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“Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn and the Picts”

A companion essay to the timeline that chronicles REH’s conception of the Picticious race, down to the history book that first inspired his love affair with the race, his eventual apotheosis of the Bran character in “Worms”, and his subsequent jettisoning of them as the sacred subject that they had once been in his cosmology.

“Robert E. Howard and the Picts: a Chronology”

This details every time Howard touched on Picts, whether it was in a story in this volume, one in others (the Steve Allison tales), or in letters written to others, particularly H.P. Lovecraft. Howard also examines along with Lovecraft why this peculiar preference for the Picts existed in his mind. It’s a very interesting read.

“Untitled”

This is an aborted novel from a teenage Howard where a dude does super drugs and then recounts episodes of his past lives. Stone Age, pre-English Pict, Babylon, an Egyptian slave… and Viking-on-Viking violence. The more he wrote, the more detailed and longer the episodes got. It’s not a bad concept, especially with Howard’s historicentric brain.

“Poem (previously unpublished)”

Rather than glorifying the Picts, this poem warns of the “worms” of the earth and the sort of doom that waits to be unleashed upon mankind, lurking deep beneath the earth.

“Fragment”

This is more like it! Bran is undercover and meets a Viking out in the middle of nowhere. Both of them lie about who they are and what they are doing, and they part more or less amicably. Eventually he runs into a red-headed warrior woman who challenges his passing into her peoples’ land and she pounces on him since he will not condescend to wrestle her.

“Worms of the Earth—Draft Version”

The differences aren’t that notable to me. Some different names or spellings, maybe short a segment or two with the Roman Governor… you would have to do a line-by-line comparison to really get a feel for what extra material Howard added, apart from I guess an early aside where Sulla contemplates the murder of Valerius.

“Synopsis”

This feels like the genesis of “Kings of the Night”, mainly because of the key detail of Bran poised to block a Roman invasion with a host of Norse invaders. Where this would have focused on a bunch of political intrigue related to Rome, tho, “Kings” mostly focused on what passes for politicking between Bran’s defensive forces.

“Bran Mak Morn—Manuscript”

this is of course the scanned manuscript that the preceding play fragment is derived from. Howard’s script is a lot easier to read, here, but this is again more of a curio.

“Bran Mak Morn”

This is the first act and scene of a play that Howard wrote when he was 17. Bran is something of an Arthur figure as the modus behind his Kingship is to repel the Roman invasion, but Bran believes that his goal is doomed and that he will ultimately die in battle, with his people backsliding further under Roman aggression.

“The Children of the Night”

The first half of this story is a who’s who of Weird Fiction mixed with a lot of intellectualized racism that bangs the drum of Howard’s Picts. Then our Celtic narrator gets a head wound and briefly relives a past life where he berserked and slew dozens of, uh, the pre-Pict “mongoloid” race (not to be confused with the redheads) that originally inhabited the UK.

“The Little People—Typescript”

Yeah, well, to pad this book out they included scans of Howard’s typescript for the previous story. It’s a neat idea, especially for omega REH fans, but I don’t get a lot out of it and it’s difficult to parse the cursive script of his hand-written corrections due to what I will generously describe as the print quality. Not hatin’!

“The Little People (originally untitled)”

Oh, hey! It’s another weird sibling dynamic and then I see the Costigan name. I’m assuming this is Steve and his sister. Howard name drops the Machen Pyramids of the Earth; she poo-poos fairy tales; he jokes about her spending the night in the Celtic ruins; she’s too cool NOT to try. Things go bad and Howard overtly alludes to cave man justice.

“Notes on Miscellanea”

Most of these Howard writers avoid unpacking his racist worldview but this essay at least takes a shot at attempting to describe him as more than just “a product of his time” by illustrating exactly what sort of a time he lived in with eugenics at the forefront in intellectualized America as well as ascribing some of Howard’s to his love of Jack London.

“Poem (Previously Published as “The Drums of Pictdom”)”

Basing your entire outlook and identity on the idea that you were meant to be a virile barbarian during the years when the world felt a lot bigger and more mysterious is not exactly the healthiest outlook to have.

“The Lost Race”

The Picts of the previous story aren’t the real ones. Some Celt dude looking for an adventure in Wales manages to kill a couple of bandits and then gets snared and then brought into the mysterious underground kingdom of the little people. They’re still really mad about the Gaels forcing them into the underhills of the UK, like burnt at the stake mad.

“The Dark Man”

This story follows up on Turlogn from “Clontarf”. He is on his way to rescue an Irish princess who has been kidnapped by Norse reavers. On the way, he happens across a statue of a mysterious king. Hey, that’s Bran Mak Morn! Well, Bran Mak Stone. The insertion of a priest into this story acknowledges the fatigue of the human race at so much needless bloodshed.

“Worms of the Earth”

Bran is so pissed at the Romans crucifying one of his Picts that he basically blackmails the nameless race that the Picts drove underground centuries ago to assist in his vengeance. Somewhere along the way it’s implied that he makes it with a demihuman named Atla (“one night of love, oh King, and I shall guide you to the gates of Hell!”

“A Song of the Race”

A lyric poem where Bran hears some lovely Pict woman sing the overall story of the Picts, the first of men who will also be the last of men when the human race is in the final moments of its twilight. Like, okay, but if the Pict nation forever dies with Bran, then who is this mystic last Pict who will see the end of the age of humanity?

“Kings of the Night”

Ohhhh yeeeeah, I forgot that one of the Kull stories was actually a Bran one. The theming of both worlds is intact: Bran is leading a degenerated people to anchor his kingship, and Kull (and Gonar) are both heavily existential in the nature of reality, with a deliberate comparison to the ephemerality of both Kull’s Valusia and Bran’s fledgling kingdom.

“Men of the Shadows”

A Norse Roman soldier is deep in Pict territory, his legion having been literally decimated by the barbarians. He makes a strong enough impression that the chief and his sister fight for his survival; there is a weird contest of wills between Bran and an Old God shaman; and then we get a version of lore of Howard’s universe, delivered as an oral history.

Picts!

Robert E. Howard loved the idea of the Picts. They appear prominently in Kull’s Atlantean age; Conan’s Hyborian age; and are rendered, here, in Howard’s fictitious prehistory of the United Kingdom, a people in decline compared to the god-like supermen of his heroic fantasy. But Bran—Bran is a throwback, much as I assume the ridiculous Cormac Fitzgeoffrey would be.