Ringstones and Other Curious Tales

by Sarban (Pseudonym), John William Wall

Sewn hardback printed and bound by Antony Rowe in yellow wibalin cloth stamped in copper,with yellow and black head and tailband and yellow silk ribbon marker.
350 numbered copies.
Out of print.

Contents: A Christmas Story/ Capra/ Calmahain/ The Khan/ Ringstones/ Number Fourteen

The five original stories of the collection are here augmented by the first ever publication of “Number Fourteen”, a newly discovered conte cruel. - Uniquely disquieting short stories.


Ringstones and Other Curious Tales ‘have a curiously-imparted quality of strangeness; the feeling of having strayed over the border of experience into a world where other dimensions operate.’ So said one of the original reviewers of these unique stories, first published in 1951.

The title story is set on the Northumberland moors, where Daphne Hazel appears to cross the boundaries of time, becoming involved with terrifying personalities from the mysterious past. ‘Calmahain’ deals delicately and imaginatively with two children’s attempts at escape from the grim realities of the Home Front during World War Two. Sarban shows himself equally at home in the Middle East, where, against an authentic background of expatriate life, three further stories explore ancient legends with spine-chilling results.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Weird Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

A pseudonym used by John William Wall.

Reviews

[Patrick.G.P · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calmahain:
Tells the story of two children’s friendship under a strict family during world war 2. The two children create a strange, magical reality they revert to when they are playing together. Suddenly this fantastical realm takes on a sense of urgency and the two children work together to build a wooden boat to help the inhabitants of the strange imaginative world.

The sense of urgency that drives this story is wonderful, and it can be read both as an exploration of children’s vivid imagination in the face of grim reality as well as an exploration of what lingers behind the thin veil of reality. The story holds elements that reminded me of Machen and Clark Ashton Smith, the story not only dwells around the incredible fantasy that the two children manage to come up with but the sheer determined escapism from their cruel parents and the air raids from the German bombers that seem to loom ever in the horizon.

Ringstones:
It begins as these tales often do, with two bookish friends, pipes, beer, and a mysterious manuscript. I love the atmosphere and how Sarban describes the scenery around Ringstones, wild and untouched, something a Roman soldier would have encountered. There is clarity over the prose and narrative in the best of Sarban’s tales I find hard to explain. The lingering sexual undertones and dominating power play between the protagonist and Nuaman adds a whole layer to the story and merges perfectly with the notion of old-world mythology.

Ringstones is an incredibly atmospheric piece of strange fiction, Sarban wonderfully weaves old world mythology together to form a picture of something older than memory surviving in the forgotten, lonely places of the world. The middle eastern myths he adds to the story works very well in merging with the British and Roman legends that form the backdrop of the tale and adds further mystery into the story. The ending is truly masterful, playing with the readers' expectations and trappings of the strange tale.

Number 14:
Of the Sarban tales, I’ve read this easily has the eeriest atmosphere lingering over it. The ambiance of the house and the queerness of the handicapped girl and her mother feels almost tangible as I read the story and Sarban draws you into the strange mystery of the occupant of Number 14. Dwelling on the uncanniness of the narrative, he never lets the reader know more than a few dreadful hints. As with Ringstones, the ending of this tale is near perfect for me, bringing to mind the more sinister tales of Robert Aickman.

The versatility of the tales in this collection shows what a brilliant author Sarban was, and that these truly are curious tales indeed. In his more horror-oriented tales he seems most easily compared to Aickman or De la Mare (which I believe I’ve mentioned before) but the deep sense of mystery, mythology, and the ineffable that lingers over his tales more often than not feel uniquely his own. The first three stories in the collection are also quite good (The Khan was a clear favorite), though they didn’t stand out as much as the latter three which I have reviewed. Overall, Ringstones and Other Curious Tales feels like a more even collection than The Doll Maker and Other Tales of the Uncanny, the tales here seem to fit better together.

[Jim Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

The multiple narratives of Ringstones are as circular as the titular ancient structure. This was the first of Sarban's beautifully crafted novellas of mystery and horror I read and it set the high standard of quality his small but substantial body of work would follow. An attentive reading of its dual stories yields a subtlety of horror and a dizzying ambiguity which leaves the reader quietly unsettled. Set against the backdrop of Northumberland's devilish moors and lonely hills, a plucky young woman may or may not be hired to look after some strange little children, who may or may not be goblins, who may or may not be able to instantiate control over time, in what may or may not be a dream. Confused? You will be. This book is an ecstasy of mystery and spiralling, coiling murk that slowly accrues dread within the reader's heart. In Sarban's hands a simple daytime walk becomes indelibly terrifying.

I never see Sarban (nom de plume of John William Wall) mentioned. His work is a must for fans of Arthur Machen, Robert Aickman and other such writers of strange, eccentric supernatural fiction.

[Side Real Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ring stones was first published in 1951 and was also the author John William Wall (1910-1989) debut book.

This edition from Tartarus contains extra story ‘Number Fourteen’. We will return to that, but first let us consider the other five tales.

At first glance they seem very dissimilar in that they have wildly differing locations ranging from Jeddah to Greece to rural Northumbria. However it becomes apparent that all these stories are portrayals of human relationships to and with landscape, either geographic or psychological.

This is emphasised by the framing devices in the first two stories. In ‘A Christmas story’, the Christmas is set in Jeddah but concerns the area around Archangel in Russia, while the second tale Capra is narrated over drinks just outside Cairo but concerns events in Greece. Both are narrated to educated English gentlemen of the ‘old school’; at the rump end of the British Empire, traders, hunters, drinks at the club, diplomats etc, very much the circles in which the author moved. Both are, in a sense, time-slip tales but in very different ways. Of them I felt that the former story seemed to drag its feet a little but the latter with its more timeless classical setting feels more successful.
The Khan is extremely odd, even by Sarban standards with an odd Arabian Nights feel to it. Once again it concerns an already displaced protagonist, but her ultimate ‘slip’ from ‘reality’ is neither geographic or psychological…

This contrasts with ‘Calamine’ which is firmly based in the UK and in which two children (one an evacuee from Hull) create a world of the imagination which somehow begins to bleed into their corporeal lives. This has a slow build but this is worth it for perplexing finale. This story has something of the spirit of of the Machen as does ‘Ringstones’, in which the strange Northumbrian landscape is very evocatively described. Both tales have elements of paganism within them perhaps even ecstasy, but while Machen presents his encounters with the numinous is a poetic style Sarbans is very direct and ‘grounded’. ‘Ringstones’ has something of John Wyndham’s ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ about it, in that he children who the newly appointed tutor Daphne Hazel has to deal with are like herself (and once again) strangely autonomous and knowing ‘outsiders’ displaced from an implied Eastern European, but certainly ‘other’ country. Their guardian (of sorts), Doctor Ravelin is absorbed in researching the legacy of the Roman occupation in the locale and the story concerns how Daphne negotiates her relationship with these seemingly disparate characters. This is another excellent slow burn, a touch of Henry James’ ’Turn Of The Screw’ is applied but in Sarban’s own idiosyncratic manner

All these stories are beautifully written in a classically educated style that only the British seem capable of. Strangely this reminds me of, of all the people, Saki (perhaps its the odd two syllable name), in that the latter’s unlikely tales of talking cats or hyenas trotting along with small children in their mouths, are presented in a literal manner that makes the reader feel that the events are real occurrences. At no time does one feel that Sarban’s tales are ‘fantasies’.

The extra story is the previously unpublished ‘Number Fourteen’ which was found among soul bands papers after his death. Often such tales, left in the metaphorical (or literal) drawer have a reason for being there, usually that the Author decided they were not worthy of publication. However this is certainly not the case here and this story of psychic vampirism with its aura of decaying creepiness (similar to Reggie Oliver’s run down theatrical boarding houses), and (oc)cultism deserves far greater recognition as it is in my opinion a minor classic of the genre.

Those familiar with Wall's biography will know that the author has some odd sexual quirks and, I am glad to say, there is certainly some underlying sexual tension in the book; either overtly as in the 'Ringstones' or (and perhaps only slightly less) covertly in 'Number Fourteen'.

This is an incredibly strong book, excellently written with a very distinctive vision. I try NOT to give five star reviews but sometimes one just has to. If you only want to own one Sarban book, make it this one.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

full post here:
https://www.oddlyweirdfiction.com/202...

I hadn't actually planned on reading this book this summer, but I had recently finished reading Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites (ed. Katy Soar) as part of my ongoing reading of the British Library Tales of the Weird series and as it happens, that book began with an extract from "Ringstones". I realized that unlike the other authors whose stories were included there, I'd never read anything by Sarban, so I bought this volume from Tartarus Press and immediately on finishing it, wondered out loud how the hell I had not read him before.

The best way to describe this book and its contents is to quote a small portion of the dustjacket blurb, which originally came from one of the book's "original reviewers" who said that these stories

"have a curiously-imparted quality of strangeness; the feeling of having strayed over the border of experience into a world where other dimensions operate."

Like the very best examples of the weird tale, Sarban's work tends to begin in normal circumstances while slowly but surely taking the reader across that border into unexpected and disturbing territory. While I enjoyed some of the stories in this volume more than others, what travels through all of them is the author's imagination and striking prose style that slowly and unexpectedly moves the reader into darker realms. He raises the storytelling bar as he adds in elements of mythologies and the natural world that complement each other as well as the characters who populate his stories, all the while building in layers of the mysterious and the strange to create different worlds where, as he notes in "Ringstones," "some queer feet have danced." This creative blending that marks his work as truly something of his own makes for compelling, unforgettable and unputdownable reading that stuck with me long after the last page had been turned.

Beyond highly recommended -- truly a collection I will never forget.

[L J Field · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this book I can easily see the influence of Arthur Machen manifesting itself in its pages. Here we have three novellas and a novel, Ringstones. The best of the earlier three is a novella entitled Calmahain. Ringstones is told from the perspective of a young woman who is hired to teach the English language to three children over the summer months. Ringstones is the manor in which she resides during this period. The oldest of the children is a 15 year-old boy named Nauman, the other two are young girls. Nauman has a suspiciously strong influence on the two younger kids. In fact, Nauman seems to control the goings-on around the entire manor. It soon becomes clear that our heroine has in some way fallen into a fantasian world of mythic beings. This is a beautifully written work.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

'A Christmas Story' - a diplomat attends a Christmas party outside the port city of Jedda, Saudi Arabia, during which a Russian military veteran tells him a story set in the Arctic. (2 stars)

'Capra' - a diplomat in Egypt goes to lunch at the house of an elderly businessman named Uncle Bentham (not the diplomat's actual uncle), who tells him a story about a party in Greece he once attended. (2 stars)

'Calmahain' - two young teens living in East Yorkshire during the Blitz tell each other stories after which the boy builds an elaborate model boat. (4 stars)

'The Khan' - Skimmed then abandoned.

'Ringstones' - a perfectly conceived story-within-a-story set on the magical moors of Northumberland. Suspense is meted out with finesse, folkloric knowledge is dispensed in good measure, and the descriptions of the natural world found in Northern England are exquisite. One of the best novellas I have read in a long time. (5 stars)

Unfortunately, were it not for 'Ringstones' this collection would have been a major disappointment. It's always disconcerting to me when one story so far outshines the others in a collection, especially when it's positioned last in the book. By the time I reached 'Ringstones' I was so disheartened I almost put the book down. Thankfully my better judgment prevailed.

As you can read from the descriptions above, Sarban (née John William Wall) was fond of having his characters tells stories. This narrative technique is not a favorite of mine, and so it is ironic that the title story captured my attention so completely. Part of the reason the other stories failed for me, though, was that I found the frameworks in them to be dry and fussy in their details, with either under-developed or wooden characters. In the two stories I truly enjoyed, 'Calmahain' and 'Ringstones', the set-up to the internal stories nested within them was, in both cases, engaging and interesting in its own right, as well as drawn with compelling characters.

The question remains, then, of where to look for more 'Ringstones'-quality writing from Sarban, if it even exists.

Note: this is the original U.S. edition so does not include the story 'Number Fourteen', found in the Tartarus reprint edition.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first two stories are amusing enough, with their "crusty Brit in the heyday of Empire" narrators. Then comes "Calmahain"; a bit of a slog to get through the domestic minutiae to the Journeys, then it's magic.

Update: I enjoyed the open-ended narratives, and the occasional period detail. But Sarban sure takes his own sweet time just getting the context set up, while Aickman for instance seems to be able to pull off something similar in a couple pages. Must be the detours on those damn twisty faerie paths.

[Riall Nolan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarban is a very disturbing writer. I first read this book many years ago, I think when I was in high school. I keep coming back to it, and to several of the others he wrote. There's a sense of atmosphere in his books that you don't often find, and of course the slow-motion horror of the stories is gripping. These aren't the sort of books you want to be reading alone, at night.

[Williwaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a premature review. I have read three of the four stories referred to as "other curious tales" in the title, but not Ringstones itself!

These three stories have certain things in common. At least two are "frame stories" (i.e., stories within stories). The second-hand nature of the stories seems to be a way of bolstering the reader's trust in the narrator. It's as if the narrator is washing his hands of the story by claiming that he heard it from someone else. Someone he didn't know well, but met at a party, for example.

These second-hand stories strain credulity. They make preposterous claims like: "I saw an extinct animal." Or "I saw a unicorn." Or, "I saw clear evidence of fairies."

If I told you that I had had these experiences myself, you would immediately question my sanity, right?

But if I retold the experiences of a third party, I'd be a little safer. And if I told you the story in a way that was somewhat suggestive, but forced you to conclude that the narrator had most probably encountered something marvelous, then I'd be even more secure. I'm reminded of Sherlock Holmes's famous statement: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

These are the qualities of the first three stories in Ringstones. I found them entertaining, but somewhat rough-going. In other words, it wasn't pure enjoyment. There was work and discipline involved in getting through them.

Perhaps my expectations were a bit high after reading "The Sound of His Horn," which may be Sarban's masterwork.

[Χρυσόστομος Τσαπραΐλης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the first half's 4 short stories, "Calmahain" and "A Christmas Story" were by far my favorites, with "Khan" a distant third (if it weren't for the extremely tedious frame story its plain weirdness would place it higher) and "Capra" fourth, though not by far (to be honest I expected more lore and less social mingling from this one).
"Ringstones" itself is a marvelous study in landscape re-enchantment and psychogeography, on how folklore intertwines with the land.
A far as the whole collection is concerned I must say that Sarban really loves frame stories (4 out of 5 use this mechanism, while Calmahain includes a story within a story). Unfortunately, his frames are rather mediocre, with only the one in Ringstones being really interesting and justifiable. Another issue (which strangely, appears mostly in the frames) is Sarban's tendency towards rather long-winded sentences which occasionally become taxing upon the reader. All in all, this was a mixed bag of stories; I think a good and rude editing would have done wonders on the book. Still, Ringstones, Calmahain, and A Christmas Story were totally worth it. Also, lovely harcover edition from Tartarus.
I will write a bit more on Ringstones and Calmahain - hopefully soon.

[Earl Solper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Ringstones (along with The Dollmaker and The Sound of His Horn) previously, so bought this collection for the short stories (well, novelettes).

Of the four stories (A Christmas Story, Capra, Calmahain, and The Khan), Calmahain stands out, and this collection is worth buying just for that story. Set in the English countryside during the Blitz, Calmahain features two imaginative children (around 14-years-old) playing the game of "Journeys", where each goes his or her separate path and imagines being an explorer of a fantasy world, then return to the "inn" to share the experiences. Some of Sarban's usual dark fantasy bleeds in at points (especially at the end), but overall, it's much lighter than his novels.

A Christmas Story is much more firmly grounded in reality -- not fantasy, but a touch of lost-world science fiction. Capra and The Khan get back into fantastic elements, especially the latter, told as a fairly long frame story with an improbable premise, which the listener finds himself believing in spite of his initial skepticism.

Sarban (John William Wall) was an English diplomat in the Middle East during the 1930's to 1950's, and both A Christmas Story and The Khan contain historical detail of countries (Egypt and Iran) on the verge of breaking free of colonial rule that are as interesting as the stories themselves.

Some of the sexual subtext of the novels shows up in Capra and The Khan, but, like the novels, remains subtext. It's a little less subtle than the hints and suggestions of Ringstones (which could be missed by unsophisticated readers), but is never explicit.

[Debra]

Stephen King recommended book. Noted as "important to the genre we have been discussing" from Danse Macabre, published in 1981.