LETTER TO H.P. LOVECRAFT, CIRCA MARCH 2, 1932
As to my feelings toward the mythical Picts, no doubt you are right in comparing it to the Eastern boy’s Indian-complex, and your own feelings toward Arabic things. My interest in the Picts was always mixed with a bit of fantasy – that is, I never felt the realistic placement with them that I did with the Irish and Highland Scotch. Not that it was the less vivid; but when I came to write of them, it was still through alien eyes – thus in my first Bran Mak Morn story – which was rightfully rejected – I told the story through the person of a Gothic mercenary in the Roman army; in a long narrative rhyme which I never completed, and in which I first put Bran on paper, I told it through a Roman centurion on the Wall; in “The Lost Race” the central figure was a Briton; and in “Kings of the Night” it was a Gaelic prince. Only in my last Bran story, “The Worms of the Earth” which Mr. Wright accepted, did I look through Pictish eyes, and speak with a Pictish tongue!
In that story, by the way, I took up anew, Bran’s eternal struggle with Rome. I can hardly think of him in any other connection. Sometimes I think Bran is merely the symbol of my own antagonism toward the empire, an antagonism not nearly so easy to understand as my favoritism for the Picts. Perhaps this is another explanation for the latter: I saw the name “Picts” first on maps, and always the name lay outside the far-flung bounds of the Roman empire. This fact aroused my intense interest – it was so significant of itself. The mere fact suggested terrific wars – savage attacks and ferocious resistance – valor and heroism and ferocity. I was an instinctive enemy of Rome; what more natural than that I should instinctively ally myself with her enemies, more especially as these enemies had successfully resisted all attempts at subjugation. When in my dreams – not day-dreams, but actual dreams – I fought the armored legions of Rome, and reeled back gashed and defeated, there sprang into my mind – like an invasion from another, unborn world of the future – the picture of a map, spanned by the wide empire of Rome, and ever beyond the frontier, outside the lines of subjugation, the cryptic legend, “Picts and Scots”. And always the thought rose in my mind to lend me new strength – among the Picts I could find refuge, safe from my foes, where I could lick my wounds and renew my strength for the wars.
LETTER FROM FARNSWORTH WRIGHT TO ROBERT E. HOWARD, 10 MARCH 1932
In this letter, Wright says, I want to schedule WORMS OF THE EARTH soon, for that is an unusually fine story, I think. Also in this letter, he rejects The Frost-Giant’s Daughter and returns The Phoenix on the Sword for revisions; these are the first two Conan stories submitted by Howard to Weird Tales.
MARCHERS OF VALHALLA, CIRCA APRIL 1932
This is Howard’s first story of James Allison, who remembers past incarnations, generally as a barbaric warrior in an epoch before the dawn of history. It tells of the world-spanning migration of a band of pre-Aryan Nordics, a band which includes one man not of the tribe.
We came of many clans, but all of the golden-haired AEsir, except the man who strode beside me. He was Kelka, my blood brother, and a Pict. He had joined us among the jungle-clad hills of a far land that marked the eastern-most drift of his race, where the tom-toms of his people pulsed incessantly through the hot star-flecked night. He was short, thick-limbed, deadly as a jungle-cat. We of the AEsir were barbarians, but Kelka was a savage. Behind him lay the abysmal chaos of the squalling black jungle. The pad of the tiger was in his stealthy tread, the grip of the gorilla in his black-nailed hands; the fire that burns in a leopard’s eyes burned in his.
JUNE 1932
People of the Dark is published in Strange Tales.
NOVEMBER 1932
Worms of the Earth is published in Weird Tales.
LETTER TO H.P. LOVECRAFT, CIRCA DECEMBER 1932
Concerning “Worms of the Earth” – I must have been unusually careless when I wrote that, considering the errors – such as “her” for “his”, “him” for “himself”, “loathsome” for “loathing”, etc.. I’m at a loss to say why I spelled Eboracum as Ebbracum. I must investigate the matter. I know I saw it spelled that way, somewhere; it’s not likely I would make such a mistake entirely of my own volition, though I do frequently make errors. Somehow, in my mind, I have a vague idea that it’s connected some way with the Gaelic “Ebroch” – York.
THE VALLEY OF THE WORM, FEBRUARY 1934
This is another story of James Allison, remembering a past incarnation as a hero whose battle with a monstrous creature inspired later legends of dragon-slayers. In this story, the AEsir come into a land inhabited by the Picts.
I will take up the tale at a time when we came into jungle-clad hills reeking with rot and teeming with spawning life, where the tom-toms of a savage people pulsed incessantly through the hot breathless night. These people came forth to dispute our way – short, strongly built men, black-haired, painted, ferocious, but indisputably white men. We knew their breed of old. They were Picts, and of all alien races the fiercest. We had met their kind before in thick forests, and in upland valleys beside mountain lakes. But many moons had passed since those meetings.
I believe this particular tribe represented the easternmost drift of the race. They were the most primitive and ferocious of any I ever met. Already they were exhibiting hints of characteristics I have noted among black savages in jungle countries, though they had dwelt in these environs only a few generations. The abysmal jungle was engulfing them, was obliterating their pristine characteristics and shaping them in its own horrific mold. They were drifting into head-hunting, and cannibalism was but a step which I believe they must have taken before they became extinct. These things are natural adjuncts to the jungle; the Picts did not learn them from the black people, for then there were no blacks among those hills. In later years they came up from the south, and the Picts first enslaved and then were absorbed by them.
CIRCA OCTOBER 1934
Beyond the Black River is accepted by Weird Tales. This story prominently features the Hyborian Age Picts. Two other Conan stories, the unfinished Wolves Beyond the Border, possibly written before Beyond the Black River, and an unsold story, The Black Stranger, which was likely written afterward, also feature the Picts.
ALVIN EARL PERRY, A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ROBERT E. HOWARD, FANTASY MAGAZINE, JULY 1935