H.P. Lovecraft. The Very Old Folk
The Very Old Folk
by H.P. Lovecraft
From a letter written to "Melmoth" (Donald Wandrei) on Thursday, November
3, 1927
It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of
Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must
have been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a
senatorial proconsul instead of a praetorian legate of Augustus, and the
day was the first before the Kalends of November. The hills rose scarlet
and gold to the north of the little town, and the westering sun shone
ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and plaster buildings of the
dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus some distance to the east.
Groups of citizens - broad-browed Roman colonists and coarse-haired
Romanised natives, together with obvious hybrids of the two strains, alike
clad in cheap woollen togas - and sprinklings of helmeted legionaries and
coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the circumambient Vascones -
all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by some vague and
ill-defined uneasiness.
I myself had just alighted from a litter, which the Illyrian bearers
seemed to have brought in some haste from Calagurris, across the Iberus to
the southward. It appeared that I was a provincial quaestor named L.
Caelius Rufus, and that I had been summoned by the proconsul, P.
Scribonius Libo, who had come from Tarraco some days before. The soldiers
were the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion, under the military tribune Sex.
Asellius; and the legatus of the whole region, Cn. Balbutius, had also
come from Calagurris, where the permanent station was.
The cause of the conference was a horror that brooded on the hills. All
the townsfolk were frightened, and had begged the presence of a cohort
from Calagurris. It was the Terrible Season of the autumn, and the wild
people in the mountains were preparing for the frightful ceremonies which
only rumour told of in the towns. They were the very old folk who dwelt
higher up in the hills and spoke a choppy language which the Vascones
could not understand. One seldom saw them; but a few times a year they
sent down little yellow, squint-eyed messengers (who looked like
Scythians) to trade with the merchants by means of gestures, and every
spring and autumn they held the infamous rites on the peaks, their
howlings and altar-fires throwing terror into the villages. Always the
same - the night before the Kalends of Maius and the night before the
Kalends of November. Townsfolk would disappear just before these nights,
and would never be heard of again. And there were whispers that the native
shepherds and farmers were not ill-disposed toward the very old folk -
that more than one thatched hut was vacant before midnight on the two
hideous Sabbaths.
This year the horror was very great, for the people knew that the wrath of
the very old folk was upon Pompelo. Three months previously five of the
little squint-eyed traders had come down from the hills, and in a market
brawl three of them had been killed. The remaining two had gone back
wordlessly to their mountains - and this autumn not a single villager had
disappeared. There was menace in this immunity. It was not like the very
old folk to spare their victims at the Sabbath. It was too good to be
normal, and the villagers were afraid.
For many nights there had been a hollow drumming on the hills, and at last
the aedile Tib. Annaeus Stilpo (half native in blood) had sent to
Balbutius at Calagurris for a cohort to stamp out the Sabbath on the
terrible night. Balbutius had carelessly refused, on the ground that the
villagers' fears were empty, and that the loathsome rites of hill folk
were of no concern to the Roman People unless our own citizens were
menaced. I, however, who seemed to be a close friend of Balbutius, had
disagreed with him; averring that I had studied deeply in the black
forbidden lore, and that I believed the very old folk capable of visiting
almost any nameless doom upon the town, which after all was a Roman
settlement and contained a great number of our citizens. The complaining
aedile's own mother Helvia was a pure Roman, the daughter of M. Helvius
Cinna, who had come over with Scipio's army. Accordingly I had sent a
slave - a nimble little Greek called Antipater - to the proconsul with
letters, and Scribonius had heeded my plea and ordered Balbutius to send
his fifth cohort, under Asellius, to Pompelo; entering the hills at dusk
on the eve of November's Kalends and stamping out whatever nameless orgies
he might find - bringing such prisoners as he might take to Tarraco for
the next propraetor's court. Balbutius, however, had protested, so that
more correspondence had ensued. I had written so much to the proconsul
that he had become gravely interested, and had resolved to make a personal
inquiry into the horror.
He had at length proceeded to Pompelo with his lictors and attendants;
there hearing enough rumours to be greatly impressed and disturbed, and
standing firmly by his order for the Sabbath's extirpation. Desirous of
conferring with one who had studied the subject, he ordered me to
accompany Asellius' cohort - and Balbutius had also come along to press
his adverse advice, for he honestly believed that drastic military action
would stir up a dangerous sentiment of unrest amongst the Vascones both
tribal and settled.
So here we all were in the mystic sunset of the autumn hills - old
Scribonius Libo in his toga praetexta, the golden light glancing on his
shiny bald head and wrinkled hawk face, Balbutius with his gleaming helmet
and breastplate, blue-shaven lips compressed in conscientiously dogged
opposition, young Asellius with his polished greaves and superior sneer,
and the curious throng of townsfolk, legionaries, tribesmen, peasants,
lictors, slaves, and attendants. I myself seemed to wear a common toga,
and to have no especially distinguishing characteristic. And everywhere
horror brooded. The town and country folk scarcely dared speak aloud, and
the men of Libo's entourage, who had been there nearly a week, seemed to
have caught something of the nameless dread. Old Scribonius himself looked
very grave, and the sharp voices of us later comers seemed to hold
something of curious inappropriateness, as in a place of death or the
temple of some mystic god.
We entered the praetorium and held grave converse. Balbutius pressed his
objections, and was sustained by Asellius, who appeared to hold all the
natives in extreme contempt while at the same time deeming it inadvisable
to excite them. Both soldiers maintained that we could better afford to
antagonise the minority of colonists and civilised natives by inaction,
than to antagonise a probable majority of tribesmen and cottagers by
stamping out the dread rites.
I, on the other hand, renewed my demand for action, and offered to
accompany the cohort on any expedition it might undertake. I pointed out
that the barbarous Vascones were at best turbulent and uncertain, so that
skirmishes with them were inevitable sooner or later whichever course we
might take; that they had not in the past proved dangerous adversaries to
our legions, and that it would ill become the representatives of the Roman
People to suffer barbarians to interfere with a course which the justice
and prestige of the Republic demanded. That, on the other hand, the
successful administration of a province depended primarily upon the safety
and good-will of the civilised element in whose hands the local machinery
of commerce and prosperity reposed, and in whose veins a large mixture of
our own Italian blood coursed. These, though in numbers they might form a
minority, were the stable element whose constancy might be relied on, and
whose cooperation would most firmly bind the province to the Imperium of
the Senate and the Roman People. It was at once a duty and an advantage to
afford them the protection due to Roman citizens; even (and here I shot a
sarcastic look at Balbutius and Asellius) at the expense of a little
trouble and activity, and of a slight interruption of the draught-playing
and cock-fighting at the camp in Calagurris. That the danger to the town
and inhabitants of Pompelo was a real one, I could not from my studies
doubt. I had read many scrolls out of Syria and AEgyptus, and the cryptic
towns of Etruria, and had talked at length with the bloodthirsty priest of
Diana Aricina in his temple in the woods bordering Lacus Nemorensis. There
were shocking dooms that might be called out of the hills on the Sabbaths;
dooms which ought not to exist within the territories of the Roman People;
and to permit orgies of the kind known to prevail at Sabbaths would be but
little in consonance with the customs of those whose forefathers, A.
Postumius being consul, had executed so many Roman citizens for the
practice of the Bacchanalia - a matter kept ever in memory by the Senatus
Consultum de Bacchanalibus, graven upon bronze and set open to every eye.
Checked in time, before the progress of the rites might evoke anything
with which the iron of a Roman pilum might not be able to deal, the
Sabbath would not be too much for the powers of a single cohort. Only
participants need be apprehended, and the sparing of a great number of
mere spectators would considerably lessen the resentment which any of the
sympathising country folk might feel. In short, both principle and policy
demanded stern action; and I could not doubt but that Publius Scribonius,
bearing in mind the dignity and obligations of the Roman People, would
adhere to his plan of despatching the cohort, me accompanying, despite
such objections as Balbutius and Asellius - speaking indeed more like
provincials than Romans - might see fit to offer and multiply.
The slanting sun was now very low, and the whole hushed town seemed draped
in an unreal and malign glamour. Then P. Scribonius the proconsul
signified his approval of my words, and stationed me with the cohort in
the provisional capacity of a centurio primipilus; Balbutius and Asellius
assenting, the former with better grace than the latter. As twilight fell
on the wild autumnal slopes, a measured, hideous beating of strange drums
floated down from afar in terrible rhythm. Some few of the legionarii
shewed timidity, but sharp commands brought them into line, and the whole
cohort was soon drawn up on the open plain east of the circus. Libo
himself, as well as Balbutius, insisted on accompanying the cohort; but
great difficulty was suffered in getting a native guide to point out the
paths up the mountain. Finally a young man named Vercellius, the son of
pure Roman parents, agreed to take us at least past the foothills. We
began to march in the new dusk, with the thin silver sickle of a young
moon trembling over the woods on our left. That which disquieted us most
was the fact that the Sabbath was to be held at all. Reports of the coming
cohort must have reached the hills, and even the lack of a final decision
could not make the rumour less alarming - yet there were the sinister
drums as of yore, as if the celebrants had some peculiar reason to be
indifferent whether or not the forces of the Roman People marched against
them. The sound grew louder as we entered a rising gap in the hills, steep
wooded banks enclosing us narrowly on either side, and displaying
curiously fantastic tree-trunks in the light of our bobbing torches. All
were afoot save Libo, Balbutius, Asellius, two or three of the
centuriones, and myself, and at length the way became so steep and narrow
that those who had horses were forced to leave them; a squad of ten men
being left to guard them, though robber bands were not likely to be abroad
on such a night of terror. Once in a while it seemed as though we detected
a skulking form in the woods nearby, and after a half-hour's climb the
steepness and narrowness of the way made the advance of so great a body of
men - over 300, all told - exceedingly cumbrous and difficult. Then with
utter and horrifying suddenness we heard a frightful sound from below. It
was from the tethered horses - they had screamed, not neighed, but
screamed... and there was no light down there, nor the sound of any human
thing, to shew why they had done so. At the same moment bonfires blazed
out on all the peaks ahead, so that terror seemed to lurk equally well
before and behind us. Looking for the youth Vercellius, our guide, we
found only a crumpled heap weltering in a pool of blood. In his hand was a
short sword snatched from the belt of D. Vibulanus, a subcenturio, and on
his face was such a look of terror that the stoutest veterans turned pale
at the sight. He had killed himself when the horses screamed... he, who
had been born and lived all his life in that region, and knew what men
whispered about the hills. All the torches now began to dim, and the cries
of frightened legionaries mingled with the unceasing screams of the
tethered horses. The air grew perceptibly colder, more suddenly so than is
usual at November's brink, and seemed stirred by terrible undulations
which I could not help connecting with the beating of huge wings. The
whole cohort now remained at a standstill, and as the torches faded I
watched what I thought were fantastic shadows outlined in the sky by the
spectral luminosity of the Via Lactea as it flowed through Perseus,
Cassiopeia, Cepheus, and Cygnus. Then suddenly all the stars were blotted
from the sky - even bright Deneb and Vega ahead, and the lone Altair and
Fomalhaut behind us. And as the torches died out altogether, there
remained above the stricken and shrieking cohort only the noxious and
horrible altar-flames on the towering peaks; hellish and red, and now
silhouetting the mad, leaping, and colossal forms of such nameless beasts
as had never a Phrygian priest or Campanian grandam whispered of in the
wildest of furtive tales. And above the nighted screaming of men and
horses that daemonic drumming rose to louder pitch, whilst an ice-cold
wind of shocking sentience and deliberateness swept down from those
forbidden heights and coiled about each man separately, till all the
cohort was struggling and screaming in the dark, as if acting out the fate
of Laocoo:n and his sons. Only old Scribonius Libo seemed resigned. He
uttered words amidst the screaming, and they echo still in my ears.
"Malitia vetus - malitia vetus est ... venit ... tandem venit ..."1
And then I waked. It was the most vivid dream in years, drawing upon
wells of the subconscious long untouched and forgotten. Of the fate of
that cohort no record exists, but the town at least was saved - for
encyclopaedias tell of the survival of Pompelo to this day, under the
modern Spanish name of Pompelona...
Yrs for Gothick Supremacy -
C . IVLIVS . VERVS . MAXIMINVS.
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1"Wickness of old ... it is wickeness of old ... happened ... happened at
last ..."