hares still in happy valleys.
And they gave him a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds as only the Muses can carve. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And the man went from that place and dressed in scarlet silks as befitted one that came from the high Muses. And through the gateway of the Golden Town he ran and cried his message, and his cloak floated behind him. All silent sat the wise men and the aged, they of the Golden Town; cross-legged they sat before their houses reading from parchments a message of the Muses that they sent long before.
And the young man cried his message from the Muses.
And they rose up and said: “Thou art not from the Muses. Otherwise spake they.” And they stoned him and he died.
And afterwards they carved his message upon gold; and read it in their temples on holy days.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? They sent another messenger to the Golden Town. And they gave him a wand of ivory to carry in his hand with all the beautiful stories of the world wondrously carved thereon. And only the Muses could have carved it. “By this,” they said, “they shall know that you come from the Muses.”
And he came through the gateway of the Golden Town with the message he had for its people. And they rose up at once in the Golden street, they rose from reading the message that they had carved upon gold. “The last who came,” they said, “came with a wreath of laurels carved out of emeralds, as only the Muses can carve. You are not from the Muses.” And even as they had stoned the last so also they stoned him. And afterwards they carved his message on gold and laid it up in their temples.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? Even yet once again they sent a messenger under the gateway into the Golden Town. And for all that he wore a garland of gold that the high Muses gave him, a garland of kingcups soft and yellow on his head, yet fashioned of pure gold and by whom but the Muses, yet did they stone him in the Golden Town. But they had the message, and what care the Muses?
And yet they will not rest, for some while since I heard them call to me.
“Go take our message,” they said, “unto the Golden Town.”
But I would not go. And they spake a second time. “Go take our message,” they said.
And still I would not go, and they cried out a third time: “Go take our message.”
And though they cried a third time I would not go. But morning and night they cried and through long evenings.
When will the Muses rest? When are they weary? And when they would not cease to call to me I went to them and I said: “The Golden Town is the Golden Town no longer. They have sold their pillars for brass and their temples for money, they have made coins out of their golden doors. It is become a dark town full of trouble, there is no ease in its streets, beauty has left it and the old songs are gone.”
“Go take our message,” they cried.
And I said to the high Muses: “You do not understand. You have no message for the Golden Town, the holy city no longer.”
“Go take our message,” they cried.
“What is your message?” I said to the high Muses.
And when I heard their message I made excuses, dreading to speak such things in the Golden Town; and again they bade me go.
And I said: “I will not go. None will believe me.”
And still the Muses cry to me all night long.
They do not understand. How should they know?
WHAT WE HAVE COME TO
When the advertiser saw the cathedral spires over the downs in the distance, he looked at them and wept.
“If only,” he said, “this were an advertisement of Beefo, so nice, so nutritious, try it in your soup, ladies like it.”
Games From Folktales 