This was produced for a Hallowe’en Week post-a-day, but when that crossed over with the Magonomia Bestiary Kickstarter, I moved it to September. In the episode I mention “older episodes” based on a book called “Haunted Homes”. Those haven’t been released yet: they are pencilled in for September 22, September 29, and October 13. I recorded them while out of my gourd on COVID and painkillers, so I really do not know what they contain. I recall vaguely spending a lot of time barracking for the screaming skull in one of the stories and that’s it.
John Henry Ingram, who wrote the following piece, was one of Poe’s early biographers. He’s the first who didn’t want to destroy Poe’s reputation. He claims that the following story is the source of the Masque of the Red Death. I can’t verify that, and it is out of scope for Magonomia because it is set in Scotland, but I want to share it because it can be transplanted easily to other sites, in either Magonomia or Ars Magica.
The reader is Lorraine Carey: thanks to her and her Librivox production team. I’ll be popping in with brief explanations as we go, and I’ll shade them in bold.
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Even the ruins of this ancient border-fortress have disappeared, and its site is, or was recently, occupied by a large prison. But time was in Scottish history that Jedburgh boasted of an important and even magnificent castle, that was the favourite residence of royalty. William the Lion and Alexander the Second often graced it with their regal presence, but it was left to Alexander the Third to still further enhance its glory and carry its splendour to its highest pitch.
Alexander the Third, for clarity, reigned from 1249 to 1286, so well within the Ars Magica period.
The childless monarch, having determined upon marrying again, ordered the wedding festival to be kept at Jed-burgh, and there, in October 1285, he was united in marriage to Jolande, or, as some style her, Joleta, daughter of the Count of Dreux.
Notwithstanding the high character borne by King Alexander, and the universal festivity and jollification, melancholy forebodings were not wanting on the occasion of this wedding. The hilarity, indeed, of the royal host and his guests was destroyed, or at all events overshadowed, by a circumstance by many deemed supernatural, and of which no explanation has ever yet been afforded. The occurrence appears to have given Edgar Poe a hint which he expanded into the tale, if such it may be termed, of The Masque of the Red Death.
You’ll note the author drops the “Allan” there. Edgar Poe was his birth name, and he gained Allan as a middle name at his christening when he was informally adopted by a couple called the Allans. The modern habit of always writing his middle name had not yet congealed when Ingram was writing.
Whilst the wedding revelry was at its height, a figure was suddenly observed by the startled guests, gliding through their midst. In the poet’s imaginative words, the figure is described as “tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat.
“Who dares ?” he makes the royal host demand, “insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him, that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise from the battlements!” At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of the group of pale courtiers in the direction of the intruder but, from a certain nameless awe with which the mad assumption of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there was found none who put forth hand to seize him, so that while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, shrank from the centre of the room to the walls, he made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step which had distinguished him from the first.”
Ultimately, the revellers take courage, and, “seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless,” they “gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form !” Less terrifying, yet not the less suggestive, are the lines of Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels, when recounting the ill-omened tale :
“In the mid revels, the first ominous night
Heywood, Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels
Of their espousals, when the room shone bright
With lighted tapers—the king and the queen leading
The curious measures, lords and ladies treading
The self-same strains—the king looks back by chance,
And spies a strange intruder fill the dance;
Namely, a mere anatomy, quite bare,
His naked limbs both without flesh and hair,
(As we decipher Death,) who stalks about
Keeping true measure till the dance be out.”
Nothing further is known of this spectral appearance, which had glided so suddenly into the midst of the startled revellers, and had as suddenly and as mysteriously vanished. But everyone felt that it was the portent of some great approaching calamity. Thomas the Rhymer, the famous seer and prophet, informed the Earl of March, in the presence of several persons, that the 16th of March should be “the stormiest day that ever was witnessed in Scotland.”
Thomas the Rhymer was a bard taken to Faerie, who had escaped. He left behind a series of writings which were the Nostradamus of his day. His story is where people get the weird idea that Faerieland pays a rent to Hell, I believe.
The day came clear and mild, and the scoffers laughed the prophecy to scorn, when suddenly came the news that the King was dead. “That is the storm which I meant,” said Thomas,” and there was never tempest which will bring more ill luck to Scotland.” The seer was right.
Alexander the Third, riding in the dusk, between Burntisland and Kinghorn, was thrown from his horse over a precipice, and killed, in his forty-fifth year, a few months after his marriage. When the sad news spread, causing distraction among the people, and civil war between the claimants to the vacant throne, many thought of the dire omen which had appeared at the King’s wedding, and deemed that it had been sent to be token his speedy and premature death.
Games From Folktales 