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| Tam-lin |
The laird forbids any maiden from entering Carterhaugh because a beautiful and irresistible fairy knight named Tam-lin lives there. “There was not a maid went to Carterhaugh but she was not a maid when she returned.” The laird’s beautiful and willful daughter disobeys him and goes to Carterhaugh to seek Tam-lin. She finds a milk-white steed and a beautiful rose bush and Tam-lin appears after she picks two of the roses. After a willful exchange, they embrace and lay together. Janet returns to the castle. Time passes and Janet grows depressed, because though she seeks him, she cannot find Tam-lin or Carterhaugh. The knights of the castle grow anxious because it is obvious that Janet is with child, and they are nervous about receiving blame from the laird. Finally, the laird approaches his daughter with tears in his eyes and asks her which of his knights has fathered her child. She responds that her lover is no man of this earth, and that she will marry no other man. Her father leaves in despair.
Janet’s sadness and loneliness grows. In her desperation, she ventures into the woods to find herbs to rid herself of the child. She rides long and, when she looks up from her horse, she sees a milk-white steed and a beautiful rose bush. She quickly rushes to pick the roses, and Tam-lin appears behind her, saddened by her actions. Janet tells Tam-lin that she wants nothing more than to be his wife and raise their child together, but asks him what he could know of her world. Tam-lin tells Janet that though he has longed for her, as a fairy knight he cannot leave the fairy kingdom. Then he tells her that he was, in fact, born to a human king, and that the Fairy Queen rescued him from a fall while he was out riding. He also conveys fear, because the fairies must make a sacrifice to hell every seven years to pay for the beauty of their land. As, he is the only mortal among them, he fears they will sacrifice him. He then formulates a plan. He instructs Janet to ride out on All Hallow’s eve to wait for him, as the fairies all ride out at midnight. He instructs her to wait for his milk-white steed, pull him down and hold him tight no matter what hideous forms her eyes might see. He tells her that once he is turned into a burning coal, she must cast him into the well and he will be changed back into a mortal man and will be hers.
Janet does as Tam-lin instructs and rides out on All Hallow’s eve, though it is cold and eerie. She waits for the fairy procession and watches as the Fairy Queen and her knights ride by. When Tam-lin’s milk-white steed passes, she grabs him from the horse and holds him tight. The Fairy Queen shrieks and Tam-lin turns into a hideous snake. He turns into other awful beasts, but Janet ignores her eyes and holds him tight. Finally, he turns into a piece of burning coal, and she casts him into the well. She reaches her hand into the well and pulls out naked Tam-lin. She covers him with her mantel and they look into each other’s eyes. Despite the shrieking of the Fairy Queen, the lovers ride off thinking only of their future.
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| Spin! Spin! Reel off Skin! |
John, a young man, dismisses the witchy woman’s warnings and pursues courting a beautiful and mysterious woman. After a whirlwind courtship they marry but within a few weeks he starts to notice that she disappears in the middle of the night. One night he secretly watches as she pulls off her skin and flys off into the night. Frightened, he goes to the conjure woman for help. She explains the he has married a boo hag. To get rid of the boo hag, she gives him salt and pepper and tells him to put it into the witch’s skin, when she goes off for the night. He does so. When the boo hag comes back, she puts on the skin and then starts spinning and clawing at the skin as the salt and pepper start irrating her. Spining and scratching into the night, she explodes into pieces. |
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| Tail-cut! |
Fox is very full of himself and struts around the forest like he’s king. He does various things to antagonize his fellow forest-dwellers. Fox, while strutting one morning, gets his tail caught in a trap. He tries to gently free himself, then pulls away from the trap in a hurry after hearing the voices of approaching hunters. When Fox reaches his den, he realizes that he left his tail back at the trap and frets about how the other foxes will make fun of him. Fox formulates a plan and calls the other foxes to a meeting. He tries to convince the other foxes that the “tailless look” is in style and that tails are burdensome and unnecessary. Wise Old Fox exposes Proud Fox’s selfish motivations and the other foxes laugh at Proud Fox. |
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| Tyl Eulenspiegel and the Marvelous Painting |
Tyl Eulenspiegel, a known trickster who prefers jests and deceptions to real honest work when it comes to making money, realizes that his purse is empty and is inspired by street painters to hatch a new plot. He comes to the palace of the Landgrave in a land called Hessen and proclaims himself to be a master painter. The Landgrave, knowing Tyl’s reputation as a trickster, is suspicious, but agrees to allow Tyl to meet his court, that he might paint them. Tyl meets them, one by one—a fat, cruel-faced duke; a tiny, shrewish old duchess; and a fair but cold maiden who is missing several of her teeth. They are all haughty and mean, and threaten to have Tyl killed if he does not paint them as favorably and beautifully as possible.
However, once he is finished meeting them and he goes back to the Landgrave to get supplies, the Landgrave warns him that if he does not paint the nobles exactly the way they look, he will have Tyl’s head! Tyl, not to be dismayed, agrees, and insists that he must be allowed to stay in a room in the palace while he paints, and have all of the finest food and drink, and never be visisted by anyone, whether assistants or nobles, lest he lose his inspiration. The Landgrave is wary, but agrees, and for one month Tyl lives like a king in the palace, with no one allowed into his chamber to see the progress on the portraits. Finally, he realizes that if he lingers too long, the nobles will get suspicious, so he opens the door to his chamber and announces that the paintings are ready! The Landgrave and his court pile into the room to get the first glimpse at the marvelous artwork, and are greeted with a curtain obscuring the far wall of the room. Tyl explains before he opens the curtain that his painting are very special—they can only be seen by those who are of pure blood and ancestry. If anyone looking upon them had a drop of peasant blood, they would see nothing. Then Tyl opens the curtain—and there is nothing hanging on the wall at all!
The nobles are all much too ashamed to admit that they see nothing, since that would imply that they were of low birth, so they all instead praise the paintings highly and loudly proclaim the beauty of their own portraits. Once they are gone, the Landgrave tells Tyl that he knows the trick that he played, but he is grudgingly grateful for the lesson he taught the vain and haughty nobles, and so gives Tyl the money he promised him and sends him on his way, hoping that the trickster will never again return to his land to cause him trouble.
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| From Beyond |
My version of the story begins with the narrator directly addressing the audience. He invites them to imagine what “beyond” looks like—what lies beyond the world we see and experience every day. But he quickly dismisses anything that they audience might think on the subject, and laughs at the possibility that anyone could pretend to believe that they could imagine such a thing. His laughter is unsettling, mad. He proceeds to tell the story:
He is invited to visit his very good friend Crawford Tillinghast after not having heard from him in months. The last contact they’d had was a heated argument in which the narrator warned Tillinghast that he was becoming too obsessed with his work and he should stop his experiments. The narrator arrives at Tillinghast’s house to find his friend quite changed—haggard, haunted, with a starved appearance but a wild look in his eyes. Tillinghast invites him inside and explains that his experiment has reached its pinnacle and he simply must show someone—and who better than his very best friend in all the world? He describes the experiment as the two move through the house up to the attic. The narrator notices that the house is much quieter and full of shadows than it used to be and the lights are all turned off, and inquires as to where the servants have gone, expressing surprise that old Gregory would ever leave. Tillinghast hastily mutters an unsatisfactory tale about them all quitting out of apprehension, and goes on to fervently explain that he has successfully managed to break down the walls between our limited perception and the true vastness of the world—that they are about to expand their senses and see things that overlap space, time, and dimension. The narrator is skeptical, but is worried about his friend and doesn’t wish to have another fight, so he agrees.
Tillinghast activates the machine and at first nothing happens. Then a strange glow appears around them, and Tillinghast blows out the candle. Soon the narrator begins to experience a sensation of vertigo, as if looking into an enormous void, and he hears strange distant music. He instinctively pulls out his revolver to make himself feel better. A minute later, a cold wind blows through the room and the narrator breaks the silence to ask what’s going on—which instantly makes him feel better, as the sounds and the wind and the void all briefly disappear. But Tillinghast cautions the narrator not to speak, and above all, not to move—the servants, he says, did not listen to his instructions, and it got them. “What got them?” the narrator asks. Tillinghast explains that just as they can see these other worlds, they can also be seen, so keep still!
The narrator does so, and immediately the sensations are back. And after a minute more, his vision is also affected—superimposed upon the room are visions of temples, of whirling galaxies, of utter chaos—and he feels intangible things pass by him, and pass through him, and as he clutches his revolver shakily, he perceives hundreds of undulating jelly-like creatures crawling all over the room, devouring one another. Tillinghast notices the narrator’s terror and becomes irate, showing his true motivations—he wanted revenge on the narrator for having doubted him instead of encouraging him when he needed support, for being such a coward in the face of his discovery!
The narrator nervously asks whether the servants were killed by these jelly-like creatures, but Tillinghast only laughs and calls
him a fool, declaring that the narrator will see what killed them soon enough. He proclaims the heavens and infinity, death and beyond, all to be his own, showing the depths of his megalomania, and explains that though he is hunted by otherworldly things which devour humans, he will evade them. They will get the narrator instead, he threatens—but then reassures the narrator that disintegration is quite painless, and that they will not lay a finger on him, but that it will be the simple viewing of them that causes his death. And see them he must, because he doubted their existence!
The narrator is frozen with terror, and Tillinghast laughs at his plight, telling him not to worry, because it will be over soon: “See, here they come, they’re right behind you—look, curse you, look!!” And then there is a loud BANG!! as the narrator fires his revolver.
The narrator wakes up at the police station and finds that he was arrested for the murder of Tillinghast, but that he was immediately released upon the discovery that his gunshot was aimed at the machine and Tillinghast died of a heart attack. When the doctor performing the autopsy asks what happened, the narrator is vague with the details lest he be considered mad—hahahaha, imagine that. The doctor assures him that he was simply hypnotized by a vindictive and homocidal madman. But, as the narrator explains to the audience, he does not believe the doctor. How can he believe the doctor when the sky is always full of shadows, and he is always being watched, and he is always cold but never alone? Besides, he says, old Gregory and the other servants? The police never found their bodies.
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