BY G. CONNOR SALTER

The following document was found in 1972 by Blaparusian-born British scholar Cairn Gllabestorreon (no relation) during a trip to the Serene Codswallop Library in Spike-on-Tent, Ticketyshire, England, while he was seeking a legendary translation of the Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher Fragment from medium-high German into irradiated Greek. Gllabestorreon presented the story with commentary at the Pan-Continental Congress on Positively Medieval Studies in Karamazu, Michigan, the following year. He disappeared shortly afterward when questions were raised about the veracity of his doctoral thesis, which included a large section about his alleged transcendental experiences in the 1960s under the tutelage of a practicing neo-Druid named Rhod Ddwr Hofrennydd.[1] Later inquiries determined Hofrennydd died in 1392, and found no evidence of Gllabestorreon’s activities after he boarded a plane traveling from Bingelstein, Michigan, for Walhalhawashyngtyn, Wales, on August 32, 1973. Stories continue to circulate about his fate. In 2022, Interpol stated that after a rigorous investigation, they had found no evidence for the long-held rumor that Gllabestorreon had received experimental surgery and was living in the Tywi River Valley as a Badger Face Welsh Mountain sheep.

Legal issues have made it difficult to publish anything by Gllabestorreon. However, a breakthrough occurred last year when a police auction unveiled items belonging to a deceased Russian oligarch imprisoned for his involvement in a mail-order gambling ring that profited from the 1972 Pro-Am Eurasian Shot Put Semifinals. Several items proved to be luggage which passed through the same airport as Gllabestorreon’s flight. Handwritten notes stuck to the inside of a bumbershoot case proved to be the original version of his conference paper. His estate has provided permission for this document to be published here minus his introduction, which featured some libelous comments about one of his classmates, Nigel St. Oojah-Cum-Spliff.[2]

No attempt has been made to update the notes with more recent research.

The Ghoul and the Grandson: A Translation and Commentary

Before the times we find ourselves in today, a village existed in northern Egypt, six miles from the Sphinx.[3] Whenever the way of all things came and somebody died, the villagers held a vigil and buried their remains in the local graveyard.

One autumn, a blood moon came at harvest time and the villagers began to notice dead bodies missing from the unconsecrated section of the cemetery, the land reserved for heathens.[4] Some weeks after these disappearances, a farmer ran into the town square at dusk and declared to all who would listen that he had seen a ghoul walking through his fields after leaving the cemetery.[5] The villagers disregarded the story, until it became clear that the unconsecrated ground was nothing but holes. Then one morning, the gardener in charge of tending the cemetery saw a hole in the consecrated graves. The people gathered garlic and charms and made wreaths which they placed across the gravestones, but to no avail. They hired a mercenary to guard the cemetery at night, and found his body the next day, propped against the gravestone of a renowned chieftain, his head missing.

Around this time, the village’s oldest elder took ill with the plague. The people gathered in his house and asked him how to go about burying him honorably.

“Give my eldest grandson a holly branch,”[6]  the elder said, “and weave lilies[7] into his tunic. Bury me with my fathers, but makes sure he leads the funeral procession.”

A week passed, and the elder passed on. The villagers followed his wishes. As they reached the graveyard, the ghoul appeared. It opened its mouth and leapt at the casket.

The grandson threw the holly branch into its mouth. The ghoul swallowed it and started choking. Then the grandson threw his lily-covered tunic over the ghoul’s head. The ghoul shrieked as if being burned and smashed its head on the ground. At long last, its head shattered against the gravestone of an Alsatian knight.[8]

The people carried its remains to a gorge used for many years to dispose of their rubbish. Many days, they threw torches into the gorge to burn the rubbish.[9] They covered the ghoul’s body with water poured from the elder’s communion chalice and hurled it into the gorge. The smoke rising from the gorge turned black and ascended to the heavens. After three days and nights, the black smoke passed. The grandson opened the gates to the rubbish dump entrance seventy times seven,[10] declared the area clean of all the ghoul’s evil on his last exit. The people celebrated and the rutabaga harvest was plentiful.[11]

The editors would like to thank Froyde Kaplinski and Omnivorous “Remy” Schmidt for their help transcribing the piece from its original notes, and also for their hours spent unsticking the manuscript from the lingonberry jam that had pasted it to the underside of the author’s luggage.

Afterword for Confused Readers

Some readers will have realized by this point that “the Ghoul and the Grandson” is a joke. It was written during a 2019 trip in Huémoz, Switzerland, and recorded as part of a Halloween short-story series, “Tapes from the Crawlspace” (Experiment Llama Productions, 2020). I was reading Rhiannon Ifan’s book Tales of Wales (Y Lolfa, 1989) when I wrote the story, and a friend had recently read me several of Hans Christian Anderson’s original fairy stories. On evening, after reading one of these Welsh folktales aloud to some friends, I thought it would be fun to try and write my own faux folktale with a heavy mix of slapstick. I was also perusing a guide to Christian symbolism in medieval paintings, which made it easy to allegorize elements. Some details have been revised from the audio version.

Footnotes

[1] For a full look at this controversy, see T. Gwydr Morthwylion, Will the Real Druid Please Stand Up? A Controversy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002).

[2] No relation to the Suffolk Oojah-Cum-Spliffs.

[3] The location is fictitious, and archeological records suggest this story is probably apocryphal, with Egypt standing in here as a legendary location. For more, see Ouroboros “Jim” Kipwerth, Egyptology and You (Ingatwurp & Son, 1953).

[4] Many medieval cemeteries had segregated plots for burying people who were not Christians. See Flip Gargarinn, Death Isn’t What Is Used to Be (Pishposh Press, 1986).

[5] Since the ghoul, academically speaking, is more associated with Middle Eastern than European literature, it is reasonable to assume the author wanted to tell a story about a monster first and added the geographic setting later.

[6] In late medieval Christian art, the holly branch typically represents the crown of thorns. See the second left-facing page in chapter 12 of almost any medieval art reference work printed after 1895 for more details.

[7] In medieval Christian art, lilies typically represent purity. See the third right-facing page of the resource mentioned above.

[8] Most likely a descriptor of someone from the region of Alsace, not to be confused with the canine species.

[9] Gehenna, a burning rubbish site in ancient Judea previously associated with pagan worship, is frequently mentioned in the New Testament whenever Jesus Christ discusses “hell.” In the traditional medieval narrative, Christ descends into hell after his death and breaks open the gates of hell three days later before resurrecting, releasing righteous heathens living in a limbo state because their salvation was impossible before he appeared. Therefore, we see here an attempt to turn this fair story into a religious allegory to provide a moral to the listeners.

[10] See the biblical reference to seventy times seven, no doubt another clear attempt to turn the fairy story into an allegorical discussion, more explicitly connecting the grandson to Christ.

[11] A note crossed out in the margins ended with: “Now tell me, readers, will you be at the rutabaga harvest come the resurrection?”