The Very Old Folk

H. P. Lovecraft was one of the greatest horror writers of all time. His seminal work appeared in the pages of legendary Weird Tales and has influenced countless writer of the macabre. This is one of those stories.

It is a recording of a dream, where the main protagonist is a Roman military official in the Basque country near Pompelo. The countryside is, every year, ravaged by terrible hill people who kidnap citizens and perform cruel rituals at a Sabbath. The narrator wishes to lead a military expedition to crush these hill folk, as a feeling of approaching evil has enveloped the countryside, due to a riot between the citizens and the hill people. These hill folk came to trade, yet some of these are killed and later, no disappearances occur before the time of the Sabbath. The incursion is guided by a local-born son of Roman parents.

"The Very Old Folk" is a short story by American horror fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft. Howard Phillips Lovecraft (August 20, 1890 - March 15, 1937) - known as H.P. Lovecraft - was an American author who achieved posthumous fame through his influential works of horror fiction. Virtually unknown and only published in pulp magazines before he died in poverty, he is now regarded as one of the most significant 20th-century authors in his genre. Lovecraft was born in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life. His father was confined to a mental institution when Lovecraft was three years old. His grandfather, a wealthy businessman, enjoyed storytelling and was an early influence. Intellectually precocious but sensitive, Lovecraft began composing rudimentary horror tales by the age of eight, but suffered from overwhelming feelings of anxiety. He encountered problems with classmates in school, and was kept at home by his highly strung and overbearing mother for illnesses that may have been psychosomatic. In high school, Lovecraft was able to better connect with his peers and form friendships. He also involved neighborhood children in elaborate make-believe projects, only regretfully ceasing the activity at seventeen years old. Despite leaving school in 1908 without graduating - he found mathematics particularly difficult - Lovecraft had developed a formidable knowledge of his favored subjects, such as history, linguistics, chemistry, and astronomy. Although he seems to have had some social life, attending meetings of a club for local young men, Lovecraft, in early adulthood, was established in a reclusive 'nightbird' lifestyle without occupation or pursuit of romantic adventures. In 1913 his conduct of a long running controversy in the letters page of a story magazine led to his being invited to participate in an amateur journalism association. Encouraged, he started circulating his stories; he was 31 at the time of his first publication in a professional magazine. Lovecraft contracted a marriage to an older woman he had met at an association conference. By age 34, he was a regular contributor to newly founded Weird Tales magazine; he turned down an offer of the editorship. Lovecraft returned to Providence from New York in 1926, and over the next nine months he produced some of his most celebrated tales including "The Call of Cthulhu," canonical to the Cthulhu Mythos. Never able to support himself from earnings as author and editor, Lovecraft saw commercial success increasingly elude him in this latter period, partly because he lacked the confidence and drive to promote himself. He subsisted in progressively straitened circumstances in his last years; an inheritance was completely spent by the time he died at the age of 46.

In this book, first published in 1970, Ruth L. Tongue has collected a number of county folk tales recorded by her from childhood onwards, from old people, village children and farm round-the-fire sessions. Many of the beliefs embodied in the gipsy and witchcraft tales are still in practice today among the travelling people and locally ‘gifted’ healers. The tales reveal a good deal of fairy lore, some tree lore, including ghostly trees like Crooker, and the ‘uncanny’ Black Dog makes his appearance in more than one tale. The collection includes several of the long fireside tales which would be told on succeeding evenings on winter nights round the kitchen fire, and rhozzums from various localities.

This carefully edited collection has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Edith Nesbit (1858-1924) was the author of world famous books for children - the tales of fantastical adventures, journeys back in time and travel to magical worlds. Nesbit also wrote for adults, including novels, short stories and four collections of horror stories. Content: The Bastable Trilogy The Story of the Treasure Seekers The Wouldbegoods The New Treasure Seekers The Psammead Trilogy Five Children and It The Phoenix and the Carpet The Story of the Amulet The Mouldiwarp Chronicles The House of Arden Harding's Luck Other Children's Novels The Railway Children The Enchanted Castle The Magic City The Wonderful Garden Wet Magic Other Novels The Red House The Incomplete Amorist Salome and the Head (The House With No Address) Daphne in Fitzroy Street Dormant aka Rose Royal The Incredible Honeymoon The Lark Short Story Collections The Book of Dragons: The Book of Beasts Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger The Deliverers of Their Country The Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are Told The Island of the Nine Whirlpools The Dragon Tamers The Fiery Dragon, or The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Gold Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the Cockatrice The Magic World: The Cat-hood of Maurice The Mixed Mine Accidental Magic The Princess and the Hedge-pig Septimus Septimusson The White Cat Belinda and Bellamant Justnowland The Related Muff The Magician's Heart Royal Children of English History Pussy and Doggy Tales Nine Unlikely Tales Oswald Bastable and Others Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare Grim Tales In Homespun The Literary Sense Man and Maid These Little Ones Collected Short Stories Poetry Collections Lays and Legends All Round the Year Landscape and Song Songs of Love and Empire The Rainbow and the Rose Many Voices Other Works...