Hind Horn (Bookhounds)

Last post before the holidays! No post next week. Next post will be the first week of January 2025!

Hind Horn is a Scottish traditional ballad with many, many variations. The story goes that Hind Horn, the hero of the tale, is given a ring as a token of love from the King's Daughter. The ring has diamonds, and she tells him that when those diamonds grow pale and lose their luster, it means her love for him is fading.

They part. He notices that the diamonds are in fact fading. He returns to the kingdom to find that she is being married to another. He approaches the wedding party disguised as a beggar and contrives to show her the ring. When she sees it, she offers to go with him, beggar or no, and they go off together.

This legend is one of the reasons why it became traditional that, should a beggar come to a house where there is a wedding, the beggar be given whatever reasonable thing they ask for.

With that in mind:

Hind Horn in Winter

The Hounds find a job lot of old ballads, loosely compiled, in one of the boxes from the last auction.

On inspection, most of them seem to have come from a house sale somewhere up North, and the Hounds find with the ballads notes on someone's academic work. The parson, or some other minor church functionary, was amusing themselves between sermons by collecting, transcribing and examining old ballads. Most of them seem to have been local to wherever the parson was (that part's not clear) and some of them seem to be much older than first glance. 

If the Hounds examine the documents very closely they find (1 point) that one of them is in fact a 15th Century manuscript, 3 pages long, apparently a version of Hind Horn written/transcribed by Charles of Orléans. God alone knows how that treasure found its way into an obscure parson's trove. 

It's not quite a Windfall but it is a very valuable find. 

The air is chilly, the mornings frosty, and it's getting more and more difficult to heat the shop. As winter draws ever nearer the Hounds find three customers all determined to purchase (or steal) Hind Horn: A Scot cleric, Andrew Baird, lean and corpselike; a young man, John Egan, poor as dirt and importunate; a young woman, Hattie Keeble, an upper middle class coquette. They all want Hind Horn. They seem to know, without telling, that the Hounds have it. If one of them gets it, the other two will be outraged and cause all sorts of scenes. Diplomacy is called for ...

Just as this becomes a problem, a peculiar item turns up in lost property: a diamond ring. A wedding band. Nobody recognizes it or knows how it ended up on the shop floor.

Option One: Dusty Memories. None of this is real. There's a Dust Thing attached to Hind Horn which, in fact, is not a 15th Century original but an 18th Century forgery. It's quite a good forgery, so it will pass muster for all but the most eagle-eyed of experts. The Dust Thing is drawing on the Hind Horn story to create ring, Baird, Egan - but not Keeble. Hattie is real enough. She saw the document at the auction but lost out to the Hounds, and now she wants another bite at the apple. 

Option Two: Dead Men's Tales. Baird is in fact what's left of the parson who, all those years ago, compiled the documents. Baird was also an experienced Dreamer and picked up some very peculiar, Mythos-oriented, views on the origins of human folklore. Baird became convinced that stories like Hind Horn are actually about Mythos narratives, and spent his life trying to prove his thesis. His life, and beyond; his compulsion leads him to defy death itself. Egan, Keeble, the ring and the fable are all dreams, part of Baird's delusion, though he believes they're real enough. If this goes too far, the shop may find itself incorporated into the dead parson's fantasies.

Option Three: Hind Horn Redux. The document was never written by Charles but it is a 15th century manuscript, a Mythos text hidden in a literary code. It is in fact dedicated to Gol-Goroth, the Fisher; it is the Old One who created the ring, which is a holy thing. Gol-Goroth uses text and ring as lures, and it has three on its hook: Baird, Egan and Keeble. Possibly the Hounds as well, if they get too close. If Gol-Goroth manages to lure someone close enough, that person becomes part of the narrative, and the text grows ever longer. Those too close to the story begin to dream of cold climes, far, far colder than London, and of peculiar dark mountains where strange treasures are hid. The text of Hind Horn is part finished; if Gol-Goroth gets all three - Baird, Egan and Keeble - then the text will be complete. Much more valuable, too, from the Hounds' perspective.

That's it for this week. Enjoy! 

 

Vagabond Voyaging (RPG all)

I've been reading the saddest book.

It's not the book's fault. It's meant to be a jolly romp, all about holidays and where you can go, how much you're likely to spend, how long you'll be. I picked it up at the Argosy for a nominal sum, not expecting to be brought to tears. 

Picture this: a stunning cruise across the ocean, from some coastal US town to wherever you care to go. Nothing fancy; no Cunard prices here. This is holiday on the cheap. This is around the world on a buck a day.

This is Vagabond Voyaging: The Story of Freighter Travel, written by Larry Nixon, press agent, newsman and travel author, he who wrote See Canada Next. Published by Little, Brown & Company.

In 1938.

He published See Canada Next in 1940 and What Will Happen And What To Do When War Comes in 1939. I admit, I'm tempted to seek out that last one. I'd be very interested to see what Nixon had to say to travelers in the Bogart/Casablanca era. 

I don't have much information about Larry himself. His name is sometimes given (on Ye Olde Internet) as Laurence A Nixon but I can't help but wonder if that's a typo, since there's a much more famous gent with that name and Vagabond doesn't give him as Laurence anywhere in the text. The copyright's in Larry's name, not Laurence. To my knowledge these are the only three books he ever wrote, though he probably published plenty of articles in magazines and papers.

This one flew off the shelves. My edition is a fourth reprint, November 1938. It first came out in July of that year and was republished three times in 1938 alone.

It probably would have been republished many more times were it not for ... circumstances beyond the author's control.

You hear about girls fresh out of high school who catch a boat across the Pacific to visit their brothers stationed with the Naval Air. You know full well what's going to happen to that brother in short order, but in the book it's all smiles and dances with handsome cadets. 

But the story that really got me was the one about the young bride who goes all the way across the waters to meet her Royal Navy beau. "'The Captain gave me a dinner,' years from now she'll tell her guests at tea. Her grandchildren will hear: 'All the passengers were so nice, they gave me presents when I left the boat.' Now you understand the Why of the gifts for the departing guest. You're attending a shower for a bride! She's up to reply, poor girl, she is embarrassed, but happy ... 'And you must all come and visit us in our little home on May Road, the Peak.'"  

The Peak in Hong Kong. 

Yeah, those grandchildren might be a little theoretical.

It comes to something when you wish you had a time machine to tell a bride to be to be careful about having children in the first year or two of marriage.

People say Americans don't like to travel but, if this book and its four printings in four months is any indication, there was a time when they were incredibly adventurous. 

Every single freighter that pulled into an American port kept a half-dozen births or more aside for passengers. That argues insatiable demand. Moreover, it was cheap as chips; round the world on a couple dollars a day. The biggest constraint, as Nixon points out, isn't money but time. It takes weeks or months to cross the ocean in a freighter. But, if you have the time, you can go round the world. Nobody's stopping you.

Money really isn't a constraint, if you're determined. Remember my other bit of book loot from a while back, Head-Hunting in the Solomon Islands? This is exactly what those two kids were doing. They got on a ship headed roughly in the right direction and, when they needed extra cash, they painted a few portraits. They saw it all and paid almost nothing for the privilege.

The people who boarded those ships were willing to go wherever the ship went, because there was no absolute guarantee that a ship bound for Toulouse wouldn't, say, be redirected to an African port on the way. These were jobbing vessels, after all; they went where the cargo was. If that happened and you were on board your options were get off or go to Africa.

They ate what the crew ate. A Japanese ship served Japanese food, and so on. There was no all-day buffet, nor was there separate dining. You ate with the crew. They'll do their best for you, but they won't change their meals just because you're used to whatever they serve in Peoria.

You're traveling on almost nothing. This is an age before passports and what we now think of as international banking. You carry hard currency and letters of credit. You carry letters of introduction to prominent citizens at your proposed destination, so you can prove you are who you say you are. 

If you want to, you can just vanish. 

Honestly, it's the kind of book that changes your whole perspective. Without it you might be tempted to think that the airplane opened up the world. It did no such thing. The world was already wide open. Moreover, it was open to anyone, regardless of income or class. It was the war that closed down travel, not opportunity.

Do you need this book? No, absolutely not. But if you're a Keeper looking to run a travel scenario set anywhen from the 1900s to the 1940s, this is the kind of resource you'll find useful. It has destinations, costs, travel times, accommodations, plus a decent picture of the kind of thing you'll find when you get wherever it is you're going. 

It's worth a trip to the library, put it to you that way.

That's it for this week!

The Perils of Witchcraft (Bookhounds of London)

Some housekeeping: no post next week, as I'm off-island wandering through the bowels of New York.

Also, a question to the masses: what GUMSHOE title would you like me to see write about in 2025? Bookhounds, NBA, Trail, something else?

Now, an extract from the Folklore of Guernsey (Marie De Garis, 2014 reprint, original 1975):

Until the First World War, the purlieus around the town church constituted a popular pied-a-terre for several charlatans and sorchiers. These were largely patronized by country people who, sure that they were being bewitched by certain neighbors or acquaintances, would visit those town quacks in hope of being given some counter-charm or advice ... The credulous wife of a well-known farmer residing in the higher parishes, used to be a regular visitor to one of these consultants, a certain Mrs. H. The wife's husband bore one of the most respected and honored names in the Channel Islands and was a man of standing in his parish. The foolish woman gave Mrs. H such huge sums of money that she beggared her husband entirely. The shame of being declared bankrupt so affected her husband that he hanged himself. The house was broken up. The mother went to live with her son but, so far from having learned her lesson, still continued to visit the town crone, passing her son's money to her until she nearly ruined him also. Her two unmarried daughters had to fend for themselves. One followed her father's example and committed suicide, while the other went to work as a maid somewhere ... When the mother finally died, her children felt so bitter about the ruin that she brought upon them that not one of them even wanted her portrait. 

Purlieu: The area directly around or outside of a place.

The Town Church of St. Peter's Port, aka Town Church of St Peter, Apostle & Martyr, dates back to the 1400s in its current form. There has been a church on that spot since the year 1000, more or less, and the building's history probably goes back to the Romans.

It's extremely close to the Market and there's a pub, the Albion House, a mere 18 inches away. That pub has been there since the 1700s, so when the writer talks about the church's purlieus, she probably means in or near the pub and what is now the market.   

St. Peter Port is the capital of Guernsey and, at the time of Bookhounds, it would still have been much as it was for centuries prior: a sleepy fishing port, occasionally enlivened by smuggling and war. It's watched over by Castle Cornet which, again during Bookhounds, is largely reduced to watching over the pond for toy boats built nearby, in the 1880s.

All that said:

Mrs. H.'s Library 

The Hounds buy a job lot in an auction, only to discover that most of the books they bought in that box of miscellanea belonged to a notorious fraud from Guernsey. 

Mrs. H, a well-known character in Guernsey circles, recently passed, and what's left of her family wanted to make sure that her memory was properly expunged. This meant, among other things, disposing of her belongings outside Guernsey. They could have burned it all, but her children share one thing with their parent: they're far too covetous to pass up a chance to make a shilling.  

This means her hand-written witchcraft journals and the scraps of knowledge that Mrs. H apparently picked up from a genuine Mythos text are now the Hounds' stock. 

As books these texts aren't worth much; about 1 point stock, more or less, History (witchcraft). If the Mythos text Mrs. H cribbed from could be found, that would be worth more. That, presumably, is in Guernsey. Lord alone knows precisely where, or even if it still exists.

Soon after the Hounds buy the job lot a widow from Guernsey turns up at their shop, a Mrs. De Beauvoir. She was a regular client of Mrs. H and, since the Hounds now have Mrs. H's books, they must be as knowledgeable as Mrs. H used to be. Mrs. De Beauvoir is being plagued by witchcraft. Can the Hounds help?

Options:

• Ghost Hunters: Mrs. De Beauvoir has driven her family to penury thanks to her obsessions and she brings with her a collection of ghosts, all of whom hate her guts. That's why she thinks she's being plagued; she is, just not by witches. If the investigators aren't careful, these ghosts will turn their attention to the Hounds and the shop. When that happens, Reversals are sure to follow.
• Crawling Chaos: Mrs. H isn't as dead as people like to think. She picked up just enough knowledge to become a kind of crawling one after death, only to find that Guernsey isn't as accommodating to her after death as it was during life. The undead Mrs. H is looking for a new home, and as 'Mrs. De Beauvoir' she's hoping that the Hounds will be gullible enough to assist.
• Family Pressures: Mrs. De Beauvoir thinks that her family doesn't know that she's stolen their savings to make a trip to London to see the Hounds. They very much do, and they want that money back, along with anything that Mrs. De Beauvoir might have given the Hounds. Break-ins, ambushes, tearful scenes at auction houses in front of God and everybody - anything is possible. This may cumulate in an accidental Megapolisomantic effect, as a slice of Guernsey interacting with London mystic forces is just the kind of spice that creates a very peculiar soup.

That's it for this week. Enjoy!