O Horror de Dunwich / The Dunwich Horror

 [Translated by / Traduzido Por]: Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva

[By / Por]: Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Ref.: https://hplovecraft.com/

John Whateley vivia a aproximadamente uma milha do vilarejo,
(John Whateley lived about a mile from town,)
Lá em cima onde o mato das colinas começa a ficar denso;
(Up where the hills began to huddle thick;)
Nós nunca pensamos que ele tivesse a mente muito ágil,
(We never thought his wits were very quick,)
A julgar pelo jeito que ele deixou sua fazenda decair.
(Seeing the way he let his farm run down.)
Ele costumava perder seu tempo com alguns livros estranhos,
(He used to waste his time on some queer books,)
Que ele achou no ático de seu lar,
(He’d found around the attic of his place,)
Até rugas engraçadas aparecerem em sua face,
(Till funny lines got creased into his face,)
E o todo o povo diz que não gosta da aparência dele.
(And folks all said they didn’t like his looks.)

Quando ele começou com aqueles gritos à noite nós decidimos,
(When he began those night-howls we declared,)
Que era melhor encarcerá-lo pro seu próprio bem,
(He’d better be locked up away from harm,)
Então três homens da fazenda do vilarejo de Aylesbury,
(So three men from the Aylesbury town farm,)
Foram pra procurá-lo – mas voltaram assustados e sem ele.
(Went for him – but came back alone and scared.)
Eles o encontraram falando com duas Coisas agachadas,
(They’d found him talking to two crouching things,)
Que de perto dele voaram pra longe em suas grandes asas negras.
(That at their step flew off on great black wings.)

Os Fungos de Yuggoth / The Fungi From Yuggoth – P. 26/XXVİ – Os Familiares / The Familiars – By / Por: Lovecraft

***

No vilarejo de Dunwich os habitantes são racialmente inferiores devido a uma série de casamentos consangüíneos entre primos próximos. John Whateley era patriarca do ramo mais degenerado da família Whateley e tinha uma filha albina chamada Lavinia; sua esposa morreu em circunstâncias violentas e inexplicáveis quando Lavinia tinha doze anos. John realizava rituais de magia negra e invocou temporariamente na noite de 1º de maio (data comemorativa conhecida como “May Day”, ou “Dia de Maio”, mas conhecida como “Beltane” no calendário pagão) de 1912 o deus Yog-Sothoth de outra dimensão pra engravidar sua filha. Um dia ele chegou no mercadinho do vilarejo.

[John Whateley]: ¡ Um dia vocês ouvirão um filho da Lavinizinha chamando pelo nome de seu pai no topo da colina Sentinel Hill!

→The inhabitants of the Dunwich town are racially inferior due to a series of inbreed marriages between close cousins. John Whateley was the patriarch of the most degenerate branch of the Whateley family and had an albino daughter called Lavinia; his wife died in violent and unexplainable circunstances when Lavinia was twelve. John performed black magic rituals and temporarily summoned in the 1912, May 1st night (May Day, but known as “Beltane” in the pagan calendar), the god Yog-Sothoth from other dimension to get his daughter pregnant. One day he was in the town’s marked.

[John Whateley]: ¡ Some day yew folks’ll hear a child o’ Lavinny’s a-callin’ its father’s name on the top o’ Sentinel Hill!

Lavinia teve gêmeos aos 35 anos de idade no dia 2 de fevereiro (Dia da Candeléria, conhecido como “İmbolc” no calendário pagão) de 1913.

→Lavinia had twins at 35 years old in 1913, February 2 (Candlemas, known as “İmbolc” in the pagan calendary).

O primeiro, Wilbur Whateley, se desenvolvia mais rápido que uma criança normal.

→The first one, Wilbur Whateley, had a faster physical development than normal children.

O segundo era um ser invisível cinza de formato oval coberto de olhos, com um punhado de patas que deixavam pegadas redondas e coberto de tentáculos com anéis roxos-azulados e bocas na extremidade, e no topo de seu corpo havia a parte superior dum rosto humano albino. Ele nem nome tinha e ficava trancado no andar de cima da casa, tendo sua existência escondida do mundo.



→The second one was an invisible grey oval-shaped being covered w/ eyes, w/ several legs that left round footprints and covered w/ tentacles w/ bluish-purple rings and mouths in its extremities, and in the top of his body was the upper part of an albino human face. He doesn’t even had a name and was locked in the upper floor of the house, having his existence concealed from the world.

John comprava gado numa quantidade anormal, mas eles sempre pareciam ser poucos e eram magros, e tinham feridas com formato de incisões. Nos primeiros meses de vida dos irmãos, Lavinia e John também apareceram com essas feridas.

→John purchased cattle in an abnormal rate, but they always appeared to be very few and were thin, and had incision-shaped wounds. İn the first months of life of the brothers, Lavinia e John always had such wounds.

No Halloween daquele ano Wilbur e sua mãe foram vistos correndo pelados na colina de Sentinel Hill, em direção a um monólito perto de ossos humanos enterrados. O clarão de uma fogueira foi visto uma hora depois. Lá ele sofreu uma metamorfose, e depois disso ele sempre era visto com roupas completas, que cobriam todo seu corpo, exceto as mãos e a cabeça, que eram as únicas partes de sua anatomia que se mantiveram normais. Agora, suas pernas e pés eram as de um bode, a parte superior de seu corpo era coberta de um couro cinza similar à de um réptil, de sua barriga saíam tentáculos com bocas na extremidade, em cada lado de seus quadris havia um olho gigante rosado com cílios, ele possuía uma cauda com anéis roxos e uma boca na extremidade, e a cauda e os tentáculos de sua barriga mudavam de cor a cada vez que ele respirava.

→That year’s Halloween, Wilbur and his mother were seen running naked in Sentinel Hill, in the direction of a monolith near buried human bones. The bonfire light was seen one hour later. There he suffered a metamorphose, and after this he was always seen using complete clothes, that covered all of his body, except by his hands and head, that were the only parts of his anatomy that remained normal. Now, his feet and legs were like those of a goat, his upper body were covered w/ a reptile-like gray hide, from his chest there were tentacles w/ mouths in its extremities, in each side of his hips there was a giant pink eye w/ eyelashes, he had a tail w/ purple rings and a mouth in its extremity, and the tail and tentacles changed its color each time he breathed.

Em 26 de Novembro de 1916 ele fez a seguinte anotação em seu diário pessoal, que estava criptografado:

“Hoje aprendi Aklo pro Sabaoth, o que não gostei, pois ela pode ser respondida a partir da colina e não a partir do ar. Aquele que está no andar de cima está mais adiantado do que eu do que eu pensei que ele estaria, e olha que ele não tem muito cérebro terreno. Atirei em Jack, o collie [Nota do tradutor: Raça de cães de pastoreio.] de Elam Hutchins quando ele tentou me morder, e Elam disse que ele mataria-me se ousasse. Ache ele não o faria. Vovô ficou me ensinando a fórmula de Dho noite passada, e acho que vi a cidade interior nos dois polos magnéticos. Irei pra esses polos quando a Terra for varrida, se eu não for capaz de compreender a fórmula de Dho-Hna quando eu a tiver memorizado. Aqueles que vivem no ar contaram-me no Sabá que passarão-se anos antes que eu possa varrer a Terra, e acho que vovô estará morto nesse momento, Então terei que aprender todos os ângulos e planos e todas as fórmulas entre o Yr e o Nhhngr. Aqueles que Vêm de fora ajudarão, mas eles não podem assumir um corpo físico sem sangue humano. Parece que aquele que está no andar de cima terá a forma apropriada. Posso vê-lo vagamente quando faço o gesto Voorico ou sopro o pó de Ibn Ghazi nele, e é quase igual a eles quando os vi na Colina na Noite De Maio [Nota do tradutor: Trata-se do "Walpurgisnacht", evento comemorado na passagem de 30 de maio pra primeiro de abril, por pagãos e cristãos.]. O outro rosto pode acabar desaparecendo um pouco. Fico imaginando como seraá a minha aparência quando a Terra for varrida e não houverem mais seres terrestres nela. Aquele que veio com o Aklo de Sabaoth disse que posso ser transfigurado, havendo bastante essência exterior que pode ser trabalhada.”

→İn 1926, November 16, he made the following entry in his personal diary, that was encrypted.

“Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth, which did not like, it being answerable from the hill and not from the air. That upstairs more ahead of me than I had thought it would be, and is not like to have much Earth brain. Shot Elam Hutchins’ collie [Translator's note: Race of herding dog.] Jack when he went to bite me, and Elam says he would kill me if he dast. I guess he won’t. Grandfather kept me saying the Dho formula last night, and I think I saw the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles. I shall go to those poles when the Earth is cleared off, if I can’t break through with the Dho-Hna formula when I commit it. They from the air told me at Sabbat that it will be years before I can clear off the Earth, and I guess grandfather will be dead then, so I shall have to learn all the angles of the planes and all the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr. They from outside will help, but they cannot take body without human blood. That upstairs looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I make the Voorish sign or blow the powder of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it is near like them at May-Eve on the Hill [Translator's note: It's the "Walpurgisnacht", event celebrated in the night between may 30th and april 1st, by Pagans and Christians.]. The other face may wear off some. I wonder how I shall look when the Earth is cleared and there are no Earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured, there being much of outside to work on.”

Cães eram agressivos em relação a Wilbur. Então, aos 04 (quatro; mas ele parecia ter dez) anos de idade, ele passou a carregar uma pistola pra se defender dos cachorros, e precisava usá-la ocasionalmente.

→Dogs were aggressive towards Wilbur. So, at 04 (four; but he looked to be ten) years old, he began to carry a pistol to defend himself from them, and needed to use it occasionally.

E assim, durante os anos, Wilbur era visto andando em direção aos círculos de pedra da Sentinel Hill durante as datas do calendário pagão. Houve relatos de tremores de terra nestas datas e que ele gritou o nome de Yog-Sothoth no topo da colina Sentinel Hill com um livro aberto. John fez uma reforma no andar superior pra tirar todas as divisórias nos cômodos pra acomodar o irmão de Wilbur, que estava crescendo. Ele também criou uma porta que levava pra fora no andar superior, servida por uma rampa externa.

→So, during several years, Wilbur was seen walking in the direction of the stone circles in Sentinel Hill during the dates of the pagan calendary. There were accounts of earth tremors in those dates and that he called for the name of Yog-Sothoth at the top of Sentinel Hill holding a open book. John reformed the upper floor to remove the internal walls in order to accommodate the Wilbur’s brother, that was growing. He also created a door that led to outsidein the upper floor, served by an external ramp.

Na noite de Lammas (evento do calendário pagão em 1º de agosto) de 1924, o dr. Houghton foi chamado pra atender John, que estava morrendo. Ele ouviu uma conversa dele com Wilbur lhe dizendo pra invocar Yog-Sothoth conforme a página 751 da edição completa do Necronomicon. John morreu naquela noite.

→İn the Lammas night (event of the pagan calendário in august 1st) of 1924, dr. Houghton was called to see John, that was dying. He heard him talking w/ Wilbur, saying him to summon Yog-Sothoth according to the page 751 of the complete edition of the Necronomicon. John died that night.

Wilbur trocava correspondência com bibliotecários sobre livros de ocultismo. Em 1925 o bibliotecário da Universidade de Miskatonic, na cidade de Arkham, Henry Armitage, o visitou, e, por algum motivo, saiu de lá pálido e intrigado.

→Wilbur exchanged correspondencia w/ librarians about occultism books. İn 1925 the librarian of the Miskatonic University, in the Arkham city, Henry Armitage, visited him, and, by some reason, came back pale and intrigued.

Com o passar do tempo, Lavinia relatou sentir medo de Wilbur, sem contar a verdade sobre ele ao mundo. No Halloween de 1926 ela desapareceu, sob suspeita de que ele teria a matado.

→Some time later, Lavinia claimed to fear Wilbur, w/out telling the truth about him to the world. İn the Halloween of 1926 she disappeared, and it was suspected that he had killed her.

Em 1927, Wilbur derrubou todas as divisórias de sua casa pra acomodar o irmão, que estava crescendo. Ele passou a morar num galpão da propriedade.

→İn 1927, Wilbur removed all the internal walls of his house to accommodate his brother, that was growing. He began to live in a warehouse in the property.

Em 1928, Wilbur consulta o Necronomicon na biblioteca Widener Library na Universidade de Miskatonic. Armitage vê que Wilbur lê o trecho:

“Não se deve pensar nem que o homem é o mais antigo ou o último dos senhores da Terra, ou que o cerne comum da vida anda sozinho. Os Grandes Antigos foram, os Grandes Antigos são e os Grandes Antigos serão. Não nos espaços que conhecemos, mas ⭑entre⭑ eles, Eles andam serenos e primais, imensuráveis e sem serem vistos por nós. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ conhece o portal. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ é o portal. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ é a chave e o guardião do portal. Passado, presente e futuro se unem em ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑. Ele sabe por onde os Grandes Antigos irromperam durante da antigüidade, e onde Eles irromperão novamente. Ele sabe em qual parte dos campos da terra Eles pisaram, e onde Eles ainda pisam, e porque ninguém pode observar Eles enquanto Eles lá pisam. Pelo odor Deles os homens podem por vezes saber que Eles estão por perto, mas nenhum homem é capaz de conhecer a aparência Deles, ⭑exceto apenas através das feições daqueles que Eles geraram entre a humanidade⭑; e desses existem muitos tipos, diferindo em aparência desde a mais autêntica imagem e semelhança do homem até aquela forma inavistável e sem substância que é ⭑como Eles⭑. Eles são fétidos e sem serem vistos andam em lugares ermos onde as Palavras foram proferidas e os Ritos entoados durante as Estações apropriadas. O vento uiva com as vozes Deles, e a consciência Deles ecoa na terra. Eles derrubam a floresta e esmagam a cidade, e ainda assim a floresta ou a cidade são incapazes de enxergar a mão que golpeia. Nos ermos frios Kadath conheceu Eles, ¿ e qual homem conhece Kadath? O deserto de gelo do Sul e as ilhas submersas do Oceano abrigam pedras onde o selo Deles está gravado, ¿ mas quem viu a cidade profunda congelada ou a torre trancada que desde há muito está coroada de algas e cracas? O Grande Cthulhu é primo Deles, e ainda assim só é capaz de enxergar Eles vagamente. ⭑¡ İä! ¡ Shub-Niggurath!⭑ Pelo odor vós reconhecerão Eles. A mão Deles está nas vossas gargantas, e ainda assim vós não vêem Eles; e a morada Deles até mesmo faz divisa com a vossa soleira bem protegida. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ é a chave do portal, onde as esferas se encontram. O homem hoje governa onde Eles uma vez governaram; em breve Eles governarão onde o homem hoje governa. Após o verão vem o inverno, e após o inverno vem o verão. Eles aguardam pacientes e poderosos, pois aqui Eles reinarão novamente.”

→İn 1928, Wilbur consults the Necronomicon in the Widener Library in the Miskatonic University. Armitage sees that Wilbur reads the excerpt:

“Nor is it to be thought, that man is either the oldest or the last of earth’s masters, or that the common bulk of life and substance walks alone. The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but ⭑between⭑ them, They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ knows the gate. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ is the gate. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. By Their smell can men sometimes know Them near, but of Their semblance can no man know, ⭑saving only in the features of those They have begotten on mankind⭑; and of those are there many sorts, differing in likeness from man’s truest eidolon to that shape without sight or substance which is ⭑Them⭑. They walk unseen and foul in lonely places where the Words have been spoken and the Rites howled through at their Seasons. The wind gibbers with Their voices, and the earth mutters with Their consciousness. They bend the forest and crush the city, yet may not forest or city behold the hand that smites. Kadath in the cold waste hath known Them, ¿ and what man knows Kadath? The ice desert of the South and the sunken isles of Ocean hold stones whereon Their seal is engraven, ¿ but who hath seen the deep frozen city or the sealed tower long garlanded with seaweed and barnacles? Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly. ⭑¡ Iä! ¡ Shub-Niggurath!⭑ As a foulness shall ye know Them. Their hand is at your throats, yet ye see Them not; and Their habitation is even one with your guarded threshold. ⭑Yog-Sothoth⭑ is the key to the gate, whereby the spheres meet. Man rules now where They ruled once; They shall soon rule where man rules now. After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.”

Ele pede o volume emprestado, mas Armitage o nega, lembrando-se das estórias acerca de Wilbur e a suspeita de matricídio. Depois ele entrou em contato com o dr. Houghton, que o contou sobre as últimas palavras de John. Então Armitage deixou de sobreaviso os bibliotecários de outros lugares pra que não deixassem Wilbur consultar o Necronomicom.

→He asks to borrow the book, but Armitage denies it, remembering the stories about Wilbur and the suspected matricide. Later he made contact w/ dr. Houghton, that rold him about the last words of John. So Armitage warned the Librarians from other places to keeping Wilbur from consulting the Necronomicom.

Wilbur voltou à noite pra roubar o livro na Widener Library. O cão de guarda o abordou. Wilbur tentou atirar com o revólver, mas a munição falhou. Então o cão o atacou.

→Wilbur came back at night to steal the book in the Widener Library. The security hound approached him. Wilbur tried to shot w/ the revolver, but the ammunition failed. So the hound attacked him.

Quando as autoridades chegaram, Wilbur estava agonizando e morreu. Uma poça de sangue verde-amarelado estava no chão, e os detalhes anatômicos anormais de Wilbur estavam expostos. A essa altura, Wilbur tinha 9 pés (2.73m) de altura. Armitage, junto com o professor Warren Rice e o dr. Francis Morgan, a quem Armitage confidenciou fatos acerca do caso de Wilbur, cuidaram pra que o público não visse a cena. O cadáver de Wilbur se dissolveu sozinho alguns minutos depois. Depois tudo foi resolvido e os detalhes sobrenaturais do caso foram omitidos.

→When the authorities arrived, Wilbur was agonizing and died. There was a puddle of yellowish-green blood on the ground, and the Wilbur’s abnormal anatomic details were exposed. To this point, Wilbur was 9 feet (2.73m) tall. Armitage, w/ professor Warren Rice and dr. Francis Morgan, to whom Armitage exposed some points about Wilbur’s case, concealed the scene to the crowd. Wilbur’s corpse dissolved itself some minutes later. Later, everything was solved and the supernatural details of the case were omitted.

As autoridades levaram os livros e o diário criptografado de Wilbur pra Miskatonic pra serem traduzidos.

→The authorities carried the books and the Wilbur’s encrypted diary to Miskatonic to be translated.

Enquanto isso, em Dunwich, o irmão de Wilbur, abandonado e num tamanho grande, rompeu as tábuas com fome e escapou, e começou a matar os animais e pessoas. Ele deixava pegadas, e o rastro de seu corpo entre elas.

→Meanwhile, in Dunwich, the Wilbur’s brother, large-sized and abandoned, broke the wooden boards due to starvation and escaped, and began to kill animals and people. He left footprints, and the trail of his body between them.

Armitage quebrou a criptografia em setembro e leu o diário. Então ele viu as notícias das outras cidades debochando dos acontecimentos de Dunwich, como se eles não fossem verdade. Então ele, Rice e Morgan se prepararam copiando fórmulas em livros de ocultismo. Então eles viajaram pra Dunwich.

→Armitage broke the cryptography in September and read the diary. So he saw the news from other cities mocking the happenings in Dunwich, like if it weren’t true. So he, Rice and Morgan prepared themselves copying formulas from occultism books. So they travelled to Dunwich.

Rice carregava um borrifador com o pó de İbn Ghazi. Morgan carregava um grande rifle de caça grosso calibre, mesmo sendo avisado que isso não adiantaria contra aquele ser.

→Rice carried a sprayer w/ the İbn Ghazi powder. Morgan carried a large caliber hunting rifle, even being warned that it wouldn’t work against that being.

Chegando lá, os habitantes lhe contaram que o monstro matou uma viatura policial que tinha ido resolver o caso.

→Arriving there, the inhabitants told them that the monster killed a police party that went there to solve the case.

Eles viram as pegadas se aproximando do topo da Sentinel Hill de uma colina e deixaram um telescópio com os habitantes locais. Chegando lá, Rice borrifou o pó de İbn Ghazi no monstro, então os habitantes o viram pelo telescópio.

→They saw the footprints coming near to the top of the Sentinel Hill and they left a telescope w/ the local inhabitants. Arriving there, Rice sprinkled the İbn Ghazi powder in the monster, so the inhabitants saw them through the telescope.

Então Armitage, Rice e Morgan realizaram o ritual pra destruir o monstro, enquanto ele gritava “¡ Socorro, socorro! ¡ Pai, Pai! ¡ Yog-Sothoth!”. A predição de John se cumpriu, mas não da maneira esperada. O monstro foi destruído.

→So Armitage, Rice e Morgan performed the ritual to destroy the monster, while he shouted “¡ Help, help! ¡ Father, Father! ¡ Yog-Sothoth!”. John’s prediction came true, but not in the expected way. The monster was destroyed.

Então os habitantes de Dunwich perguntaram o que era aquele monstro. Armitage explicou, sem entrar em maiores detalhes:

“Aquilo era... Bem, aquilo era, em sua maior parte um tipo de força não pertencente à nossa parte do espaço; um tipo de força que age, cresce e toma forma sob leis que não são aquelas que regem a nossa Natureza. Não temos motivo pra invocar tais coisas de fora, e apenas pessoas e cultos muito malignos sequer o tentam fazer. Havia um pouco disto no próprio Wilbur Whateley – O suficiente pra torná-lo um demônio e mostro precoce, e pra fazer do seu falecimento uma visão um tanto terrível. Queimarei este diário amaldiçoado, e se vocês são homens sábios, dinamitarão o altar de pedra lá em cima, e derrubarão todos os círculos de pedras eretas nas outras colinas. Coisas como essas trouxeram os seres que tanto agradavam aos Whateleys: os seres que eles queriam invocar tangivelmente pra varrer a raça humana e arrastar a Terra pralgum lugar inominável pralgum propósito inominável.

Mas acerca desta coisa que acabamos de mandar de volta... Os Whateleys a cuidaram pra que ela desempenhasse um terrível papel nas coisas que estavam por vir. Ela e Wilbur cresceram rápido e ficaram grandes pela mesma razão – Mas ela o superou porque tinha uma parcela maior de essência exterior dentro de si. Vocês não precisam perguntar como Wilbur a invocou. Ele não o fez. Ela era seu irmão gêmeo, só que ainda mais parecido com o pai.”

→So the Dunwich’s inhabitants asked what was that monster. Armitage explained, w/out giving too much details:

“It was – Well, it was mostly a kind of force that doesn’t belong in our part of space; a kind of force that acts and grows and shapes itself by other laws than those of our sort of Nature. We have no business calling in such things from outside, and only very wicked people and very wicked cults ever try to. There was some of it in Wilbur Whateley himself – Enough to make a devil and a precocious monster of him, and to make his passing out a pretty terrible sight. I’m going to burn his accursed diary, and if you men are wise you’ll dynamite that altar-stone up there, and pull down all the rings of standing stones on the other hills. Things like that brought down the beings those Whateleys were so fond of – The beings they were going to let in tangibly to wipe out the human race and drag the Earth off to some nameless place for some nameless purpose.

But as to this thing we’ve just sent back – The Whateleys raised it for a terrible part in the doings that were to come. It grew fast and big from the same reason that Wilbur grew fast and big – But it beat him because it had a greater share of the outsideness in it. You needn’t ask how Wilbur called it out of the air. He didn’t call it out. It was his twin brother, but it looked more like the father than he did.”

Canção Do Exílio / Exile’s Song

 Por / By – Antônio Gonçalves Dias

[Translated by / Traduzido Por]: Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva

“¿ Kennst du das Land, wo die zitronen blühn,
(Você conhece tal terra, onde os limões brotam,)
(Do you know such a land, that bear lemons,)
İm dunklen laub die goldorangen glühn,
(As laranjas douradas brilham entre as folhas escuras,)
(The golden orange shines among the dark leaves,)
Ein sanfter wind vom blauen himmel weht,
(Um vento mais suave sopra do céu azul,)
(A softer wind blows from the blue sky,)
¿ Die myrte still und hoch der lorbeer steht?
(¿ Onde a murta se ergue quieta e o louro se ergue alto?)
(¿ Where the myrtle stands quiet and the laurel stands tall?)
¿ Kennst du es wohl?
(¿ Você conhece isso bem?)
(¿ Do you know it well?)
¡ Dahin, dahin!
(¡ Lá, lá!)
(¡ There, there!)

Möcht ich mit dir, o mein Geliebter, ziehn!
(¡ Eu gostaria, oh meu querido, de te trazer comigo!)
(¡ İ would like, oh my dear, of bring you w/ me!)”

Goethe – ¿ Kennst Du Das Land? / ¿ Você Conhece Tal Terra? / ¿ Do You Know Such A Land? (trecho traduzido por mim / excerpt translated by myself)

[Nota do tradutor: O texto foi escrito em alemão. Não sei a porra dessa língua, mas o traduzi usando vários dicionários online pra pesquisar o significado de cada uma dessas palavras. Depois as coloquei juntas pra construir o contexto geral. Este é o jeito de traduzir línguas que você não conhece.

Translator’s note: The text was written in German. İ don’t fucking know that language at all, but İ translated it by using several online dictionaries to check the meaning of each of the words. Later İ put them together to build the general context. That’s the way you translate languages you don’t know.]

***

Minha terra tem palmeiras,
(My land have palm trees,)
Onde canta o sabiá;
(Where the thrush sings;)
As aves, que aqui gorjeiam,
(The birds that sings here,)
Não gorjeiam como lá.
(Don’t it like the ones from there.)

Nosso céu tem mais estrelas,
(Our sky have more stars,)
Nossas várzeas têm mais flores,
(Our meadows/floodplains are more flowered,)
Nossos bosques tem mais vida,
(Our woods have a more abundant life,)
Nossa vida mais amores.
(Our life have more loved ones.)

[C.:]
Em cismar, sozinho, à noite,
(While meditating, alone, at night,)
Mais prazer encontro eu lá;
(İ feel that’s more pleasant the memories from there;)
Minha terra tem palmeiras,
(My land have palm trees,)
Onde canta o sabiá;
(Where the thrush sings;)

Minha terra tem primores,
(My land have wonders,)
Que tais não encontro eu cá;
(That İ don’t find here;)

(C.)

Não permita Deus que eu morra,
(God, don’t let me die,)
Sem que eu volte para lá;
(Before İ go back there;)
Sem que desfrute os primores
(Before enjoying the pleasures)
Que não encontro por cá;
(That İ don’t find here;)
Sem qu’inda aviste as palmeiras,
(Before having a sight of the palm trees,)
Onde canta o Sabiá.
(Where the thrush sings.)

Coimbra – 1843-Jul.
[Translator’s note: Coimbra is a Portuguese city.]

Poems By Álvares de Azevedo

 [Translated by / Traduzido Por]: Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva

☙Sonnet❧

Pale, under the light of the gloomy lamp,
Lying down amidst the flower bed,
Embalmed like the Moon in the night,
¡ She slept among the clouds of the love!

İt was the Virgin of the Sea, in the cold sea-foam
¡ Lulled by the tide!
She was an angel among the clouds of the dawn
¡ That bathed herself while dreamt and forgot about that!

¡ She was the most beautiful one! Her heart beating...
Dark eyes under the opening eyelids...
Nude contours touching the bed...

¡ Don’t think that İ’m being funny, my cute angel!
Because of you –  İ wept while keeping the wake in the nights,
¡ Because of you – İ will die while smiling!

☙My Dream❧

[Me]:
Knight of the dark weapons,
¿ Where are you going through the impure darkness,
With that blood-stained sword in your hand?
¿ Why your flaming eyes are shining,
And the screams from your trembling lips,
Releases the fire from your heart?

¿ Knight, who are you? – ¿ The remorse?
You seat in the back of the steed...
And you ride through the valley...
¡ Oh! Raising the dust from the road
Don’t you hear the skeletons shrieking
¿ And the ghost biting your feet?

Where are you going through the impure darkness,
Knight of the dark weapons,
¿ Gaunt like a dead one in the tomb?...
¿ Do you hear... İn the tall mountain,
A throng following your gallop,
And a call for avenging rumbling?

¿ Knight, who are you? What a mystery...
Who plotted for your death in the Empire,
To make you wander by the haunted night?

[The Phantom]:
İ’m the dream of your hope,
Your fever that never gives a break,
¡ The delusion that will kill you!...

Poems by Augusto dos Anjos

 [Translated by / Traduzido Por]: Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva

☙Psychology of a Defeated One❧

İ, the son of the carbon and of the ammonia,
Monster of darkness and shining,
İ suffer, since the epigenesis of my infancy,
The bad influence of the zodiac signs.

Deeply hypochondriac,
This environment makes me sick...
İ feel a nausea analogous to a nausea coming to my mouth
That come out of the mouth of a cardiac.

About the Vermin – this worker of the ruins -
That eats the rotten blood from the slaughters
And wages war against the bulk of life,

He is stalking my eyes to chew them,
And will only let my hair alone,
¡ İn the inorganic coldness of the earth!

☙The Vermin-God❧

Universal factor of transformism.
Son of the teleologic matter,
Na superabundance or in the poverty,
Vermin – That’s your unknown baptism name.

Never performs the extreme unction
İn your dairy funeral work,
And lives cohabiting with the bacteria,
Free from the facade of the anthropomorphism.

Feasts with the rotten pulp of the sour drupes in the lunch,
Feasts with dropsical in the dinner, chews thin guts
And swells the hand of the new corpses...

¡ Ah! The rotten meats stays with him,
And in the inventory of the abundant matter
¡ Their children receive the biggest part!

☙The Bog❧

¡ You can see it, without pain, my fellows!...
But, to me, and İ listen to the Nature,
This Bog is the ultimate grave,
¡ Of all of the pretensions of greatness!

Unknown larvae of the giants
Over its surface of venom and mourning
That sleeps calmly the deep sleep
¡ Of the superorganisms that are yet infants!

İn its stagnation stirs a race,
That tragically is awaiting those who are passing
To wide open the door...

İ fell the anguish of this stirring race
Doomed to wait forever
¡ İn the crushed universe of the dead water!

☙HOMO İNFİMUS (Negligible man)❧

Man, unremarkable flesh, blind creature,
Unfortunate geographic reality,
The silent Universe repudiates you
¡ And your own mouth curses you!

The noumenon and the phenomenon, the alpha and the omega
Embitter you. Hostile hebdomads
Pass... Your heart becomes disaggregated,
¡ They make your eyes bleed, and, however, you laugh!

Unjustifiable fruit among the fruits,
Bunch of dark clay mixed with dung,
Unique earthly excrescence.

Let your happiness to the brutish beings,
Because, on the planet’s surface,
¡ You only have one right: – the right to weep!

☙The Thoughts of Destiny❧

Recife, Buarque de Macedo Bridge.
(Bridge in Recife – Capital of the province of Pernambuco – Brazil)
İ, while going to the Agra House,
(Probably a reference to a Funeral/Mortuary parlor/agency of the same name, also in Recife)
Haunted by my thin shadow,
¡ Was thinking about the destiny, and İ felt fear!

İn the austere high celestial dome the high phosphor
Of the stars were shining... The paving
Of Stony, of rigid asphalt, dark e glassy,
Mimicked the polishedness of a white skull.

İ remember well. İt was a long bridge,
And my long shadow covered the bridge,
Like a rhino skin
¡ Stretched for all of my life!

The night hatched the eggs of the animal
Addictions. From the coal of great darkness
Comes a damned air filled with disease
¡ On the general surface of the buildings!

Like a hungry horde of ferocious hounds,
Crossing a desert station,
Howling inside the self, with the mouth opened,
¡ The scared hound of the instincts!

İt’s like if, in the heart of the city,
Deeply luxurious and revolted,
Showing its flesh, a free beast
Released the shouted of the animality.

And going deeper in the dark thought,
İ saw, then, under the light of golden reflections,
The generating function of the sexes,
Making in the nights the men of the Future.

Free from microscopes and  scalpels,
They danced, parodying cynical soirees,
Billions of apollonic centrosomes
İn the promiscuous chamber of the vitellus.

But, obfuscating my eyeballs,
Preaching about and disseminating the disgusting color,
Thin fetuses, still in placenta,
¡ Gave me their rudimentary hands!

Showed me the unknowable apriorism
Of this egalitarian fatality,
That created the family that originated me
¡ From the den of that horrible factory!

The strongest atmospheric current
Buzzed. And, in the igneous crust of the Cross,
(Probably the Southern Cross)
İ thought to see the funeral candle holder
That will shine light me in the moment of the death.

No one understood my sob,
¡ Not even God!
The strong wing sent arrow-like blows
to the holes of my clothes,
And doses of the winter Russian ice.

The revenge of the astronomical worlds
Sent to the Earth an extraordinary knife,
Bound firmly by shellac
Over my anatomical elements.

¡ Ah! Certainly God chastised me!
For all around, like a defendant that confessed,
There was a judge that read my case
¡ And a special force that awaited me!

But the wind stopped to blow for some instants
Or, at least, the ignis sapiens of the Orcus
Was a pig and suppressed the air of my bent chest
İn a nucleus of substances that raise the embers.

İt’s possible that one day İ will become blind.
İn the heat of this lethal torrid zone,
The color of the blood is the color that impresses me
¡ And the one that most persecute me in this world!

That chromatic obsession makes me gaunt.
İ don’t know Why İ always remember
The stabbed chest of a child
And a piece of red guts.

İ would like any temporary thought
That entered in the cave that is my brain,
And until the very end, cut
The ill-lucked traits of my memory.

İn the barometric ascension of the calmness,
İ knew well, nauseous and counterfeit,
That a population of ill lungs
¡ Coughed without solution in my soul!

And the spit of that temporary cough
Like an acid waste,
İt wasn’t the spit of a single individual
Weakened by the precocious phthisis.

¡ No! Certainly it wasn’t my spit
İt was the rough and putrid expectoration
From the lung bronchi of a race
¡ That violated the laws of the Nature!

İt was a strange, ubiquitous cough,
Like the sound of a round pebble
Thrown in the apex of the bang,
¡ Like the slingers from the mountain!

And the salivation of that unfortunate ones
Swells, in my mouth, in such a manner,
That İ, to avoid to spit for all around,
¡ İ began to swallow, a bit from each time, the hemoptysis!

İn the high hallucination of my thoughts
The liquid microcosmos from the drop
Had the abundance of a wrinkled artery,
Destroyed by the aneurysms.

¡ The highest point of the bitterness came to me!
Two, three, four, five, six and seven
Times that İ stabbed myself with the switchblade,
¡ The hemoglobin came full of water!

Spit, whose flows irrigate my lips,
Under the form of small camândulas,
(Camândula is a kind of rosary with large beads)
Blessed be all of these glands,
¡ That, daily, release it!

Spit from an abyss to other abyss,
Releasing to the sky the smoke from a cigarette,
There’s more philosophy in this spit
¡ Than in all of the moral of the Christianity!

Because, if in the egg-shaped orb in that İ put my feet
İ didn’t let my evil spit,
İ would never express my extreme disgust
¡ That İ feel by the scoundrels of the world!

Ⅱ

İt was in the horror of this dreary night
That İ discovered, perhaps bigger than Vinci
(Maybe a reference to Leonardo da Vinci)
With the visual strength of the lynx,
¡ The lack of unity in the matter!

The clumsy skeleton,
Free from the sour foulness of the dead flesh,
Spinning, with the white curved shinbones,
¡ İn a dance of several shows!

All the evil Gods,
Shiva and Ahriman, duendes, Yin and trasgos,
(see the “Duende” entry. “Trasgo” is a spanish term for small monstrous beings, also called boggarts, imps, kobolds, etc.)
Mimicking the sound of people chocking,
Hit the entrance of the churches.

İn this moment of sublime monologues,
The party of the night thieves,
İn a search for a tavern to be down in the dumps,
Walk in the shadows thinking about crimes.

They committed the darkest acts,
And the moonlight, with the color of a jaundiced person,
İlluminated, like if it were laughing, shamelessly,
The red shirt of the incests.

Certainly no one was there to watch me,
But my lamp, close to my face, made me remember,
A suggestive eye, that was put there
On purpose, to hypnotize me!

So, after all, my eyes distinguished
From the unique miniature of a quotation mark,
The tiny anatomy of the dandruff,
¡ Embryos of worlds that never developed!

Because who don’t see there, in any street
With the fine clearness of a clear jet,
İn the Buddhist patience of a dog
¿¡ The embryonic soul that doesn’t carry on?!

¡ To be a dog!¡ Bark incomprehensible
Verbs! He wants to say us that he’s not pretending anything,
And the word wrap itself in the larynx,
¡ Only the bark are released!

Taking off the clothes of the rotting cumbersome form,
İn the dark dissolution that inverts everything,
Lets fall over the motionless belly
¡ The scavenger hunger of the fly!

¡ The animal souls! İ take it, İ distinguish it,
İ find a secret duel inside it
Between the desire for a complete vocabulary
¡ And the expression that didn’t came to the tongue!

İ spot it in quadrillions of living bodies,
İn the antiperistaltic shocks
That produces in the bulls and the horses
¡ The contraction of the instinctive shouts!

İt would come a time in that, from that dreary
Chaos of organic misshapen bodies
Would emerge huge brains,
¡ Feverish water bubbles, boiling!

İn this age when the sages don’t teach,
The hard stone, the clayish mounts
Would create sheaves of nervous chords
¡ And the neuroplasm of the ones who think!

¡ Pygmy souls! God subdues them, confine them
¡ To the imperfection! But here comes the Time, and defeats him,
And my dream grew in silence,
¡ Greater than the Carolingian epopee!

İt was the tragic revolt
Of the most elementary ontogenic specimens,
From the Foraminifera from the seas
to the lilliputian cattle of the polyps.

All the characters of the tragedy,
Tired of living in a peace that is good enough for a Buddha,
Looked like they asked with their speechless mouths
The ganglionary intermediary cell.

The plant that is burned by the igneous dogday,
And the more negligible inorganic things
Notorious encephalons, spinal chords
¡ İn the brave happiness of the avenging!

The protists and the obscure rigid collection
Of the poriferans and the infusorians
Received from their sensory organs
¡ The emotional triumph of joy!

And, although it’s so late,
That parasite mankind,
Like a lesser animal, afflicted, shouted,
¡ İn my coward personality!

But, wondering, alone, about my case
İ saw that, like an underground amniote
İt was through my skull
¡ The fateful intersection of the delay!

The genial idea of microzyme
That strangled my valiant thinking,
And İ bent all of my body like a frog
¡ That have a bothersome weight in the upper side!

İn the agonies of the delirium-tremens,
The drunken simpletons that stared at me,
Sterilized with the full mugs
¡ The prolific substance from the semens!

They shove their hands in the inner side of their throats,
And shaking intensely
Expeled, in the strong pain of the vomit,
Several yellow goos.

They gone to the lupanars to sleep
(“lupanar” is a brothel of Pompeii)
Where, in the glory of the concupiscence,
Deposited almost without conscience
Their last muscular forces.

That way the blastoderms were produced,
Where inside its repugnant receptacle
My examination saw the show
Of an idiotic offspring of simpleton.

Prostitution or any other name,
Because of you, although the Man accepts you,
The bad women will lack the milk
¡ And the fatherless boys starve!

¿ Why so many burials have to happen here?
Also, there in the "sugar cane mill", it’s a damned death...
There is the evil carbuncle that kills
¡ The infant society of the calves!

¡ So many girls doomed to the grave!
And after the rottenness of so many girls,
The pigs playing in the puddles
¡ Of the virginity confined in the mud!

Death, the very end of the last scene,
Diffuse form of the peaceful matter,
My philosophy abhors you,
¡ My great thoughts condemns you!

Before you, in the richest cathedrals,
They spin in vain their amulets,
¡Oh! Lady that is the owner of our skeletons
¡And of the skulls that you daily produces!

İ had a rare desire to have,
When İ was thinking in the ones that İ lost,
The unconsciousness of the waxen masks
¡ That we attach, with a string, in the face!

İt was a forbidden dream of submerge myself
İn the universal life, and, being completely submerged,
Make the Abstract part of the universe,
¡ My balanced and firm lair!

So, worse than the remorse of the murderer,
Echoed, that way, from the bottom of a cave,
İn an impressive internal voice,
The unique echo of my Fate:

Ⅲ

"¡ Man! Much as the İdeia disintegrates itself,
İn that persecutions that doesn’t stop,
Never, gaunt man, you will know the cause
¡ Of all of the happy phenomena!

İn vain, with the rough arduous hoe, you open
The sterile earth, and you bring the
hollow clear lamp, to examine (¡ Oh! ¡ Mad science!)
The content from the heinous tears.

Dark and endless is the place where you dive
Place in the Cosmos, where the pain that doesn’t stop
İs produced like the kerosene
¡ İn the humid holes from the coal!

Because, in order to examine the Pain,
İt was necessary that, not the way you are, in short,
Rather it would be better, to reflect in your fellows,
The mankind in suffering itself!

The universal complexity is what İt
Encompasses. And if, sometimes, it splits itself,
Even so, its wholeness is not represented
¡ İn the isolated quotient of the part!

¡Ah! The Pain doesn’t stop, like the immortal air!
From the nervous papillae that are in the touch senses
Comes and goes since the most ancient times
¡ To other ages that will still come!

Like the wound of insomnia
Destroys you, when you give all of your Fiery İdea
The laborious study on the nymphaea
¡ And on the other dicotyledons plants!

The very clear water and the dreary ember
That splashes from the stripped rough flame
The molecular composition of the myrrh,
The symbolic lamb from the Easter;

The revolted choleras that roar
İnside the civilized man, and are bound to him
Like the bracelets sold by the traveling merchants
The persistent adherence of the rust;

The ferocious orb that is produced
By thick sour gorses; the rebellion that lets the men
(“gorse” is a plant from the Ulex europaeus species)
Fallen in the ground, without a shroud,
İn the concrete bloodbath from the massacres;

And the whips that are very bloodthirsty
For the hemorrhage; The thickest nodes,
The ignoble flattening of the heads,
That degrades the Hottentots peoples;

The Love and the Hunger, the avenging beast that enters
İn the lair, waiting for the victim to do it too,
- Everything that is conceived inside the maternal womb
The physiological cause of the disgust;

The eyelids that become swollen by the nightwatch,
The young birds who lost their wing,
The oven that is not being used in a house,
Where the household head died;

The private train that drags a corpse
İn a dreary manner by the railroad,
The crystallization of the earthly mass,
The fabric wears out;

The arbitrary water that carries and eats
The fissured thick stems; The dark ugly forms
Of the arachnids and the centipedes,
The Will O’ Wisp that illuminate the bones;

The Flammivomous projections that obfuscate,
Like a Rembrandtesque brushstroke,
The sensation that a fresh curd
Transmits to the nervous hands of those who seeks it;

The antagonism between Typhon and Osiris,
The oppressed great man and the little man
The fake Moon of the Moondog,
The meteoric deception of the rainbow;

The earthquakes that, shaking the ground,
Remember gunpowder storage exploding,
The rotation of the fluids producing
The geologic depression of the poles;

The reproduction instinct, the legitimate urge
From the soul, facing triumphantly high risks,
The oath of the elder warriors
Putting the hands in the glands of the victim;

The fluctuations that the human psychoplasm
Suffers from the mystic mania,
The heavy characteristic oppression
From the ten minutes of an asthma attack;

And, (albeit you will mutter against this)
The funeral function of the rope
That drags and later fatten the cattle,
To the wretched death in the slaughterhouses...

Everything that is kept in the earthly abyss,
Encompasses the complication of this sound,
Fought between the human the human pride in dragon form,
¡ And the inorganic forces from the earth!

¡ For discovering all of this, you become tired in vain!
The germ of this active force is unknown,
That conceives, in each passive cell,
¡ The heterogeneity of the change!

Poet, evil fetus, raised drinking
A sour milk, disgusting carnivore,
Conceived in the monstrous atavism
İn the disordered soul of the dead ones;

The last of the lesser creatures
Controlled by selfish atoms,
Your foot kills the abundance the paths
¡ And sterilize the wombs that give birth!


The rough evil that you brings to everything around you,
İt’s analogous to the thing that, dark and in its due time,
Brings the avid nocturnal phyllostomidae,
¡ To the blood of the voracious mammals!


¡ Ah! Much as you work, with all the strength of your spirit
To the perfection of the existing beings,
You will show your dental caries
¡ İn the dreary anatomy of the details!

The Space – this Spencerian abstraction
That encompasses the relations of coexistence
And That’s all! İt’s not dependent
Of the mortal spinal cords of the human species!

The radiant ellipses traced by the stars,
And the fake ones present themselves to the viewer
They’re luminous truths watched by the man
Who, however, aren’t able to understand them.

İn vain, with the corrupted hand, asks for other Æther
That this hand, that have skeleton-like phalanges,
İnside this water that you see,
¡ Also verifies the Archimedes principle!

The ferocious fatigue that is in you
Will left this dreadful mark on you,
That, in the bodies swollen because of the anasarca,
¡ Left the fingers of anyone!

And also you will not have after all of your work
The merciful friendly towel,
That touch the ill man in the belly
¡ And touches, at night, the pustules from the pest!

When the calm moment comes,
You will be dragged, in a row,
Like an unconscious wooden log
¡ İn the organic evolution of the clay!

A single day compared to a millennia
That will be, then, your last Gospel...
İt’s the evolution from the new to the old
¡ And from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous!

¡ Goodbye! Stay there, rotting
With your large belly!... ¡ You are dust, and in vain is vibrating!
The raven that eats your carrion
Will a feel bitter taste!”

Ⅳ

The voice become silent. İt was a dreary night.
And the chins, showing damned trismus,
İ pulled my uncombed hair
¡ Like king Lear, amidst the forest!

Cursed, with vehement apostrophes,
İn the stentor of a thousand insurgent tongues,
The conventionalism of the Pandects
(Probably a reference to a compiled codice of roman Laws)
¡ And the text of the recent bad codices!

My tormented imagination
Conceived absurd ideas... Like a couple of demons,
Make me look in the eyes of the corpses
That have a greenish sclera.

The chlorophyll of the farms dried.
Like the sharps of a dirge
The complaint from the pain of the crowds
Came to my vocal chords.

The upside-down world resigned itself
İn the bulk of his own work...
The gravity was concept that failed,
¡ The spectral analysis lied!

The Estate, the Association, the Cities
Were dead. From de whole world
Only remained a dying device
And a teleology without standards.

İ wanted to run, go to Hell,
So that, in the psyche in the occult game,
All the impressions from the outer world
¡ Died by the inhalation of the fire’s smoke!

But the Earth denied me the balance...
İn the Nature, a woman in black
Sang, watching the trees without fruit.
¡ Song of the whore of the deception!

Assorted Excerpts & Abridged Tales – The Many İnvisibility Rings İn the Public Domain Literature

 Compiled and abridged by Felipe Lohan Pinheiro da Silva

"(...); and in the hand, plainly visible in the moonlight, the dark circle of the magic ring."

The Enchanted Castle - Edith Nesbit

***

Dedicated to the memory of all the authors of the cosmic mythopoeia.

***

See the drawing file. İt Reads “Dragon Slayer” in right-to-left runes, actually in English.

***

This anthology was created to show that invisibility rings are a common element in the Public Domain literature. It surely have its flaws and mistakes; but this is normal in such large-sized projects.

❦The Dragon of The North (Der Norlands Drache)❦

Compiled by Andrew Lang in the Yellow Fairy Book, referencing the book “Estnische Märchen” by Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald

There was a Dragon that came from the North destroying the land, devouring men and animals. Several kings offered a reward to those that could destroy him, either by force or enchantment, but several men failed. He had a hypnotic gaze, so anyone that looked at him walked in his direction only to be devoured by him. His scales were harder than metal, so even forest fires couldn’t hurt him. But the legend said that the King Solomon’s Signet Ring had a secret inscription with instructions to kill him. However, no one knew where the ring was or knew a sorcerer who could translate the text.

A young Hero with a good heart accepted the Quest, and after some years he found an Eastern Magician, who said that if the Hero understood the language of the birds it could help him in the Quest. So he collected nine kinds of herbs under the moonlight and used it to craft an alchemical potion, so he made the Hero drink it, and he gained that ability. The Eastern Magician said to the Hero to bring the Ring it to him if he found it, so he could translate its inscription.

Some time later, the Hero heard two birds talking to each other, and they said that the Ring was in possession of the Witch Maiden, or at least she knew where the Ring was. She would be at the spring three days later, because every month she washed her face under the full moon in order to stay forever young.

When the day came, she arrived in the spring and bathed her face nine times under the full moon and walked nine times around it, while singing the magical chant:

“Full-faced moon with light unshaded,
Let my beauty never be faded.
¡ Never let my cheek grow pale!
While the moon is waning nightly,
May the maiden bloom more brightly,
¡ May her freshness never fail!”

He met her there, and he never saw a woman so beautiful in his life. She invited him to sleep in her house, but before entering there the birds warned that if he gave his blood to her, she would make a ritual to taker his soul. Later, they arrived in her house and dinned there, and were served by the servants. None of the treasures inside her house were permanent, because they were all created by the Ring’s magic. She asked to marry with him, but he asked some time to make up his mind.

One day, she showed him the Ring and said that if he married her, she would gave him the Ring, but she asked for three drops of his blood in exchange. So he hid his feelings from her and asked about the powers of the ring. She explained that no man knew the Ring’s full power until someone translated its inscription. But she figured out some of it’s powers. Putting it on the fingers of the left hand it would give the following powers:

*Pinky – Shapeshift into a flying bird (in this form, the ring becomes attached to a ribbon in the bird’s neck)

*Ring – İnvisibility

*Middle – Hardness against physical weapons

*İndex – Create temporary objects by magic

*Thumb – Super Strength

Some days latter he fast-talked her, saying that he didn’t believed that the Ring had such powers, and she made a demonstration to him, so asked to test it. She agreed, no suspecting her intention. So he used the invisibility to go to far away from her and later the power shapeshift into a bird to fly to escape from her.

He took the ring to the Eastern Magician, who took seven week to translate all of its secret signs. The instructions were: To craft a fake metal horse and a giant spear, fitted in the middle with a chain with stakes in its end. When the Dragon tried to eat the horse, he would use the super strength to wield the spear and hit him in the palate to make it trespass his upper jaw. So he would fit the stakes to don’t let the Dragon to escape. So he would wait three days to because the dragon would lose his strength. So he would use the invisibility power to approach him without being hit by his tail, and later use the super strength to make the final blow.

The Hero offered to reward him in the future, but he said that the Ring gave him so much knowledge that it was enough.

The Hero did all this and used the super strength to hit the his head with a giant stone.

The King rewarded him making him marrying with his daughter. However, when the Dragon’s corpse became rotten, the air became poisoned with it and a pestilence took over the land, killing several people. So the Hero flew to the Eastern Magician home to seek for help. But the Witch maiden cast fortune telling spells to locate the Prince, so she shapeshifted herself in an eagle form. So she captured him in the air and took of the ring from him, and later kidnapped him. So she made him prisoner in an Underground Dungeon.

Several weeks passed and the Princess had precognitive dreams warning that her husband was in a great suffering. So she warned the king, who asked for the magicians to discover something about it, but they didn’t discovered nothing new. A long time later a Magician (not the Eastern Magician) discovered by casting a fortune telling spell that the Prince was imprisoned by a powerful being in the East. So the king sent a party to the East, and they met the Eastern Magician and told him what happened, so he cast a fortune telling spell to locate the Dungeon. The Eastern Magician said that he could go with the party because the Dungeon were protected with magic.

The Eastern magician was guided by birds. After a few days the party reached the Dungeon and broke in it, where the Prince was imprisoned by nearly seven years. So the Eastern Magician used his magic to set him free.

When the prince returned to home, he discovered that the King died in that morning. So he was raised to the throne, but didn’t got the ring back.

The End

Final note: The original text said that “ill-gotten gains never prosper”, about the method used by the prince to get the ring. Well, my fucking ass: that’s not quite the case. First because the original text itself said that the Hero had a “good heart”. Second, it’s possible that the Hero could have accepted the Quest in self interest, but the truth is that he used the Ring to help him to kill the Dragon, a thing that also helped a lot of people. Third, let’s not forget that the Witch Maiden used the Ring as a bait take the Hero’s FUCKİNG SOUL.

❦Prince Narcissus And The Princess Potentilla (La Princesse Pimprenella et Le Prince Romarin)❦

Compiled by Andrew Lang in the Green Fairy Book

The King Cloverleaf and the Queen Frivola had a blue-eyed daughter called princess Potentilla. Potentilla was so beautiful that Frivola was jealous of her, fearing that her daughter could be more admired by the people than herself. So she locked her in a house near the river bank, surrounded by a high wall and protected by several guards. Later, Frivola lied, spreading a hoax that Potentilla was kept there because she was too ugly.

There was another kingdom in that the queen and the king both died, and the eldest son raised to the throne. So he delivered her younger brother Narcissus to a fairy called Melinette, so she could raise him. She did it and also imparted to him some of her Fairy Lore. When he became an adult, she gave him an invisibility ring.

Prince Narcissus traveled to the court of Frivola and when he heard the story about Potentilla he became curious to see her. So he used the power of the ring to don’t be seen by the guards, and he succeed at climbing the wall with some difficulty. When he saw Potentilla he figured out that it was just a hoax.

Narcissus asked to Melinette to use her fairy powers to influence Potentilla’s dreams, sending a message that he was friendly. She was so successful that Potentilla feared that she could stop to dream these dreams. So Narcissus first talked to her while invisible, and later showed himself to her when she asked for it.

After Narcissus leaved, Enchanted Grumedan, a Large one-eyed man with big teeth, appeared in a cloud of dust and shavings. He used a magical wand to make several flowers appear before her. Melinette used her Fairy Powers to mimic the Narcissus voice in the ear of Potentilla, so she asked her to don’t reveal her feelings to Grumedan.  Later, she appeared to Grumedan in all of her Fairy Splendour and warned to Grumedan to don’t make any dirty trick when courting Potentilla.

Later, Melinette met Narcissus to tell him what happened, and warned him that Grumedan was a dangerous individual, being punished several times before by the Fairy Queen.

When Grumedan discovered that she had another suitor besides him, he tried to kill Narcissus with a club blow, but Melinette used her lightning speed to save Narcissus and escape from there with him. Potentilla fainted. When she woke up, she thought that he had died, and Grumedan used his magical wand to put her to sleep. So he took her and appeared in the court, to say to her parents that he would marry her. Melinette took Narcissus to her flying castle.

Frivola Agreed with Grumedan, with the condition that he took her to live far away from the kingdom. So they agreed to give their daughter to Grumedan as wife, but she wanted to die before that. So Friva offered a cup of poison to Potentilla. Just before she raised the cup in her lips, Melinette appeared with Narcissus.

Melinette faced Grumedan. He saw her, but she slipped around his blind side and wrestled him. She kicked him and subdued him, and she imprisoned him inside a crystal ball for a thousand years with her magical wand.

Narcissus and Potentilla married. Melinette deprived Cloverleaf and Frivola from the throne because she thought that they were unfit for it. So she made Narcissus and Potentilla raise to the throne. The Prince and the princess both didn’t wanted it, but they had to obey the fairy.

The End

Final note: İn the original text, its said that: “These rings seem to be quite common”.

❦The Enchanted Ring❦

Compiled from Fenelon by Andrew Lang in the Green Fairy Book

There was two brothers. The younger, Rosimond, was good and handsome. The older, Bramintho, was ugly and wicked.

One day Bramintho was jealous for the love that their mother had with Rosimond, so he created a hoax. He said that Rosimond were visiting an enemy of the family and was plotting to kill his own father with poison. So his father took Rosimond and spanked till he began to bleed, and later he imprisoned him for three days without food. Later he turned him out of the house and threatened to kill him if he came back.

Later, Rosimond found a fairy who was riding a gray horse. She saw that he was sad, so she gave him a Magical ring. She said that the ring could make him the happiest and the most powerful man, provided that he never made a bad use of this. She explained its powers:

1 – Puting it in the pinky finger – Shapeshifted into the form of the King’s son

2 – Turning the diamond inside – İnvisibility

Rosimond shapeshifted himself and appeared as the Prince to his father, and asked to take Bramintho to the court. Meanwhile, his father was taken to the fairy, who beat him with a golden birch rod and imprisoned him until Rosimond rescued him.

Rosimond appeared disguised in the court, because the true Prince was in a war in a distant island, and was captured by savage people, so people thought that it was the real prince that returned.

So he said to His brother, also disguised as a prince, that Rosimond was in the court. So he took off the ring, without letting Bramintho see it, and appeared as himself. So he said that he forgive his brother.

Some time later there was a war with a foreign kingdom, so he used the invisibility power to discover the enemy plans, and defeated then in a battle.

Some time later the king arranged a marriage to Rosimond, still disguised as Prince, but the fairy warned to him to don’t do it, to don’t use the power of the ring to deceive anyone, and she said that she would help him to rescue the true prince.

So he traveled to the island in a vessel and rescued him. İn the return to the kingdom, he told all the truth to the King and the Prince. He denied all the rewards offered by the King, and only asked to give a post in the court for his Bramintho.

İn the way home, he met his father at the cave and spoke the magical words taught by the Fairy to release him.

Fearing that if he kept the Ring he might be tempted to use it in order to regain his lost place in the world, he made up his mind to restore it to the Fairy.

Some time later, the Fairy said that his brother tried to convince the Prince to ill-treat Rosimond. So the Fairy told him that she would give the Ring to his brother as a mean of punishment.

[Rosimond, complaining]: ¿ What do you mean by giving him the Ring as a punishment? He will only use it to persecute everyone, and to become master.

She explained to him that the best way to punish a scoundrel is giving power to him. So she disguised herself as an old woman and gave it to Bramintho.

But Bramintho only used it to do wicked things, like discovering family secrets to later betray them, gain wealth by stealing things, commit murders, etc. But he became a suspect because he get rich too quick.

So the king did the following plan: he bribed a stranger that arrived at the court, that came from a Kingdom that was always in war with his Kingdom. The stranger should contact Bramintho at the night asking him to betray State secrets. The stranger did it and Bramintho boasted about his Ring. So in the Next morning, the king said to the guards to arrest and take the Ring from him. A search revealed the stolen documents.

Rosimond gone to the court to beg the King’s pardon, but it was denied, and Bramintho was executed. The king returned the Ring to Rosimond, and Rosimond returned the Ring to the Fairy. So he said to her that ill fortune seems to follow all who keeps it, and asked to never give it to anyone who he loves.

The End

***

Final Notes:

1 – The original text said “Fearing that if he kept the Ring he might be tempted to use it in order to regain his lost place in the world, he made up his mind to restore it to the Fairy”. İn other words, the Ring could cause temptation.

2 – When Rosimond talks about the possibility of Bramintho using the Ring, he said “(...) to become master.”. İn another words, the Ring could be used by someone to become master.

3 – İt’s worth to note that in the original text, Rosimond while returning the ring, says: “Take back your ring, and as ill fortune seems to follow all on whom you bestow it, İ will implore you, as a favour to myself, that you will never give it to anyone who is dear to me.”.

❦The Lady of the Fountain❦

Compiled by Andrew Lang in the Lilac Fairy Book, this tale was also in the Mabinogion and was influenced by the tale “Yvain, the Knight of the Lion” (“Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion”)

The young knight Kynon was wandering in search for adventure. During his travels he became a guest of a master of castle, who told his about a challenge for him: there was a black uniped (one-legged) giant cyclops who carried a giant club and was the master of the beasts of the woods.

He traveled to talk to the cyclops, who told him that there was a marble slab near a fountain, that had a chain attached to a silver bowl. He should drop the water in the slab and a knight in black velvet equipped with a lance with a black pennon would appear to challenge him.

He did all this and the Black Knight came. So they dueled and Kynon was defeated by him. Later he returned to the same castle on which he was a guest and slept there. Later he returned to the King’s Arthur Court.

The Knight Owen (or Owain) listened the Kynon’s tale and traveled to challenge the Black Knight. Owain defeated the Black knight, who escaped to his castle. Own followed him inside the castle, but the drawbridge hit him and the horse, so he was locked inside the castle. A women called Luned appeared and pointed to him that the guards of the castle could kill him for hurting his master. So she agreed to help him, so she gave a magical Ring to him with the power of giving invisibility by turning its diamond inside.

So the guards would not see him, and said to follow her into her home so she could hide him there.

İn the following day, the Black knight died due to a skull injury inflicted by Owen in that duel. Luned was a servant of the Countess, The Lady of the Fountain, that was the Black Knight’s wife. She talked to the Countess and pointed that she needed someone for replacing her deceased husband. So, Luned presented Owen and the countess to each other, and they married. Owen became the new Black Knight at the fountain.

Three years passed and Arthur missed Owen. So he formed a party with several knights, including Kai and Gwalchmai.

They reached the Fountain and challenged the Black Knight. Everyone fought him and was defeated, except Kai, Arthur and Gwalchmai. So Kai fought him and was defeated.

Later Gwalchmai fought him and both fell from the horses. So the fight resumed on foot. So Owen hit a blow that removed the Gwalchmai’s helmet. So he recognized him and the fight stopped, because Owen showed himself.

Arthur’s party took three months with Owen. So Owen traveled back with them, saying to his wife that he would be three months in Arthur’s Court. However, he took three years there. One day, a women riding a horse threw a ring at his feet and called him traitor and faithless. So he remembered his wife.

So Owen began to travel without destination because his heart was heavy. He became thin and his hair grew. So he fainted at the margin of a lake. He was rescued by a servant of a local lady, who under her instructions, poured a healing ointment on him. Later he knew that a knight threatened to take the lands of that lady, and defeated him in a duel so that knight wouldn’t cause problems to the lady anymore.

Some time later he beheaded a serpent that tried to attack a lion. So the lion, in reward, became his pet.

Owen found Luned imprisoned inside a cave. He talked to her without revealing her true identity. She explained him that the countess imprisoned her there because she married Owen under her influence, and now he disappeared for several years. She also said that the guards of the countess would execute her in two days if he didn’t returned.

So Owain went to a castle nearby in the same plain. So the master of the castle explained that his two sons were kidnapped by a giant who lived in a castle in the mountains, and that he wanted to marry her daughter in exchange of releasing them. So Owen gone that castle and challenged the Giant, but the lion attacked him. So the giant pointed that the fight was unfair because of the help the lion. So Owen agreed to lock him in a tower in the castle. But the lion climbed the tower and escaped it using a door in its roof, and later climbed down by the outside walls, and later reached the ground. So he killed the Giant with his paw. So Owen released the two brothers from the castle.

Returning to the cave, there were two guards making preparations to set fire in the cave to kill Luned. So he challenged them, but the lion attacked them. So the guards pointed that the fight was unfair because of the help the lion. So Owen agreed to lock him in the cave, putting stones at the entrance. But the lion escaped from cave, pushing the stones so they fell in the ground. So he killed the guards.

So Owain rescued Luned and returned with her to live with the countess again.

The End

❦The Water Of The Wondrous İsles❦

By William Morris

***

İn the town of Utterhay, people told tales of supernatural events in the wood called Evilshaw near the town, so no one entered there. A traveling merchant woman saw a poor widow called Audrey and offered her gold to stay in her house. Later she gave her gold to buy food for them. When Audrey gone out to the market, the merchant woman kidnapped her two year old daughter and escaped to the wood. The Merchant was actually the Witch-Wife, and reached with the child in her house at Evilshaw, the House Under The Wood.

İn the following day, when the girl woke up, the witch-Wife revealed her true form to the girl, because she shapeshifted herself in order to kidnap her. So the girl, called Birdalone, was raised by the witch-Wife to be her servant.

Birdalone figured out that once in every two months the Witch-Wife gone outside the house in the dead of night and traveled to a far away place, and returned some days later. She was curious bout it, but feared to check what about it.

So, when Birdalone was 17 years old she crafted new clothes for her. One day she met in the woods a naked women that only covered her genitalia with an oak wreath. She presented herself as Habundia, and said that she wasn’t quite human, but a Wood-Wife, a fairy. She said that if Birdalone wanted to Escape, it should be by the sea, and not by the woods. She gave a tress of her hair to Birdalone and said that she should burn it to summon her.

Birdalone returned to the house, and the witch-Wife asked her what he saw in the woods. She lied, saying that saw some common things. So the Witch-Wife asked her if he saw a woman at the woods, and she lied again, answering that she didn’t saw it. So the witch wife said to her that she would take her to work in the hay field soon.

So she swan and begun to explore the Green Eyot, Rocky Eyot and the nearby places to her plan to escape from the Witch-Wife by sea. She found an old boat that she could use to escape. Later, she returned to the witch-Wife house.

She mentioned to the Witch-Wife that they could go to the Green Eyot for better fish. So she figured out her trick to escape, so she threatened Birdalone putting a knife in her throat. But the Witch-wife suddenly fell sick and fell in the ground. When she recovered later, she entered in a chamber and took a lead flasket and a golden cup with strange signs.

The Witch-Wife pointed out that if Birdalone escaped to a big city, she would found lust from men, but scarcely love. And when she would grow older, she would discover that the words of “love” said by such men were only mockery, and she would be alone in a hellish life.

She ordered to Birdalone to drink the liquor from the flask and threw the water from the cup in her face while speaking magical words, so she shapeshifted her into a beast temporarily. Later the Witch wife threatened her if she gone stray from the brook near the house.

Two weeks later, and at that time she already returned to her human form, Birdalone found Habundia on the woods and told her what happened. So Habundia told to Birdalone that the boat was called Sending Boat have her a gold magical Ring that could help her in her plan to escape. The Ring had the shape of a Ouroboros (the snake that eats his own tail) and had the power of invisibility by speaking the following magical words:

“To left and right,
Before, behind,
Of me be sight
¡ As of the wind!”

One day, the Witch wife said to Birdalone catch some fish, and she did so. Some days later, it was one of that nights that the Witch-Wife traveled at the night. So, Birdalone used the power of the Ring to follow her. She saw the Witch-Wife entering into the oat, cutting her arm with the knife and putting the blood in the surface of the Sending Boat, saying the following words:

“The red-raven wine now,
Hast thou drunk, stern and bow;
¡ Then wake and awake!
And the wonted way take:
The way of the Wender forth over the flood,
For the will of the Sender is blent with the blood.”

So the Sending Boat begun to move in the water by magic, and disappeared far away in the water. So Birdalone returned to the house.

Some days later, she met Habundia at the woods. So Habundia taught her about some of the Forgotten lore.

When the winter come, Birdalone said to Habundia that she would like to use the Ring to follow the Witch-Wife one more time, but wouldn’t do it, because she would leave her footprints in the snow. Habundia pointed that, albeit it was not hard to put in the Ring a power to let his user to walk without leaving footprints, it was not yet been done.

So the Witch-Wife begun to fear Birdalone, because she thought that she would one day overcome her. So she often sit while holding her knife, while looking at Birdalone.

İn the spring Birdalone begun to use the Power of the Ring to observe the Witch-Wife in the nights that she traveled using the Sending Boat. She meet Habundia and told her that she was preparing herself to escape from the Witch-Wife.

Meanwhile, there were three women called Aurea, Atra and Viridis lived in a nearby kingdom, and the King arranged a series of duels between their suitors. While that happened, the Witch-Wife appeared in the Sending Boat and offered her a ride while the duels happened. They accepted, but the Witch-Wife kidnapped them during the ride, threatening them with her short sword. So she delivered them to her sister, the Witch Queen. Later they spotted the Witch-Wife in one of her visits without being seen to learn about the activation of the Sending Boat. So, one day, they tried to use it when the Witch-Wife visited the island to escape, but they discovered that there was a spell that prevented them to activating the boat. Later, the Queen also killed several people that reached the island, including a guy that refused to lie in her bed.

Some time later, Birdalone met Habundia in the woods and said farewell to her.

One day, Birdalone took of her clothes and swam to the Sending Boat, but forgot a sharp object to cut herself, but she found a briar-rose and used its thorns to draw blood. So she used the blood and spoke the magical words to perform the ritual.

So the Witch-Wife approached the Sending Boat while wielding a short sword and said the following words:

“Back over the flood
¡ To the House by the Wood!
Back unto thy rest
¡ İn the alder nest!
For the blood of the Sender lies warm on thy bow,
And the Heart of the Wender is weary as now.”

But it was useless, because it was the Birdalone blood that awakened it. So she asked to Birdalone to speak the same Magical word to make her return, but Birdalone didn’t it. So she threw the sword at Birdalone, but she didn’t hit. So the boat moved to far away from the shore.

Some time later, she reached an island with a white palace. So she met the three women. They gave her food and said that the İsland was ruled by the Queen, who is the sister of the Witch-Wife. They said that the Queen had memory problems, so she didn’t remembered anything for more than 24 hours. However, they said that she remembered her spells and witch-songs very well.

They said that was useless to hide her, because the news of her arrival must already reached the Queen. So they presented Birdalone to the Queen.

The Queen, who wore a red dress, said that she would return Birdalone to her sister, and said to Atra put imprison her in the Wailing tower. While inside there, Atra said that “The prison is a grim place where poor folk who have do that which pleaseth not rich folk are shut up.”

[Compiler’s Note: Here we can see the socialist bias of William Morris.]

They told that the İsland was called the İsle of İncrease Unsought. They also told that everything they needed to live was provided by a magical device owned by the witch, the Wonder-Coffer, without the need of tillage, sowing, reaping or tending. So they said that they would plan for release her, manipulating the short memory of the Queen. So Birdalone asked if the Queen would not take revenge of them. They answered that the Queen foretold a Prophecy that she would fell if she raised her hand against them, unless a heavy guilty was clearly proven against her. So they told their story.

So they released Birdalone from the prison and gone with her to the Sending Boat. So They gave clothes Birdalone to wear and provisions. They also gave jewel that Birdalone should deliver to they favorite suitors: Atra for Arthur The Black Squire, Viridis to Hugh The Green Knight and Aurea to Baudoin the Golden Knight.

So Birdalone performed the ritual on the boat, drawing blood with the pin of the girdle-buckle, and escaped from the island.

After they return to the palace, the witch remembered a vision of a naked woman, who was Birdalone, but couldn’t remember it very well due to her memory problems. So she asked to them about it, and pointed out that her prophecy didn’t forbade her to punish them if they lied to her. So Atra lied, saying that it was a memory of her torturing one of them inside the pillar.

Later, two doves with gold rings around their necks [Compiler’s Note: here we can see a similarity with “The Dragon Of The North”] appeared carrying two scrolls. So she said to them to keep the scrolls and the doves, and to gave the scrolls to her in the next day. She asked to Viridis to help her to go upstairs. While she did it, she heard the witch saying to herself that she should drink the Water of Might to feel better and recover her memory temporarily.

Next day they tried to read the scrolls but it was in a language that they didn’t understood. So they delivered the scrolls to her. She said that they were two letters from her sister, telling about the escape of Birdalone. So she figured out everything.

So she decided to chastise them. She chained them in the pillars near the dais and gave them a red potion of invisibility, so no one could found them. From times to times she released them to make hard tasks, and later chained them again.

Meanwhile, Birdalone arrived in an island and found two little children in the shore. She later found an old man who took care of the two children, and offered her to take her in his house. He told her that the island was called the İsle of Young and the Old. So Birdalone saw that there was several houses in ruins in the island. She ate the dinner. Later, she asked who he was, and why the only him and the children lived on the island, and why there was that ruins in the island. The answered trying to avoid the matter, saying only that the first thing that he had to do in the island was to bury an old man. He told also that there was a great lady of the earl-folk, a baron’s dame, that was very dear to him.

Later he took a mead and began to drink until he got drunk. So he began to talk like a noble. Later he began to sleep.

So Birdalone decided to escape from that island before something bad happened to her. So she made a blood-offering in the boat to escape from that island.

She reached an island with a white palace. Entering in the dinning room she saw several people in the table and the serving-women, but no one even talked to her. There was a coffin in the room with a King holding a sword covered in blood. Near the coffin was a Queen kneeling. So she figured out that everyone’s body stood still. So they were was dead, albeit only the king have an appearance of someone dead. She tried to escape the island but she fainted several times in the was, so she ultimately fainted under the shade of a thorn tree. When she woke up, she activated the boat and escaped there.

Next day she reached another island with a white palace. When she entered there she saw a similar scene than the previous island. There was three kings in council with three counselors, and several armored soldiers at the room. So there was the funeral of a girl with long blonde hair. So she deemed that if she stayed more time there she would lose her wit full soon.

So she activated the boat and escaped there.

She reached another island and walked southward there, but it was night and didn’t reached the south shore. She slept in the island and in the following morning she figured out that she was lost. So she burnt the hair of Habundia to summon her. The shape of Habundia appeared at distance. Birdalone ran at her direction, but she disappeared. However, when she reached the point in that she saw Habundia, she was able to see the Sending Boat at distance. So she figured out that Habundia actually helped her.

So she activated the boat and escaped there.

She reached a place in the mainland with a castle. There she found several knights and a priest. She asked to stay. The castellan, Sir Aymeris, denied it, because he said that it was not a place for women. She asked to see his masters, and he explained that they would not come back until next morning. However, the priest, Leonard, convinced him to let her stay. Aymeris said that she could stay until the sunrise. They explained her that they were in a castle located at the mainland, not in the islands. After the dinner, they got a room outside the castle to let her sleep.

The Leonard led her to the cot, and there he told her that the masters of the castle were doing war against ill neighbors. So she asked why they didn’t let women enter in the castle. He answered that the masters of the castle had lost her loved women, and would not let any other enter until they found them again, and that castle was called the Castle of the Quest. So she figured out that probably was talking about the prisoners of the Witch Queen. He advised her to meet the masters of the castle next morning at the road, to talk with them.

So in the next morning she took a bath and wore the clothes that the three women gave her, and put the jewels that they gave her.

So she met the three knights when they came by the road. They recognized the tokens that were gave by the three women. So they arranged to meet in the castle later so that she could explain them better about the case.

Later, inside the castle, she gave to the three knights the jewels that the three prisoners of the Witch Queen gave to her.

She told them the story about the island of the Witch Queen. They said that they already heard the story before, but every time they tried to travel by water, a wind drove back the ship to the shore. So Birdalone told them about the Sending Boat, because it was magical.

The knights gave new clothes to her, and she gave them the clothes that the three women gave to her. They also gave to her some jewels.

She spent some days in the area. So she saw the Feats of Arms and the Games of Prowess from the men of arms of the area.

So the men of the castle made the preparations and made a feast and a banquet in the night prior to the Quest.

İn the next day, they were making the preparations to the travel. The Green knight wanted to behead the Witch Queen, but the Black Squire pointed out that if he did so, the secrets of the palace’s prison would die with her. Birdalone said that the better thing to do is to search for Atra, because she had a better understanding of the secrets of the island.

So the three knights made the blood ritual and traveled there, while she stayed at the land. So they visited all the islands that Birdalone did. When they reached the İsle of the Young and the Old, the old man asked to travel with them. However, they didn’t dared to hinder their mission because a tormented man, so they denied it and gave him some gifts and traveled again.

Later, they saw a boat in green, black and gold. They wanted to swim there, but Arthur pointed out that it were an illusion from the Witch. Later they saw a ship. So a horn blew and a line of bowmen shot at them, but none off the arrows hit them. When the ship got closer, they saw the three women with the hands tied. So they drew their swords, but Arthur pointed out that it was another illusion from the Witch.

They were sleeping in the boat, when they saw another boat coming close. From there they listened the voice of Birdalone asking for help. Arthur wanted to jump at the boat to save her, but Baudoin pointed out that it was another illusion from the Witch.

Later they reached the island of İncrease Unsought. So they put their armors and met the Witch Queen, with her red dress, at the palace entrance. She invited them to enter and ate and drink. But Baudoin presented them to her and said their purpose to rescue the three women, offering to pay a ransom.

She explained to them that she chastised the women giving them to her sister, the Witch-Wife. So the three men ate and drank with her. She offered them to search in the island if they didn’t believed her. She offered them to sleep in the palace chambers.

Later they took off the armors, because they felt there’s no need to use that, and they decided to stay in the island because they didn’t believed in her. They took some days searching them in the island, the palace and its dungeon. One day they figured out that in the beginning of the day the Witch Queen treated Arthur as if she had met him for the first time, but later in the day she remembered him. So they figured out that she had memory problems. They also figured out that she treated Arthur differently, so one day Arthur told them that soon or later he would be forced to go to the bed with her, unless they slayed her.

After several days they were exploring a far place in the island. Near the sunset they reached a dale and found a house hid in the woods near a brook. Outside the house they found a cage with the three women inside. However, the women didn’t answered them, as if they were bewitched. So they tried to find an opening in the cage, but didn’t found it. So the night began and the rain and storm also began. But after they ended, the cage and the house disappeared, so they figured out that it was another illusion from the Witch.

When they returned to the palace she was awaiting for them. After they gone down in the hall, she hugged and kissed Arthur. After the dinner, she called him into her chamber to sleep with her. Fearing that she could kill him in the night, Baudoin and Hugh spent the night with the swords ready.

Next morning, Arthur appeared and asked to do not talk about the quest while inside the palace, because he feared being watched.

Outside the house he told them that the witch forgot that she lied about the three women, so she told him what happened. He told her about the cage, and she told him that she chastised the three women, so they escaped to the inner side of the island. So she believed that the three women learned some magical lore, and the cage was an illusion to let the three women to defend themselves from her. He said to them that he thought that she was still lying, and the three woman were still with her.

After three days they explored the dale, but they didn’t found anything. Later, Arthur said that the Witch began to become tired of him, and she began to look at Hugh. So they decided that the matter should have an end.

That same night, after the dinner, she approached Hugh. She said him that they should stop to search for the women in the island and be happy with her here.

Later, they explored a new place in the island, and there they saw the three women shooting arrows on them, they figured out that it was another illusion from the Witch.

İn the next night, the witch invited Hugh to go to bed with her. So he took off his clothes and put his sword on the bed. When she entered at the chamber and took off her clothes, she saw the sword and asked about it. He answered that he thought that she put a spell on him and that no one, save from her bride, would go in the bed with him. She became angry and escaped from the room. So he used this opportunity to explore the chamber better, and found a flask with a liquid inside.

Next day he gave the flask to Baudoin. When they met the witch he gave it to Baudoin to keep it. When they met the Witch she didn’t treat Hugh ill, but her eyes were moving and her hands were touching his coat as if she were looking for something.

They met outside the house and later she also appeared there and invited them to walk in the garden. They lunched in the garden, but they sensed something wrong. So Hugh put his hand near the little dagger in his girdle, and Baudoin put his hand at the sword sheath. The witch saw it and grew pale, so she leaved to the house.

Later Baudoin gave the flask back to Hugh, and they met the witch at the entrance of the house. At the dinner, Hugh showed the flask to the witch and said that she should drink it to be well. She jumped at him to grab the flask, but he pushed her. So Baudoin and Arthur tied her in the chair with cords that they got. So she said that if they let her drink the Water of Might she would set free the women.

So Hugh decided to drink it. The Water gave him the following powers:

1 – Super Strength (it becomes 3 times the normal strength).

2 – Augmented Sight (vision).

Using his augmented vision, he saw the three woman in the pillars. This revealed a new power of the liquid:

3 – See the invisible.

So he gave the flask to Baudoin and Arthur to drink it. They set free the women, but when Baudoin set free Aurea he used his super strength to pull the chains from the pillar. So the witch pointed out that the damaged structure would make that part of the palace fall.

So they escaped there and they gave the flask to the three women to drink. This revealed a new power of the liquid:

4 – Heal wounds.

As the women knew, the water had also the following power:

5 – Alleviate memory problems temporarily (as noted by the Witch Queen before).

So they saw that part of the palace falling, under the clear moonlit sky. They entered the boat and made the blood offering. So they escaped from the island using the boat, and they visited the same islands that Birdalone did.

When they reached the İsle of Young and the Old, the old man was courteous, but he became, according to Viridis, “over kind” with the women when he was drunk. Arthur gave Atra a ring, but she returned it from him later because she suspected that he didn’t loved her anymore. Later they leaved that island and reached the mainland.

Meanwhile, Leonard was teaching Birdalone to read and write. She heard that the Red Knight, a local troublemaker, was hurt in the bed. So she said to Aymeris that she wanted to ride on the nearby area. So he sent scouts into the wilderness to check if there was something dangerous. After their return, they traveled into the wilderness and the hills some for days. They saw a trail to the valley between the mountains, but Aymeris said that it’s better to don’t go there, because it was the Black Valley of the Greywethers. İt was a valley inhabited by supernatural creatures like landwights (some kind of monster of spirit) and wild men. He said that Leonard know better its tales.

Leonard told her that he was in the valley once, but no creature attacked him. The tales says that the Greywethers were giants or landwights. They were turned into stone but could back to normal form sometimes. İf someone found them while in the normal form, he should say the following magical words:

“O Earth, thou and thy first children, İ crave of you such and such a thing, whatsoever it may be.”

But he couldn’t say anything else. İf he did so, or tried to escape from them, he would be killed. So that creatures would offer him treasures and a naked woman. İf he accepted any of these gifts, he would turned into one of the Stony People. But if he refused, he would receive all of these gifts.

She asked him if it would be dangerous to her to go there alone during the day. She said that no, that they only change to the human form at some nights in the year, like the Midsummer night. So she asked if he could help him escape from the castle for a while to visit there. He said that she could escape using the chapel door.

Next day she put a sharp knife at her girdle. And she took her quiver and bow. Leonard helped her to escape, but, before her departure, he confessed that he loved her. She answered that she didn’t love him. He asked to kiss her, and she agreed. So he kissed her cheek and her mouth. Later she took the palfrey and departed.

There, she didn’t saw anything supernatural, save that she deemed that she saw something dark moving just beyond a stone. So she spoke the magical words that Leonard told her, but nothing happened.

A man in black, appeared from behind the stone. She said that she would follow her in her travel by the valley. She denied it, but he insisted. So she thought in shot on him, but he was too close to let her draw an arrow. So she agreed, saying that he compelled her. He pointed out that he was not compelling her, since she as able to go anywhere she wants, but she could not compel him to leave her, he was only following her. He also said that he had said harder words to ladies that had done his pleasure and didn’t felt herself compelled. When he said that, she became scared. He was Sir Thomas of Eastcliff, the Black Knight.

So he followed her by the valley, and they reached a dale where had concentric rings of grey stones, a doom-ring of an ancient people. So they took wine and food and ate and drank near there.

Later he told her that the circle of stones were the only place that could awake the Greywethers, and asked what was her plans. She answered that she saw that he looked at her body and that she feared that he could rape her, so she warned him that she had something in her girdle (the knife) to protect herself (it’s interesting that this proves that the ownership of weapons can prevent rapes, contrary to the current leftist/SJW ideologies). So he answered that she could just go anywhere she wanted. So she pointed out that it was strange that he didn’t asked in any moment about her origins. He answered that he already heard tales about her when she arrived at the Castle of the Quest. He offered to her to wait until the night to awake the Greywethers, and to not fear him, because he would let his hauberk and longsword with her. She accepted it.

At the night, they saw armed men approaching the dale. So he said that they should escape from them, because they’re outnumbered by them, and he said that later he would explain why they were escaping. So they escaped from there. So they reached the strait pass and slept there.

Next day, while riding, he told her his story to her. He was the second in command from the Red Knight, that sent him to kidnap her and take her to the Red Hold. After that, the Red Knight would call one of his witches to put a spell on her. So Thomas came with his men and said to them that he would take one day to capture her in the dale. But he had regret of that because he liked her.

So he led her to a bower that he built 15 years ago and they rested there. She asked if he would take her back to the Castle of The Quest. He said to ask again next day.

Next day, she asked again. He offered to take her to the town of Greenford By The Water, so they could marry there. She declined, saying that she only would go to the castle. He grabbed her wrists and asked if she was in love with one of the three knights, pointing out that they were bound by their women. So she asked that he killed her with the sword. So he agreed to take her to the castle, but asked her to stay one day more in the bower. Next day, they traveled.

Later, they rode for a while, but he asked to stop to sleep for a while because he was tired. So the Red knight approached her while he was sleeping. She tried to wake up him but was useless. She warned to him to don’t get any closer, but he didn’t obeyed it. So she shot an arrow on him, but missed it. She knew that he had no time to shot another arrow and begun to run, but he reached her, because he was on the horse. So he grabbed her by the hair.

He forced her to answer his questions about her origin, but she denied it. So cried with her and she answered it.

Later he woke up Thomas. He offered him the option to redeem himself by delivering Birdalone, so he would spare his live, but he denied it. So they began to fight.

Birdalone ran at the Red Knight and attacked him with her knife, piercing the chainmail joint between his shoulder and the helmet, but the wound was not enough to kill him. So he used his sword to pierce the throat of Thomas, killing him. Later he pushed Birdalone and said that if she did anything else he would kill her.

Later he decided to take her to the Red Hold, but she asked him to kill her instead. He denied it and beheaded the Thomas corpse and tied his head to her neck. He also tied her hands.

Meanwhile, in the Castle, Leonard was about to tell to Aymeris about Birdalone, fearing that something could have happened to her. But, when he gone to the tower, the men said that there was a boat at distance. İt was the sending boat, with the three women and the three knights.

When they arrived, they asked for Birdalone. Aymeris said to the men to go to her chamber to take her, but Leonard told that she was not in the castle. Arthur wanted to kill him, calling him a traitor, but Baudoin prevented it. So Leonard told everything.

They said to Aymeris to make preparations of two parties of men to attack the Red Hold if necessary. Five men gone to the Black Valley: The three knights, a sergeant and a squire. They followed the track of Thomas, but it was difficult, because the ground was stony. Next day a heavy rain fell, erasing the track. So the sergeant offered to led them to a pass that goes to the Red hold to search for Birdalone, and they accepted.

After arriving there, the sergeant explained that there was a return path to the castle if they need to call the parties to invade the Red hold. Later, the squire listened a sound of the clash of swords, but Baudoin said that they should stealth there with the weapons ready, using the trees as cover. Later the sergeant listened the sound of horse-hoofs and a woman voice crying out.

So they saw in the wood the Red Knight riding a bay horse and Birdalone, who walked afoot.

Baudoin attacked him so he would have not time to draw his sword, but he had a battleaxe on his hand and hit him with a blow between the shoulder and the neck, killing Baudoin. Arthur ran to release Birdalone, while the other men all attacked the Red Knight at once. The sergeant attacked his right arm with a maul, so his battleaxe fell in the ground. The squire attacked with the sword and it hit the temple of the helmet and bounced. Hugh hit a piercing blow inside the armor that hit his throat, and the Red knight died.

Later, Birdalone wept for Baudoin, but Arthur pointed out that it was better for them to escape there quickly. The sergeant recognized the head as being from Thomas.

She told them that Thomas “entrapped her” [Compiler’s Note: what’sn’t actually true], and later the Red Knight beheaded him as traitor and captured her.

So they buried the Thomas’s head and took the Red Knight’s horse as loot. So they Returned to the castle of the Quest with the Baudoin’s corpse.

After returning to the castle, Arthur pointed that the corpse of the Red Knight would be devoured by the wolves and crows.

Viridis came to the Birdalone’s chamber to talk with her, so she asked what the other persons were saying about her, since she was responsible for the Baudoin’s death. So Viridis explained that there was not a general hate sentiment against her. So Viridis invited her to the solar, so she could tell her story of the Black Valley, and they could tell her about the story of the İsland.

Later, at the solar, Birdalone was invited to sit among them, but she said that she wouldn’t do it until she was sure that she was still under their fellowship. That created an atmosphere of embarrassment between everyone.

She also asked to let Leonard be pardoned. Later they were pardoned, and she told her story.

After Birdalone told her tale the people in the solar forgave her. So Arthur pointed out that Baudoin, being a knight, had a risky life anyway [Compiler’s Note: Actually having a risky life isn’t an excuse for forgive her, as he died because of her irresponsibility].

The men of the castle made a council predicting that since they killed the Red Knight, probably a war must broke between then and the Red Hold. So they sent messages to summon the knights of Greenford to make preparations to attack the Red Hold.

Later, Hugh told at the solar about their Quest to rescue the women from the Witch Queen. Later, Viridis told about the time between when Birdalone escaped from the İsland and their rescue.

After Baudoin was buried, they made preparations with 1600 men to wage war against the Red Hold.

Birdalone asked to talk with Arthur in private and began to kiss his mouth and she grew hot as fire. They talked about how the future would be, and he told her that Atra gave him back her ring. So he gave this same ring to Birdalone.

Next day the man traveled to the Red Hold. They made a war veteran called Geoffrey of Lea to take care of the castle. A message from them said that it was difficult to defeat the Red Hold because it was strong and well-manned.

Other messages revealed that after they used Siege engine called Wall-Wolf, a wall was destroyed and they tried to invade the Hold there, but were defeated by the men of the Red Hold. Arthur got a minor wound by the thrust of a spear.

She talked with Viridis, saying that she would leave to Greenford before the end of the war, in order to do not destroy the relationship between Atra and Arthur. She also asked money to start a living there, and one of the Geoffrey’s men, Arnold or Anselm, to escort her in the road. Next day Geoffrey gave a man called Arnold and 4 more men to do the escort.

Next day, Arnold gave her a pouch with money that Viridis sent. And so they traveled to Greenford.

Reaching there, they slept in the house of the local burgrave. Later Arnold returned to the castle. She said to the local alderman that she wanted to hire some men to travel with her in the roads. He answered that all the local fighters were at the war in the Red Hold. But later he got to her a Man called Gerard of Clee and his two sons, Robert and Giles. They have bows and short swords, but she had to buy armors and bucklers for them.

The alderman asked where she would go, and she said that she would go to first to Mostwyke and later to Shifford on the Strand . But when she gone to the road, she gone to a place away from Mostwyke, and she explained to Gerard that she would hide her footsteps from her friends. Gerard explained that the road would lead to the following places: the town of Upham, the town of Appleham, the City of the Bridges and the Liberties and the City of the Five Crafts. He said also that so miles away there was the road to Utterhay and Evilshaw. He told his history, saying ta one month earlier, the guys of the Red Hold burned his house and stolen his animals. She asked why he didn’t gone to the war to take revenge, and he answered that he was not accepted because he was too old to serve.

After 4 days they reached the City of the Five Crafts. They were lodged in a hostel. İn that city, no one could have freedom in the market, except if he joined his respective Guild. That Guilds were “open-handed and courteous” and no one would be rejected if his work were “good and true” [Compiler’s Note: Here we can see the socialist bias of William Morris, portraying under a good light a kind of institution that promotes protectionism and regulations, at the cost of preventing the independence and free enterprise from businessmen]. Later she showed her embroidered work to the Embroiderers Guild. Jacobus, the Guild Master, liked her work, but pointed out that she would need to hire servants and apprentices to help in her work. He told her that there was an old woman in the city called Audrey, that refused to join the guild, and he said that it would be a good thing if she hired her, so Audrey could also join the Guild. He also offered his house in the Street of the Embroiderers to rent, and she accepted it.

Some days later, Jacobus presented her to Audrey. She asked her where she came from, and Audrey said that she came from Utterhay. So Birdalone said that she remembered something about that town, but she didn’t remembered exactly what was, so she asked her to tell if there was something uncommon about the town. So the embroiderer said that the only thing uncommon was the proximity with Evilshaw. So she began to weep and told her story to Birdalone, saying that she had a child kidnapped, and later she settled as embroiderer. Birdalone told her story to Audrey. Comparing the details of their stories, they figured out that Audrey was the Birdalone’s mother.

She opened an embroidery shop and took the three men as his servants and bodyguards, and hired workers. She told also publicly that Audrey was his mother and she was stolen from her when she was a child, but she didn’t told to anyone the details of her kidnapping.

Jacobus asked to marry with Birdalone, but she refused and said that it was better to seek another house. So he gave the document of property of the house to her, saying that if she leaved the house he would not live in it or let anyone rent it anyway, because he would remember her inside it.

Meanwhile, After the war at the Red Hold, Arthur hunted the bandits that escaped to the woodlands of the northwest. However, they got women to them and would like to have children to them in order to breed an evil folk. So 3 years later he traveled to Evilshaw, where no one would annoy him. He knew a man that became his friend, but died 2 years later due to a sickness. Before he died, he gave his harp to Arthur. Later some of the former men from the Red Hold saw him there, but didn’t recognized him (because his hair and beard grew, and this clothes changed). Even so, they tried to attack him, but he killed and hurt some of the men. But the men overcame him and captured him, tying his hands. They tortured him a bit, but he was able to escape when the men were not there. After that, he was still wandering in the woods.

Meanwhile, Hugh came to the Green mountains with the three women, and he had 2 daughters with Viridis. But they missed Birdalone, so they delivered their daughters to trusty folks and began to follow the track of Birdalone.

Meanwhile, Birdalone spent five years in the city, and there was an epidemic that killed Jacobus and Audrey. So the Witch-Wife appeared in her dreams saying that she should meet Arthur Again. So she said to Gerard and his sons that she would travel to the Castle of the Quest and she would make a document giving them everything, save the money to the travel and to hire men to escort her. They said that she could give the house to the servants, because they would travel to Utterhay.

Later, she brought a long hauberk, long leather boots and a short sword to her. They come to the road and said farewell to each other where the road splits.

She reached the town Greenford, and there, a chapman called Master Peter, a veteran of the war of the Red Hold said that, after they defeated the Red Hold, they held a garrison for 3 months against troublemakers in the land. He told that later Hugh returned with Viridis to their castle and Arthur gone to the Red Hold, and that the castle was uninhabited now.

She reached the castle and Leonard told her that Arthur leaved it after he returned from the war, because his heart was heavy because of her. Later, Hugh leaved the castle with the three women. He also told that later, the people of the castle saw two apparitions:

1 – A ginger woman with a short sword and a twiggen rod, saying curses and blasphemies.

2 – Birdalone in the following forms:

2.1 – İn a green dress and singing.

2.2 – Barefoot in a gray dress.

2.3 – Naked, shrieking and wailing.

She explained that the woman with the short sword was the Witch-Wife. She saw him that she would leave to use the Sending Boat.

Later, she gone the Sending Boat and activated it, because she wanted to visit Habundia to ask her what she should do.

She reached the İsle of Nothing (the island in that Habundia helped her to escape), but it was now inhabited by a primitive folk. She ate and drink with them and spent a day there, and that folk thought that she was some kind of goddess. Next day she departed.

Later she reached the İsle of the Kings (the island where she found the corpse of the three kings who stood still). İt was now inhabited by several women who thought that she were some kind of male God of Love (because she was wearing an armor). When she was leaving the island, they figured out that she was a woman, so they wanted to take of her armor by force and force her to leave the boat to force her to stay in the island to become their queen. So she threatened to kill with her sword those who tried to do it.

Later she reached the İsle of the Queens (the island where she found the corpse of the Queens who stood still). She met an old man with a green coat, who carried a short sword and a quarterstaff. They talked for a while, and he figured out that she was a woman, so he tried to grab her, but she drew her sword. So he hit its guard with his quarterstaff, and her sword fell in the ground. She began to run until she saw a young man. The old man began to argue with him about who would stay with her. So she figured out that the younger man was called Otter, and the older man was called Antony. Otter agreed to go with her to the boat, but when they were walking, she saw Antony trying to hit him with the sword, so she grabbed his hand. When he saw it, he grabbed him by his nape and made a takedown on him.

They returned to take back her sword, and he gone with her to the shore. So she activated the boat.

She reached the İsle of Young and the Old and it was now populated by several children and young people, being the older a guy with 15 years old. She asked him about the old man, but he didn’t knew anything about it. So she ate and drank and leaved the island later.

She reached later the İsle of İncrease Unsought, but it was not inhabited and the vegetation began to die. Returning to the shore, she saw that the Sending Boat was not there anymore. So she take off her armor and weapons. So she burnt the hair of Habundia to summon her. So she swan naked to the Green Eyot and the Rocky Eyot. She saw a tree-bole floating in the water and she grabbed it. So, she reached the house of Witch-Wife. She saw her sitting at the bench outside the house. So she said that she wanted to live with her again, but it was just to deceive her, because she was not with her weapons anymore. But when she approached her, she saw that she was dead. So she became happy because of her death. She entered in the house and found the old clothes that she wore before her escape and she wore it again. So she took a mattock and a spade to dig a grave for her.

Later she found the Sending Boat completely destroyed near the water. She wondered if the boat leaved the İsle of İncrease Unsought and was now destroyed because the death of the Witch-Wife. So a big moldy hairy brown-freckled grey serpent came from inside the boat and entered in the water. So she ran back to the house. She wondered if such serpent was some kind of creature that somewhat powered the boat.

Later she met Habundia and told her the story of the things that happened since they saw each other for the last time. Habundia told that he send the tree-bole to Birdalone. Later Habundia gave her Fairy clothes as a gift. She said to Birdalone to ask 7 days, while she would discover something that would help in her situation.

Habundia took the form of Birdalone and entered in the wilderness, and Arthur saw her.

At the 6th day she saw Habundia at the entrance of the house, wearing hunting clothes and carrying bow and arrow. So she gave another fairy hunting clothes to Birdalone.

She offered Habundia to enter in the house, but she denied it, saying that it was a house built by a witch, who buried human beings at its four corners. She asked if Birdalone saw at the night an apparition of a youngling using a garland on the head walking near the house. She answered that no.

Habundia accepted to enter in the house, but warned Birdalone to don’t be scared if her physical form changed when she entered it. She also asked to Birdalone to concentrate her willpower to don’t allow her shape to change. So when she crossed the threshold she became about a meter (3 foot) tall for a moment, but came back to normal later.

So they ate and drink, and Birdalone wore the fairy hunting clothes, put a knife in her girdle and took bow and arrows.

İn the wilderness, Habundia told to Birdalone that they were to make a manhunt. So they went to the wilderness. They heard a man singing, and they took cover. So Birdalone saw Arthur wearing a pelt clothes, carrying a short sword, a short spear and a small harp. When she saw him, she screamed and came in his direction, but he said to her that she was just an apparition appearing to the second time to him, so he pointed his sword to her. So Habundia drew the bow and arrow and said that if he did something with Birdalone she would kill him. He put his sword aside in the bushes and he said to Birdalone that he had a bad life since she left him. So he fell in the ground.

Birdalone thought that he died, but Habundia checked on him and saw that he just fainted. So Habundia used her naturalist skill to find in the wilderness the “blood-stauching” and the “sleepy” herbs, and used her herbalism skill to help to heal him. She said to Birdalone that they should go to a safer place to let her heal him properly. Birdalone asked if both should carry his body, but Habundia said that she was herself strong enough to carry him. So Habundia carried him to a cave. She said to Birdalone that in the next day she would not take the Birdalone form, because it would confuse him and make him worse. She said to Birdalone to return to the house.

Birdalone took the ring that Arthur gave her and put it in a chain around his neck.

Habundia took the form of an old woman and began take care of him while Birdalone returned to the house. She gave him black clothes and a sword in a red sheath. He saw the ring in his neck, but she lied saying that she didn’t knew if the “ring-bearer” was the woman that he looked for. So she took her short sword, her bow and arrows and led him in the wilderness. She said him that his name was Arthur, the Black Squire, and he was at the war of the red hold. She asked how she knew it, and she answered that a friend told her. So he told her his tale. He also asked for the visions that he saw in the Birdalone form, but she answered in an evasive way, saying that they should not talk about that matters. So she gave instructions to allow him to reach the House Under The Wood.

Meanwhile, Hugh and the three women visited the Castle of the Quest and met Leonard, who told them about the apparitions and that Birdalone was there and used the Sending Boat. So, Atra had an idea to everyone sleep in the hall that night, so they could see the apparitions to get some information. So they saw an apparition of an old woman in hunting clothes, carrying bow and arrow and a knife. So they had an idea to visit Evilshaw, because they knew that Birdalone came from there.

Meanwhile, Arthur reached the house and met Birdalone, and they had sex for several days. Later they agreed to met Habundia to ask what they should do to find their friends.

They met Habundia and she said that they should wait for 14 days, while she would seek with their messengers about the situations of their friends.

Meanwhile, Hugh and the three women went to Greenford with two men to hire guides to Evilshaw. Here, they hired two guides. Hovewer, Viridis felt that she didn’t trust them. Later, they gone to Evilshaw.

Later, Habundia returned and told that their friends were in the company of some people, but there was two traitors who wanted to deliver them to the men of the Red Company. So there were people from the Red Folk who were going to ambush them.  Habundia asked to Birdalone to swear an oath that she should visit her at least once in a year, if she wanted that she helped her this time. Birdalone accepted.

So Habundia gave fairy armors and helmets to both, and they were masterpieces, so well made that no human could have made it. She lead them to the place of the ambush. She gave an oliphant horn to Birdalone, and said that she should blow it if she need it. So Habundia said that she would leave because she had more things to do about this situation.

While Hugh and the women were sleeping, they were ambushed by the men of the Red Folk, because the two guides betrayed them, and their two men had their throats cut. He was tied to a tree with the two guys, so he could die slowly.

Viridis began to shriek, but the men beat her to get her unconscious. Birdalone took off the helmet to hear better, and she heard at distance a rough voices and the shriek. So Birdalone and Arthur saw several men in red surcoats who took the three women as prisoners, and were calling them “white-skinned bitches”.

They ambushed the men. Both Birdalone and Arthur killed 1 man each one (2 men in the total) with the bow and arrows. Arthur’s armor was green, so it helped him to ambush three more men, and he killed them with the sword, piercing their leather armors and chainmails. Viridis was unconscious, and Birdalone came to her to cut the cords at her wrists, latter she drew the sword to continue to fight.

She blew the horn, but while she was doing it, a horseman hit her head with the sword, but her helmet protected her. So several warriors in green armors appeared and helped Arthur to kill all the men. So they searched for Hugh and found him alive.

 They buried the two men, but didn’t buried the men of the red Folk, because they wanted their corpses to be eaten by the wolves, crows and kites.

Hugh asked to Birdalone where they all should live, because it should be decided because Hugh should know where to bring his children. So she said that Utterhay would be a good choice (so she wouldn’t break her oath to Habundia). She asked to Habundia if they should build a barque to the Hugh travel. Habundia said that no, because she would help little that way. But she said that if he traveled by land, she should send three of her men to go with him.

Birdalone presented them all to Habundia, so it was explained that the apparition of the old woman in the castle was of Habundia. Hugh appeared and met the Habundia men. So he traveled to the Castle Of The Quest and his home. Later, Leonard was made the Prior of the Castle. After taking his children, he took all people to Utterhay and dismissed the Habundia men. There, the guards at the gate said that no group coming from Evilshaw could enter in Utterhay, unless someone was taken by them as hostage while the other should see the mayor. So Birdalone offered herself as a hostage. The mayor was Robert (son of Gerard). Giles was also there. Birdalone asked if Gerard was well. Robert answered that yes. So Robert agreed that they all could settle there.

Robert said that as Utterhay grew it got a lot of enemies. So he offered the post of War-dukes to Hugh and Arthur, but they declined it because they didn’t wanted the hard work that comes with the title, but they offered all the help that they could. So a castle was built in Utterhay to help its defense.

Gerard married Viridis and lived with her for 15 years, when he died sleeping, due to his old age. Aurea married Robert. Atra was still single, and visited Habundia regularly to talk with her.

The End

Notes:

Birdalone is mentioned as a “ring-bearer”, who put a chain with the ring around the neck of Arthur.

Birdalone wears a male armor and is freqüently mistaken as a man.

The İnvisibility Ring is never used or mentioned again after the Birdalone Escape from the Witch-Wife.

❦The Ring of Gyges❦

İn “The Republic” by Plato (Translated by Benjamin Jowett) – Book İİ/2

A shepherd of the king of Lydia, Gyges, ancestor of Croesus the Lydian, descended into the opening in the ground made by an earthquake during a storm, and found a hollow braze horse with an opening, among other marvels. İnside there was a giant corpse wearing a gold ring. He took it and reascended.

During a meeting where the shepherds choose messengers to send the monthly report to the king, Gyges was playing with the ring and discovered that he became invisible when he turned its collet inwards, and became visible again when he turned its collet outwards. So he contrived to be one of the chosen messengers.

Arriving in the court he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired to kill the king. So he killed him and took the kingdom.

Plato later imagines a situation where 2 men, one just an another unjust, receive each one such magical ring. So he says that no man have such an iron nature that he could keep himself in the justice, so he would, sooner or later, commit unjust actions like: steal in the market, break into someone else’s house to lie with anyone he wanted, kill or release from the prison anyone he wanted to, etc. İn short, ultimately, both the just and the unjust man would come at last to the same point.

Plato also says that even if a man got such invisibility power and decided keep himself in the justice, other people would praise him publicly due to the fear of suffering reprisals, but they would secretly thought that such a man is the most wretched idiot for don’t using his power to make a dirty profit.

The End

Note: is interesting to note that here Plato use the invisibility power of the ring together with the theme of the moral degeneration.

❦The Songs Of Maldoror (Part 1) – Vampire Tale❦

By the Count of Lautréamont (İsidore Lucien Ducasse)

***

A family is together inside the house, preparing to pray to god before sleep; the father, the mother and the little son.

A vampire lurks around the house and his loud cry is carried by the wind in the wilderness; the family members can hear it. The family begins to pray.

While the father was praying aloud, the vampire makes mental contact w/ the son trying to lure him. He promises to the little boy to carry him to a wonderful land where he will have a magical ring that gives to the user the power of invisibility when he rotates its ruby inwards, to the palm of the hand; he said that the little boy would be “invisible, like the princes of the fairy tales”. İn this magical land, the little boy would bath himself w/ girls w/ butterfly wings.

However, the little boy refused it, because he knew that the vampire only wanted to deceive him.

When the father opened his eyes after the praying, he saw that his little son and his wife were killed by the vampire.

❦The Enchanted Castle❦

By Edith Nesbit

There were three siblings: Gerald (Jerry), James (Jimmy) and Kathleen (Cat[-/thy/ty]). They studied at boarding schools in the town of Liddlesby. They were prohibited by their family to come back home in their vacancy because their cousin Betty was infected w/ measles. So it was decided that they should spend the vacancy in Kathleen’s school dependencies, as almost everyone from there would leave there in the vacancy, except for the French teacher (called in he original text simply by "Mademoiselle").

Gerald approached the Mademoiselle, that was reading a book w/ a yellow cover.

[Note: İ personally like to imagine that the teacher is reading the theater play “The King In Yellow/Le Roi En Jaune”.]

He asked her if he and his siblings could spent the next day wandering around. She allowed it.

Next day, walking near the woods, they found a cave entrance near the base of the hill. Gerald told that the father of his acquaintance told that there was a cave entrance near Salisbury Road, and an “enchanted castle” somewhere.

They entered the cave and crossed it. At the end of it, there was an open-air area and a tunnel entrance in the opposite side. They crossed the tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel, they reached a marble terrace w/ a garden. They saw a building at the distance, and thought that it was the enchanted castle of the rumors.

They walked for some time until they reached a garden w/ a maze of yew hedges around the castle. There they found a red threat tied to a thimble. They followed it, and discovered that the other end of it was attached in the finger of a girl who was sleeping over a marble bench. She wore a beautiful dress and several rings and bracelets. they thought that the girl was an enchanted princess.

Kathleen kissed her, but she didn't awoke. James did the same next, and this time the girl awoke.

The girl told that she was really a princess and was put to sleep for one hundred years due to a curse after she prickled her finger in an spindle; she also said that the time was "frozen" in the castle since then. Since the three siblings were hungry, she princess convinced them to go to the castle.

[Compiler’s note: reference to the Sleeping Beauty popular fairy tale.]

She gave something to them to eat, and she invited them to her treasure room.

After arriving there, the siblings couldn't see any treasure, but the princess asked them to close their eyes. They did it, while she said the magical words "Wiggadil Yougadoo Begadee Leegadeeve Nowgadow", and they heard a sound. When they opened their eyes, they saw shelves w/ jewels.

The princess said that all the jewels there were magical artifacts:

*A bracelet that forces this user to talk the truth.

*A chain bracelet that makes you ten times stronger.

*A boot w/ spurs. If you hit the horse you're riding w/ this spur, he will run one mile per minute. If you walk on foot w/ them, it will allow you to move faster.

*A brooch that grants wishes. But if anyone, except for the Princess, touches it, the brooch loses its magical power forever.

*A belt w/ a buckle that had the dispel effect.

*An invisibility ring.

The three siblings doubted the veracity of the invisibility ring. So the Princess said to the three to close the eyes and wait a little bit; they did so. So she decided to play a practical joke on them; so she hid herself behind a panel in the room and later wore the ring, while the siblings listened the same sound that when she spoke the magical words. James accidentally opened his eyes for a moment and saw her hiding herself. Later, when they opened their eyes, the jewels had disappeared. James told to the others about the panel in the room. Being discovered, the Princess opened the panel and left the hiding place. However, the siblings still couldn't see her.

So they all figured out that the Princess became really invisible; and the Princess herself confirmed that by standing invisible before a mirror; however, her shadow wasn't invisible. The Princess said that it was impossible, since the magical nature of that jewels was all a fabrication invented by her to mock the siblings. In despair, she confessed that her name was Mabel Prowse and she wasn't a princess, but the niece of the castle's governess. She tried to take off the ring, but it refused to leave her finger.

They had the idea of using the belt w/ buckle to dispel the effect of the invisibility ring (since the fabrication of Mabel worked for the ring, it could also work for the belt w/ buckle). However, Mabel discovered that she forgot the key inside the room, and the room was locked w/ a "spring lock" mechanism, that locked everyone outside it.

They decided that Mabel should live w/ them at the school in an hidden way. Since Mabel's aunt was in a fair, she let the following note to her aunt:

"Dear Aunt, —

I am afraid you will not see me again for some time. A lady in a motor-car has adopted me, and we are going straight to the coast and then in a ship. It is useless to try to follow me. Farewell, and may you be happy. I hope you enjoyed the fair."

So they came back to the school w/ Mabel. Mabel, being invisible, could eat the food here w/out being seen.

The siblings met Mabel's aunt to reinforce the story that her niece was "disappeared". But her aunt didn't seem to care a lot about it, as she was reading a novelette, and told them that Mabel was orphan by both parents.

[Mabel's aunt]:  Then I can only be glad that she is provided for. I dare say you were surprised. These romantic adventures do occur in our family. Lord Yalding selected me out of eleven applicants for the post of housekeeper here. I've not the slightest doubt the child was changed at birth and her rich relatives have claimed her.

Later, walking on the streets, Mabel walked behind Kathleen, so their shadows were together, so no one could notice it.

The children went to the fair, and purchased something to eat there. Gerald painted his skin himself in black and wore a crimson turban.

[James]: ¡ He's just like a nigger!

[Compiler’s Note: The word “nigger” is used in the original ¡ Suck it SJWs!]

Gerald pretended to the crowd to be a magician; however, it was Mabel that, being invisible, was behind all the tricks.

After earning some money from the crowd, he began to get tired and tried to figure out how he would get rid of the crowd. So he said to the crowd that he would perform a last trick: he would disappear.

Mabel was wearing a shawl that Gerald purchased from a woman of one of the tents; it was invisible on her. So she covered him to try to make him disappear; however, despite the fact that the shawl was itself invisible, it didn't concealed him.

[Compiler’s Note: It's interesting to see how the mechanics of magic works here. I wonder: ¿ It would conceal him if the ring had a stronger enchantment?]

The crowd began to lost the patience and demanded their money back. Mabel started to wring her hands in nervousness; so the ring slipped from her finger in that moment. She gave it to Gerald and mixed herself in the crowd. Gerald wore the ring and disappeared.

Gerald face the same problem: he tried to take off the ring, but it refused to leave his finger. Now they had the problem of both explaining the disappearance of Gerald and explain the return of Mabel (since she couldn't stay hidden in the school anymore).

James said that if he would be invisible, he would be a burglar. Both Mabel & Kathleen reproached him. So he said that he would be a detective instead.

[Compiler’s Note: note here the theme of invisibility rings related w/ crime & corruption.]

Hearing this, Gerald had the idea of investigating some crime. They went to the police station and read the board of side. They discovered that some valuable silverware was stolen and decided to investigate it.

Back to the school, Mademoiselle asked where were Gerald. The children lied to her saying that he was lying in the bed earlier due to a headache.

Mabel remembered that she left the window of the treasure room opened. So she and Gerald went to the Yalding Castle. There, she came back to her aunt.

[Mabel's aunt]: ¡ You naughty, naughty girl! ¿ How could you give me such a fright? I've a good mind to keep you in bed for a week for this, miss. Oh, Mabel, ¡ thank
Heaven you're safe!

So Mabel was hugged by her aunt.

[Mabel]: But you didn't seem to care a bit this morning.

[Aunt]: ¿ How do you know?

[Mabel]: I was there listening. Don't be angry,
auntie.

[Aunt]: I feel as if I never could be angry with you again, now I've got you safe.

[Mabel]: ¿ But how was it?

[Aunt]: My dear, I've been in a sort of trance. I think I must be going to be ill. I've always been fond of you, but I didn't want to spoil you. But yesterday, about half-past three, I was talking about you to Mr. Lewson, at the fair, and quite suddenly I felt as if you didn't matter at all. And I felt the same when I got your letter and when those children came. And to-day in the middle of tea I suddenly woke up and realized that you were gone. It was awful. I think I must be going to be ill. Oh, Mabel, why did you do it?

[Mabel]: It was — a joke.

In the garden, Gerald saw the statues of a dinosaur and a satyr (beings that are goats waist-down and humans waist up, but haves goat horns and ears) becoming alive.

Gerald used the abundant ivy that grew in the wall outside the treasure room to climb it and reach the treasure room. He unlocked the door by inside, took the key, left the treasure room and put the key in a nail on the wall.

He used the opportunity to explore the castle. There, in one of the rooms, he discovered a gang of burglars who were stealing the silverware. Gerald wondered how he could warn someone about the stolen silverware if he was invisible.

He wrapped a note in a pebble an threw it by the window of Mabel and her aunt. It said:

"You know the room where the silver is. Burglars are burgling it, the thick door is picked. Send a man for police. I will follow the burglars if they get away ere police arrive on the spot.

From a Friend — this is not a sell."

So Gerald shout from outside of the window w/ a fake manly voice:

[Gerald]: Send for the police at once.

Police was called. When the cops entered in the room, the silverware was really stolen. Meanwhile, Gerald followed the burglars into their hideout.

Gerald came back to the school and went to sleep. The ring slipped from his finger during his sleep. During the next morning the children were unable to find the ring again.

Gerald told Mabel about the statues becoming alive; however, Mabel said that she never saw that.

Gerald told Johnson, the cop, about the stolen silverware at the Yalding Castle; he told that he was there last night, and that he had followed the burglars, but omitted the details about the invisibility ring, of course.

Gerald asked if Johnson wanted to know where the hideout were, to share the reward w/ him; however, Gerald said that he wouldn't want any recognition for it. Johnson accepted. So Gerald first told him the location where the silver was stored (ready to be transported to somewhere else) and the location of the hideout.

The silverware was recovered and Johnson made the headlines. However, no burglar was caught, because Gerald wrote a letter to the burglars warning them about a possible police raid there, and put it in their hideout. The letter contained the following warning:

"The police know all except your names. Be virtuous and you are safe. But if there's any more burgling I shall split and you may rely on that from a friend."

Mademoiselle and all the servants were out. At the front door, the fiancée of Eliza, one of the servants, was in despair. He said to the children that he could hear her voice and could feel her touch, but couldn't see her. So they figured out what happened. They claimed that he just had lost his mind, and advised to go back home to rest. Later, hearing the voice of Eliza weeping in despair, they asked if she had stolen a ring. She admitted that she just borrowed a ring she found in the children's bedroom, to use in a date w/ him. They explained her that it was an invisibility ring, and it would eventually slip from her finger later.

The children went w/ Eliza to a picnic in the Yalding Towers. Despite being, invisible, while eating, the food that entered through the Eliza's esophagus to her stomach couldn't be seen.

[Compiler’s note: here, more of the mechanics of magic is explained. The original text says: "Eliza, once convinced that her chest, though invisible, was not transparent, and that her companions could not by looking through it count how many buns she had eaten, made an excellent meal.".]

Eliza saw that the statues became alive during the sunset; she saw one of the man-like statues . She said it to the children, and Gerald explained that only the one wearing the ring could see it.

Back to the school, the magic ring slip from Eliza's finger. Next day, Eliza met her fiancée.

Mabel told to the Mademoiselle that the Lord Yalding would come to the castle in the next week. Mabel told that in the past Lord Yalding wanted to marry a poor girl. So his uncle didn't accepted that, and left all the money to the Lord Yalding's 2nd degree cousin, while left to the Lord Yalding only the Yalding Castle. Lord Yalding was unable to sell the property, due to a clause in the testament. The girl he wanted to marry ended up in an unknown convent, and he was unable to find her.

Gerald told to his siblings about the events of helping the burglars to escape, saying that he did it because once their father visited a prison and brought him together, and they two saw the living conditions there, so he had compassion about what the burglars would face.

[Compiler’s note: To the modern readers, this part of the story have heavy political implications, as the conservative right-wing would simply label Gerald as a "leftist defender/protector of bandits/criminals", instead of making a honest critique of the subhuman living conditions in the correctional facilities of both the old times and the present-day.]

Gerald noticed something: when he was invisible, it was for 21 hours; Mabel for 14; Eliza for 7. So, w/ a difference of 7 hours now, the result would be zero. So he hypothesized that the enchantment of the ring would undergo some change.

In that day, Mademoiselle was feeling herself unusually uninhibited, so she untied her black hair, so the children saw that it was knee-length. The children wanted to play a game pretending to be a theater play. So they created fake human figures made of brooms, umbrellas, hockey sticks, and other objects to make structures, filled w/ pillows and covered w/ clothes, gloves, boots and hats; the faces were painted paper masks. They called the figures the "Ugly-Wuglies".

The ring was given back to Mabel.

[Mabel]: I wish, I wish those creatures we made were alive. We should get something like applause then.

So her wish became true, the figures becoming alive. Mademoiselle & Eliza screamed in fright and ran. The children were frightened in despair from seeing the scene.

So the children figured out that it became an wish ring. So Gerald took the ring from Mabel and tried to "unwish" them.

[Gerald]: I wish the Uglies weren't alive.

But it didn't worked. So one of the Ugly-Wuglies asked in an almost unintelligible voice:

[Ugly-Wugly]: ¿ Can you recommend me to a good hotel?

Gerald made up some excuses to say that he wouldn't get them to any hotel or lodge in the town. So they led them to the garden and said them to wait there. So he looked after Mademoiselle & Eliza and lied to them, saying that it was a trick w/ strings made by him, just like puppets in the theater. But he said that he couldn't repeat the trick because he already had undone all the arrangement of the strings.

Gerald asked Mabel if there was some point of the castle to be used as a fake hotel. She said yes. So they two led the Ugly-Wuglies to the streets, even that Mabel was in fright. As it was night, it was easy to them to choose a route to avoid encounter w/ people. However, they were seen by a man.

The castle gates were locked, but Mabel led them through a secret passage to the castle's garden. There, Gerald wore the ring, and saw the true nature of the statues that were animated, and when he took it off, he saw the mirage of common statues in their pedestals.

Mabel lead them to a secret door in the property that lead to the temple of the goddess Flora, inside the castle's real estate. Inside there, noticing that it wasn't any hotel, the Ugly-Wuglies changed into an threatening stance. So Mabel & Gerald ran to the stone door and tried to close it. So a man appeared in the garden.

[Man]: ¿ What's up, there ?

Gerald urged him to help them to close the door. The stranger did it.

Later, he asked what was going on. Gerald said that he wouldn't tell because the man wouldn't believe anyway. Mabel asked Gerald to tell the man anyway, as they couldn't let them leave the temple.

Gerald told him all the story of the magical ring, but noticed that he didn't believed anyway. Mabel told the man that she lived in the castle, and later he carried Gerald to the school. Gerald asked him to don't open the temple's door before the following morning, when there would be chance of the enchantment to be over (as he had theorized that the time of the enchantment would work in multiples of seven).

The man who had seen the Ugly-Wuglies in the streets at night told it to his wife, but no one believed him.

All the children were back there in the next morning, but were late, because they had to clean all the mess from the games and plays of the earlier day. They found the man of the earlier day unconscious, w/ a haematoma w/ a cut in his forehead, w/ the blood staining the white of the temple's marble.

Mabel went for the castle to get some smelling salts, to wake him up.

Later, they were scared because they suddenly saw among the leaves of a bush the face of a Ugly-Wugly trying watching them.

As James was very frightened, Gerald gave him the ring to wear, as the magical ring had the power of relieving the fear.

They saw that the Ugly-Wugly had been turned into a human elderly man.

That ex-Ugly-Wugly, far from being aggressive, left the bush and explained the situation. He was called Mr. U. W. Ugli. He said that, after being locked in that passage, he didn't stayed w/ the others. He found other passage that led him to a "good hotel". When he came back to warn the others about it, that man opened the door. So the others escaped, and one of them hit him on the head before Mr. U. W. Ugli could prevent it.

Kathleen and James covered the area to search for the other Ugly-Wuglies. They found them at the margin of the water lake of the garden. However, they were turned back into normal objects, as the spell seemed to have be broken.

back to Gerald, that asked to James (that was immune to fear due to the magical ring) and Mr. U. W. Ugli to hide themselves back in the bush, as the man, after waking up, wouldn't like to see strangers. Mabel came back w/ the smelling salts and used on him, that woke up.

He said the children that he had a strange dream about them, and that dreamed that there was a door to a temple there. So the children make him believe that the events since last night were all just a dream. Later, the stone door was closed.

Among the children, Gerald said that they should find Mr. U. W. Ugli to find a way to make him disappear, and later he would come back home and seal up the ring in an envelope, because he was fed up w/ adventures.

They went to the bush where James was riding. James said that Mr. U. W. Ugli told him that he's a very rich man. So James wished that he would be also a rich man.

As James was wearing a magical ring, his wish was fulfilled, but not in the way anyone expected: James suddenly became an elderly snob rich man.

James didn't recognized the children as his siblings. So he asked them about the nearest railway station to London. As they were too awestruck about this situation, they didn't answer.

So James talked to the Mr. U. W. Ugli, and both left the property to the station.

Gerald said to the girls to carry back to the school the objects that composed the former Ugly-Wuglies. He would follow the two in the train; they should lie to the Mademoiselle about it, saying that he and James went to travel by train w/ an uncle.

Mabel and Kathleen hid the objects that composed the former Ugly-Wuglies inside the dinosaur statue (that was hollow inside).

The girls went to the school and told the lie to the Mademoiselle. The man that was found unconscious in the castle was walking in the street, coming back from the doctor, w/ a bandage in the head; the Mademoiselle saw him.

[Mademoiselle]: ¡ Ciel! ("! by the skies!" interjection in French).

So Mademoiselle left the school in a haste, w/out any further explanations.

Gerald followed them in the train to London, there, he entered in a commercial building. There were two doors there, one w/ the name "James" and other written "Mr. U. W. Ugli, Stock and Share Broker. And at the Stock Exchange".

Gerald asked about James and Mr. U. W. Ugli to the boy that was an employee of the office. The boy answered that they were rivals of each other in the world of business for years. Gerald wondered how a wish of a magical ring had built a backstory for both.

[Compiler's note: See here the mechanics of the magic. It's a "reality warper" spell.]

Gerald bribed the boy to distract James for some time, while he would had a talk w/ Mr. U. W. Ugli. he told to Mr. U. W. Ugli that James was "mad" about the him, and they made a plan: at the time of the lunch, in the restaurant, Mr. U. W. Ugli would ask to see it and would let it drop in the ground, pretending to be an accident, and Gerald would pick it.

Mr. U. W. Ugli went to the restaurant w/ James; Gerald and the boy of the office also went there, and took a separate nearby table. Mr. U. W. Ugli asked to see the ring of the James. After receiving the ring in the hand, he let it fall. Gerald picked it and wore it.

[Gerald]: I wish Jimmy and I were inside that door behind the statue of Flora.

They were teleported to the temple of Flora and James was a child again.

It was dark there. Gerald and James both tried to make wishes to be teleported out of there. But it didn't worked, as the magical "charge" for that time period was already wasted.

Suddenly, Kathleen & Mabel both had an bad omen that made them immediately go to the temple of Flora. There, they opened the stone door and found James and Gerald, that explained what happened.

Gerald said again that they should put the magical ring in an envelope to end w/ all these situations.

Mabel took the ring and made a wish that she would like to be 4-yards (12 ft, or about 3.65m) tall. The ring grant the wish, but didn't increased her body mass or waist circumference at all, so she got a slender appearance.

Since she couldn't let her aunt see her in that condition, she had the idea of spending the night camping in the property. So she wrote a letter to her:

"Dearest Auntie, —

Please, ¿ may we have some things for a picnic? Gerald will bring them. I would come myself, but I am a little tired. I think I have been growing rather fast. — Your loving niece,

Mabel.

P.S. — Lots, please, because some of us are very hungry."

Gerald delivered the letter to Mabel's aunt and received a packet of food. He came back w/ it and they all ate.

Kathleen took the ring. She entered in the statue dinosaur and made a wish that she would like to be like a statue. So she turned into a white marble statue, paralyzed. Gerald took off the ring from her marble finger surprisingly easily.

So he gave it back to Mabel.

[Gerald]: Here's your precious ring. Now you're not frightened of anything, ¿ are you?

The children planned that they would lie to the Mademoiselle, saying that Kathleen would stay in the castle for the picnic. At the night, they would escape from the school by climbing down its trellis, to check about their situation.

At the night, the statues became alive, including Kathleen. She was moving inside the dinosaur, so she managed to leave it in the margin of the lake; so he swam to the island at the center of the lake.

She met the statue of Phœbus (god Apollo). He explained her that the statue, but not mere mortals, can see and talk to each other while alive in the night.

[Kathleen]: But I am a mortal.

[Phœbus (Apollo)]: You are as modest as you are charming.

Later, Phœbus/Apollo dived in the water. So she went to search for Mabel.

[Compiler's note: We see in this books several scenes of marble statues swimming. I wonder how it could be explained in terms of physics, due to problems related to the body's mass.]

She found Mabel. They figured out that they couldn't back home in that condition (Mabel as a 4-yard girl, and Kathleen as a statue).

Kathleen presented Mabel to Phœbus. He explained to Mabel that, when making a wish to the ring, it should be specified time constraints, otherwise the enchantment of Arithmos, the god of the numbers, would put a random time duration on the spell. So he suggested to Mabel to also wish to be also a statue until the dawn.

She did it, and became also a statue. Phœbus explained that the spell that turned them into statues also made them capable of athletic feats, including swimming.

They swan to the island at the center of the lake, and there was a pool there. They saw seven Moons in the sky. In the pool, there were the statues of several Greco-Roman gods.

Kathleen became worried about James & Gerald, so the god Hermes (messenger god, or the god of speed) informed her that they escaped from the school to meet her & Mabel.

Hermes asked the ring, and Kathleen handed it to him so he asked how Kathleen would make a wish to get her brothers there. She said that she would wish to turn them into statues until the dawn. Hermes said that she should also wish to transport them to there in the same wish.

So Hermes put the ring in the water, at the reflections of the seven Moons. Later he gave it to Kathleen and said that he did it to recharge the magical power of the ring to the next spell.

She made the wish and her brothers appeared there in the form of statues.

Phœbus explained that statues are animated at the night. Normal humans are unable to see them (humans could only see a mirage of a simulacrum in their place), but the statues can see each other (that's why the children, in form of statue, could see them); human could see them by wearing the magical ring. However, in one night per year, humans could see them.

[Phœbus]: At the festival of the harvest. On that night as the moon rises it strikes one beam of perfect light on to the altar in certain temples. One of these temples is in Hellas, buried under the fall of a mountain which Zeus, being angry, hurled down upon it. One is in this land ; it is in this great garden.

[Compiler's note: Here we can see the connection between magic and astronomical events, just like the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. In the work "The Call Of Cthulhu", written by him, it's said: "when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity", ¿ remember?]

[Gerald]: ¿ Then, if we were to come up to that temple on that night, we could see you, even without being statues or having the ring?"

[Phœbus]: Even so. More, any question asked by a mortal we are on that night bound to answer.

[Gerald]: And the night is... ¿ when?

They urged to go back to their pedestals, because the dawn was coming.

[Hermes]: In fourteen days from now, at the Temple of Strange Stones.

[Mabel]: ¿ What's the secret of the ring?

[Hermes]: The ring is the heart of the magic. Ask at the moonrise on the fourteenth day, and you shall know all.

The dawn came; the seven Moons disappeared and the children were turned back to normal.

They figured out how they would leave the island. They couldn't use the ring to teleport themselves, as Kathleen just had handed the ring to the statue of the goddess Psyche, that ran when everyone urged back to their pedestals. They couldn't swim as the spell was dispelled.

Exploring the island, Gerald found a passage w/ a staircase.

[Mabel]: I knew there was a passage. It goes under the water and comes out at the Temple of Flora. Even the gardeners know that, but they won't go down, for fear of snakes.

[Gerald]: Then we can get out that way — I do think you might have said so.

[Mabel]: I didn't think of it. At least — And I suppose it goes past the place where the Ugly-Wugly found its good hotel.

The children entered through the passage, using a flashlight that the boys had w/ them. they end up in a great hall w/ decorated archs. This was the place Mr. U. W. Ugli called a "good hotel". the statue of Psyche was there, wearing the ring. Gerald took it off surprisingly easily. So he gave it to Kathleen, that made the wish.

[Kathleen]: I wish, that no one at home may know that we've been out to-night, and I wish we were safe in our own beds, undressed, and in our nightgowns, and asleep.

That was fulfilled. However, Mabel's aunt didn't understood how Mabel entered in the governess house after she had locked it.

One day, the Yalding Castle was opened to visitation, and there were rumors that a rich American would rent the place.

The man they found the earlier days (the one that was hit in the head), that was the new caretaker of the castle (a job called "bailiff" in the original text), was there.

[Mabel]: I said that to that nice bailiff-man this morning, and he said it wasn't much to let them come once a week. He said Lord Yalding ought to let them come when they liked — said he would if he lived there.

Gerald warned Mademoiselle was going to meet them there in the castle.

The children began to talk, saying to what kind of people they would marry in the future.

[Gerald]: When ⭑I⭑ marry, I'll marry a dumb girl, or else get the ring to make her so that she can't speak unless she's spoken to.

[Compiler's note: To the modern readers, Gerald just said a thing w/ heavy political implications, as leftists (specially feminists, of course) would call Gerald a misogynist here.]

The children were in a picnic w/ the bailiff. They told their stories to him; later them handed the magical ring to him and asked him to make a wish.

[Bailiff]: " I will... I'll wish for the only thing I really want. I wish my — I wish my friend were here.

So the Mademoiselle arrived and met the children. She and the bailiff looked to each other as if they were old-times acquaintances.

[Bailiff]: ¡ You!

[Mademoiselle]: Mais... c'est done vous. ["But... it's you" in French.]

[Compiler's note: This excerpt was written in French. İ don’t fucking know that language at all, but İ translated it by using several online dictionaries to check the meaning of each of the words. Later İ put them together to build the general context. That’s the way you translate languages you don’t know.]

The children asked if they were acquaintances. Mademoiselle explained that they were old-times acquaintances. She told them that the man that they knew as the bailiff was actually the Lord Yalding. So the children figured out that Mademoiselle herself was the Lord Yalding's old-times lover.

The background history of Mademoiselle was that she had been a rich girl, but her legal custodian put her into a convent under the excuse of not letting her to marry a poor lord; however, it was only an excuse from him, that fled w/ her fortune to the South America. So she left the convent and got the job at the school, just to be close to the Lord Yalding's property.

Later, Lord Yalding gave the permission to the children to explore the castle. There, they found Mr. Jefferson D. Conway, the American millionaire who wished to rent the place. Mr. Jefferson and the children began to explore the castle together.

[Mr. Jefferson]: It is a fine mansion, but I should suppose, in a house this size, ¿ there would mostly be a secret stairway, or a priests' hiding place, or a ghost ?

[Compiler's note: In the United kingdom, in the past centuries, during the persecution against the Catholics, many houses had secret passages to hide Catholic priests.]

Mabel, having area knowledge of the castle, pushed a button that disclosed a secret staircase. It was so wonderful to him that he said that he would rent the castle if were haunted by a ghost.

Mabel said him that it was haunted by the ghost of Sir Rupert, who lost his head in the time of Henry Ⅷ; he wandered there at night, carrying his own head under his arm.

He said he would ask the permission of Lord Yalding to spend the night there, in order to see the ghost.

[Mr. Jefferson]: Let me tell you, young gentlemen, that I carry a gun, and when I see a ghost, I shoot. And I am a fair average shot. ¿ See that big red rose, like a tea-saucer?

So he drew a pistol and shoot in the rose at the window, destroying its petals.

[Compiler's note: I wonder if this is an early example of British authors (and British people in general) stereotyping American citizens as mere "gun nuts".]

The children asked the risk for the Lord Yalding, that handed it to them. So they went to an isolate room and Mabel wished some weapons for a possible confrontation. So the room became full of melee & ranged weapons; but the children changed their mind because they thought that it wasn't a good idea; so Mabel unwished the weapons.

So Mabel wished the summoning of ghost of Sir Rupert at night.

Later they met Lord Yalding.

[Lord Yalding]: Mr. Jefferson Conway wants you boys to spend the night with him in the state chamber. I've had beds put up. You don't mind, ¿ do you? He seems to think you've got some idea of playing ghost-tricks on him.

[Compiler's note: After the sexual scandals of the accusations of sexual abuse of children against the American singer Michael Jackson (regardless of if Michael Jackson was really guilty or not), it may be awkward to the modern readers to envision children sharing a bedroom w/ an adult man that they had just met for the first time in that same day.]

The night came and they were sleeping in the same bedroom than Mr. Jefferson. They were sleeping; so they woke up w/ the bang of a pistol shot. Mr. Jefferson was shooting in the ghost of Sir Rupert; he shot several times, but the bullets passed through him, and he still laughed. It was a headless ghost carrying his own head under his arm.

[Compiler's note: This ghost is similar to a folkloric being called "Dullahan" or "Nukekubi" (ぬけくび/抜け首 - Being [Nuke/ぬけ/抜け] "detachable" and [kubi/くび/首] "neck"), that have the ability to detach his own head.]

Morning broke and the children told Lord Yalding that the ghost was their trick. The Lord Yalding, in an sad tone, told the children that Mr. Jefferson gave up renting the house, because it was too much to him to live in a house w/ a ghost that couldn't be turned away when hit by bullets.

[Lord Yalding]: And I don't know how you did it, and I don't want to know. It was a rather silly trick.

The children suggested him to sell the jewels of the family to get some money. Lord Yalding said that there were no family jewels at all. However, Mabel told them that there was a room w/ hidden jewels. So they all followed Mabel.

They entered the treasure room, but Mabel was unable to find the mechanism to reveal the shelves w/ jewels. There was an aura of discomfort around everyone there.

[Lord Yalding]: ¡ You see! Now you've had your joke, if you call it a joke, and I've had enough of the whole silly business. Give me the ring — it's mine, I suppose, since you say you found it somewhere here — and don't let's hear another word about all this rubbish of magic and enchantment.

Gerald was w/ the ring in his finger

[Geral]: I — I can't get it off. It — it always did have a will of its own.

[Lord Yalding]: I'll soon get it off. We'll try soap.

Nervous by watching that discomfortable situation. Mabel's fingers sliped through the panel; so she suddenly found the mechanism.

When the mechanism was activated, the jewels appeared, and everyone was in awe.

Later, even applying soap in Gerald finger, the ring didn't slipped from it.

[Gerald]: Well, I'm sure I wish it would come off.

So, suddenly, the ring slipped. So Gerald handed it to the Lord Yalding.

Next day Lord Yalding visited the school, he was wearing the ring. He said to the Mademoiselle that he wasn't going to marry her anymore. The reason was that he was suffering mental disturbances; he was seeing the statues becoming animated at the castle at night. So he left the school.

When Mademoiselle was weeping, Gerald explained her that the ability to see the true nature of the statues was the ability from the magical ring. Gerald propose that they all should go to the Castle at the night of the festival of the harvest, so that everything would be explained.

At the night of the festival of the harvest, they visited the Yalding Castle and met Lord Yalding. They convinced him to watch the lunar event in the circle of stones at the property; one of these stones had a hole in it; at the center of the circle, a flat stone table. It had been said that the monument was constructed by an ancient religion.

So they watched the event. A beam of moonlight went throughthe hole of the stone and hit the stone table.

So the statues of several mythical gods and beings from all around the world came to meet them. When the event ceased they left. The god Phœbus had explained before that they could ask any qüestion in that night, but everyone were too awed to do it.

Mademoiselle asked to visit the temple of Psyche. Gerald had some candles to light the way, just in case.

[Mademoiselle, saying w/ a manner of expression that wasn't her normal one]: The ring is the magic ring given long ago to a mortal, and it is what you say it is. It was given to your ancestor by a lady of my house that he might build her a garden and a house like her own palace and garden in her own land. So that this place is built partly by his love and partly by that magic. She never lived to see it; that was the price of the magic. Except from children, the ring exacts a payment. You paid for me, when I came by your wish, by this terror of madness that you have since known. Only one wish is free.

[Lord Yalding]: ¿ And that wish is?

[Mademoiselle]: The last. ¿ Shall I wish?

[Everyone else, in unison]: Yes — wish.

[Mademoiselle]: I wish, then, that all the magic this ring has wrought may be undone, and that the ring itself may be no more and no less than a charm to bind thee and me together for evermore.

The magical ring ceased to be enchanted. So the true nature of the Psyche statue was revealed: it was actually the grave of the Mademoiselle's long-deceased relative.

Next day, it was discovered that several statues, secret passages of the castle and the passage behind the temple of Flora disappeared. It means that the Lord Yalding's ancestor used the powers of the magical ring to construct all the things he disappeared.

The former magical ring was used as a wedding ring of Lord Yalding and Mademoiselle.

They barely believed that these supernatural events happened at all. However, a newspaper article dating from the day after the night when the magical ring ceased to be enchanted was the proof that the events actually happened:

☙MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF A WELL-KNOWN CITY MAN❧

Mr. U. W. Ugli had remained late, working at his office as was his occasional habit. The office door was found locked, and on its being broken open the clothes of the unfortunate gentleman were found in a heap on the floor, together with an umbrella, a walking stick, a golf club, and, curiously enough, a feather brush, such as housemaids use for dusting. Of his body, however, there was no trace. The police are stated to have a clue."

***

The End

***Notes***

Note what Gerald says about the invisibility ring: “(...). Now we’ll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope.”

Note that Gerald called the ring "precious".

The Ugly-Wuglies could be used in RPGs as an race of improvised constructs.

❦Assorted Excerpts - The Tales Of Orlando❦

“Orlando...

...İnnamorato” by Matteo Maria Boiardo

...Furioso” by Ludovico Ariosto

Translations by William Stewart Rose:

http://web.archive.org/web/20150701000000*/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/boiardo/matteo_maria/orlando_innamorato/complete.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20150701000000*/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/ariosto/orlando/complete.html

***

These tales tells the story of a Christian knight called Orlando that falls in love by a Pagan princess called Angelica.

Making a summary of both works would consume a lot of both space in this anthology and my time (that I could invest in other projects); after all, some of the characters of the works are mythical versions of real-life historical characters, what would demand a lot of historical research (what I call a “work/task for cuckolds”). So I will only put the text excerpts that are relevant to this anthology.

These tales presents a ring w/ the following magical powers.

1 – Spell resistance when used in the finger:

“(...) he has received from his father a ring, which, when on the finger, makes enchantment of no effect, and when placed between the lips renders the wearer invisible. (about Argalia, Angelica’s brother)

(...) Her brother’s ring the sleeping lady wore,
Whose hidden virtues were described before.”

“Not aware that the enchanted ring was on her finger, which she had accidentally received from Argalia, he conceives he has rendered her sleep as fast as that of her followers, and clasps her in his arms; but the ring, which is proof against all spells, does its duty. Angelica wakes with a shriek, and Argalia rushes to her assistance.”

“Since thou, an antidote to sorcery,
Lady (she said), the virtuous ring dost wear, (...)”

“(...) but that she may be seen without disguise, and in her real dress,
This ring, returning, on thy finger wear,
And thou shalt see the dame, and mark how fair.

(...) This ring, which can each magic spell undo,

(...)

The ring the false enchantment served to clear.
This too unmasked the charms Alcina wore,
And made all false, from head to foot, appear.

[Compiler’s note: In the digital text of the English translation, it appears as “food”, instead of foot; probably a typo/mistype, as the Italian word is “piè”, the Italian for “foot”. I don’t fucking know Italian at all, I just searched online the meaning of the word.]

(...)

Rogero thus, when by Melissa’s lore advised, he to behold the fay returned,
And that good ring of sovereign virtue wore,
Which, on the finger placed, all spells o’erturned;

(...)

By art she gave herself the lovely look,
Which had on many like Rogero wrought;
But now the ring interpreted the book,
Which secrets, hid for many ages, taught.”

“(...) And on her little finger, lest a new mischance should follow, slipt the ring, which brought the enchantment of the magic shield to nought.”

“(...) When, casting down her eyes in shame and fear,
The virtuous ring upon her finger placed,
Angelica descried, and which of yore from her Brunello in Albracca bore.

IV

This is the ring she carried into France,
When thither first the damsel took her way;
With her the brother, bearer of the lance,
After, the paladin, Astolpho’s prey.
With this she Malagigi’s spells and trance made vain by Merlin’s stair;”

[Compiler’s note: “Petron di Merlino” refers to “Merlin’s stair” in the Italian original. An Online search show that the term appears to be “Merlin’s Stone”. It appears to be the cave that, according to the legend, is the grave/tomb of Merlin.]

“Had placed the ring upon her hand anew,
Which old Atlantes’ every scheme o’erthrew.”

2 – Invisibility when you put it between your lips:

“Angelica treasures up their history in her mind, as useful to the purpose which she had in hand, and on the door of the tower opening, to admit a new victim, slips the ring into her mouth and escapes.”

“(...) for before thine eyes, concealed by it, the caitiff slips if once he place the ring between his lips.”

“She roams from post to post, and far and wide searches pavilion, lodging, booth, or rent,
And this, mid foot or horsemen, unespied,
May safely do, without impediment,
Thanks to the ring, whose more than mortal aid,
When in her mouth, conceals the vanished maid.”

“Assisted by the magic ring she wears,
Angelica evanishes from view. (...)”

“But when he had recalled the ring to thought,
Foiled and astounded, cursed his little heed.
And now the vanished lady, (...)”

“But to Angelica return we, who now of that ring so wondrous repossessed,
(Which, in her mouth, concealed the maid from view,
Preserved from spell when it the finger pressed,) (...)”

“She enters, hidden from the enchanter’s eyes,
And by the ring concealed, examines all;(...)”

“The ring she from her mouth withdraws, and shows her face, unveiled to the Circassian’s eye: (...)”

“The ring, which more than once from misery had rescued her, she ‘twixt her lips enclosed,
Hence from their sight she vanished in a thought,
And left them wondering there, like men distraught.”

“Angelica, the sylvan spring beside,
Reposes, unsuspicious of surprise;
And thinking her the sacred ring will hide, (...)”

“Her ring she thought upon, and this the fair placed in her mouth; nor failed its virtue now;
For putting it between her lips, like light extinguished by a puff, she past from sight.”

“Angelica, while ‘twixt her lips she slipt the virtuous ring, and hid her visage sweet (...)”

Judging by the excerpts bellow, it also appears to have the following power:

3 – Seeing things that are invisible or concealed by magic.

“In the mean time Agramant is assured that Rogero is upon Mount Carena; though the garden, where he is confined, is invisible; and that the possession of Angelica’s ring would enable him to succeed in his enterprise.”

“(...) but the ring, which discovered what was before invisible, could not, though it revealed this paradise, enable Agramant or his followers to enter it.”

“(...) for Agramant, having received from Brunello the booty he had made, discovers, by help of the magic ring, the abode of Rogero, and allures him into his service.”

“This truth by him with fictions was combined,
Whose sleight passed red for yellow, black for white:
But all his vain enchantments could not blind the maid, whose virtuous ring assured her sight (...)”

“Who with Angelica’s, or rather who were fortified with Reason’s ring, would see each countenance, exposed to open view,
Unchanged by art or by hypocrisy.
This now seems fair and good, whose borrowed hue removed, would haply foul and evil be.
¡ Well was it for Rogero that he wore the virtuous ring which served the truth to explore!”

Note: Look what’s said about the ring:

“(...) The thought of having lost the precious ring; (...)” – “precious ring” (“prezïoso annello” in the Italian original)

“(...) Since he had forfeited the ring of might.”

“¡ A curse betide the wonder-working ring, and eke the wight who gave it to that lady, full or pride!”