THE DEEP ONES: "Morag-of-the-Cave" by Margery Lawrence

"Morag-of-the-Cave" by Margery Lawrence

Discussion begins August 24, 2022.

First published in the July 1925 issue of Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?681029

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Nights of the Round Table: A Book of Strange Tales

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://pseudopod.org/2021/01/08/pseudopod-739-morag-of-the-cave/

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://pseudopod.org/2021/01/08/pseudopod-739-morag-of-the-cave/

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Lawrence
http://enfolding.org/pan-a-clergymans-redemption-in-margery-lawrences-how-pan-ca...
https://jayrothermel.blogspot.com/2021/02/margery-lawrences-strange-club-stories...
https://tinyurl.com/26j3dhj2

I was going to nominate "The Haunted Saucepan" by Margery Lawrence (trust me - that title doesn't do it justice), but while searching for it online, I bumped into this one instead. I'm glad I did, because it's even better. I'd call it a top-notch, vividly evoked folk horror tale with a strong element of the weird. Of course, any HPL afficionado is going to be thinking "deep ones", and rightly so. Morag's story was written several years before "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". Might HPL have read it in either Hutchinson's Mystery Story Magazine or in the Nights of the Round Table: A Book of Strange Tales collection? Who knows, but I'd sure like to get a copy of the latter.

I think this is the best story so far in this cycle. It's a perfectly executed horror story. The choice to have most of the story told by an Irishwoman from the Islands (I assumed this was somewhere in Galway, but could be anywhere on the West Coast or even Cork) had the advantage of the oral traditions of the country folk. She nails the dialect and knack for storytelling which instantly immerses the reader in the narrative. I thought the two events after Silis' tale were well plotted for pay-off to the reader.
I liked the way Lawrence handled the tension between the Christian and pagan belief systems. This is familiar ground in our horror traditions, but the typical way it plays out reminds me of the movie The Wicker Man, related in similar fashion to Christopher Lee's character gloating about the resurgence of paganism over moribund Christianity. Lawrence's take, although I suspect she is rooting for the pagans, is more sympathetic to the dilemma of the country folk who are still occasionally at the mercy of the older gods and elementals, so they fear and respect them, and are then convicted by their local priests for a lack of Christian faith. I'm curious if that made a similar impression on anyone else.

This was a very enjoyable story mixing the old motif of the changeling child with something more mysterious and disturbing than fairies.

>3 papijoe: Yes, this story played up the conflict and tension between Christianity and the "old ways" in ways I didn't expect with the ending. It seems the older and wiser priest was not afraid to use older magic to protect the village when his own professed faith can't.

I thought the scene with Morag's child was particularly well done.

The parallel to "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is obvious enough, but the HPL story that first came to my mind was actually "The Dunwich Horror". Perhaps because, while presumably less cosmic than Yog-Sothoth, the father seemed more god-like than the more-or-less human-level deep ones.

I can't judge the accuracy of the dialect, but couldn't help but notice that the bits of Irish strewn in at points seemed very inconsistently spelled; perhaps most notably "agraidh", "aghray", and "a-ghraidh" apparently render the same endearment.

The portrayal of the old and new faiths struck me as respectful to both. Lawrence was a believer in the occult - perhaps likely to subscribe to the idea that all faiths contain parts of the greater truth?

I did wonder what kind of runes might look like cuneiform to someone apparently familiar with the look of that script.

>5 AndreasJ: Had some frustration with trying to google the Gaelic (Irish) words. Maybe a non- standard transliteration? Figured most of them out by context.
I assumed the runes were Ogham.

>6 papijoe:

Ogham is neither technically runes, nor particularly like cuneiform in appearance. But it'd make sense in an Irish context, and I don't know how knowledgeable Lawrence was, nor how well-informed the narrator is supposed to be.

I wasn't particularly reminded of The Wicker Man. Wasn't the pagan religion in that film an entirely synthetic one constructed by the Christopher Lee character's grandfather?

I agree that this is a very good story, and one with far more of a kick than I was expecting at the outset. Comparing it to "The Tenants of Broussac", I note that in this one it's the stupid galumphing man who interferes with potentially tragic result. I say potentially because of course de Grandin saved the day in that story, and here the ending is ambiguous if not (like "The Shadow Over Innsmouth") triumpant in embracing the Other (also, the magical charms reduce Morag to the state of someone on heavy (1920s) medication. Anindication of where Lawrence's sympathies lie?).

The only minor quibble I had was with Silis' telling of Morag's story, which to my ear switched, early in the narrtion, from her normal speech to a much more "literary"register with the occasional "Irishism" (is that a word?) thrown in thereafter.

>2 semdetenebre:
Re. Nights of the Round Table. I looked on Amazon UK, because a handful of Ash Tree Press books have subsequently been published in paperback by Harper Collins. But not this one, sad to say. There's actually an Ash Tree Press copy listed - at £1,910.99! There is good news, however. There's a Kindle edition listed too, and at a sensible price.

>8 housefulofpaper:

The cheapest I've seen Nights of the Round Table is for about $400 on ABE Books. There is a second Ash Tree Press volume of her short stories called Terraces of the Night that can be found in the $150 range. Since Handheld Press has included Lawrence in "Women's Weird" and she is right up their alley, I think I'll ask them if they might consider re-releasing "Nights" or even coming up with their own ML volume. I can't stand reading lit from a screen, so Kindle is out of the question for me. I can wait for now.