Belinda and I spent the last six weeks preparing to move our household from cosmopolitan Cleveland, Ohio to my long-neglected childhood home in Bucyrus, Ohio:
The move has now been accomplished, but preparation and execution left my reading and writing schedule - such as it was - in tatters. Before the move I did finish a hare-brained post about Le Fanu, but have not put it up. Yet.
The Machen collection Bridles and Spurs (originally published by the Rowfant Club of Cleveland, Ohio in 1951), included in the Delphi Classics Machen collection, has proved a lovely way to reconnect.
"The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin" is a captivating essay. It begins with some drollery about Spiritualism:
I was saying that I once heard X say to Y: 'You know, of course, that Confucius has come over?' — and that I didn't believe a word of it. Well, I didn't and I don't; but, if one comes to think of it, I should find it difficult to justify my disbelief on strictly rational grounds. Who are we to pretend to understand the laws of the kingdom of the unseen? Confessedly, demonstrably, we blunder daily, we blunder hideously over the laws of our own region. We condemn innocent men, we acquit guilty men. We stone the prophets and the poets; we laud and laurel horrible quacks and impostors. Germany makes certain of tremendous victory; and comes to the most appalling grief. And betting men back horses as 'dead certs,' which, somehow, crawl in at the tail of the field. Evidently, we know very little about things seen: how shall we presume to be dogmatic about things unseen? What right had I to be derisive and incredulous about the supposed manifestations of the great sage of China?
None whatever, taking the proposition— 'Confucius has come over' — simply as it stands. I know nothing whatever about the present state of the spirit of Confucius or its possibilities; and I have no right to any opinion on the subject. My defence for my derision must be founded on the fact that this was the pronouncement of a Spiritualist. Now I know from long experience that the Spiritualists are highly credulous folk, that they have been deceived, cheated, humbugged again and again, and that they never learn caution or the critical habit of mind. The medium with the faked slate is found out; and is succeeded by the medium with the faked photograph; and the exposed 'spirit' photographer yields place to the manipulator of ectoplasm — which turns out, in due time, to be cheese cloth. So, on the whole, I think I was justified. I may yet be brought to believe in the apparition or manifestation of Confucius; but not on Spiritualistic evidence. Emphatically, what the Spiritualist says is not evidence; when he speaks on his own topic. When he talks about chess or chemistry or the culture of roses he may be the most trustworthy of men.
But the Machenean topos soon commences:
So much for grounds of disbelief; now for the more difficult matter: grounds of belief in one of the strangest stories that I have ever heard. And let me say at once that it appeared in Light, which is the principal Spiritualistic paper in England, and that, for all I know, the narrator herself may be a Spiritualist. I do know one thing: that she was most unwilling to publish her experiences, lest she should be thought a fool. And it is to be further remarked that whatever may be thought of her tale, it is certainly not a Spiritualistic tale. Its atmosphere is wholly remote from that of the séance.
Well: to our adventure. On or about July 20th, 1929, a party of six people set out to climb Mount Nephin, by Lough Conn, in County Mayo, Ireland. There were three men and three women, and of the women, one, with an injured knee, turned back after an hour's climb, and was to wait at the cottage where the party had left their car. It was a clear and sunny day. The climb began at eleven, the summit was reached at a quarter to three, and at three o'clock the descent began.
We started down in groups and singly, my husband by himself, F.H., James and myself together, and the other man quite a bit ahead of us. Suddenly, F.H. turned away, and vanished over the shoulder of the mountain. Little was said, for she often took her own way down the various mountains we climbed during the summer. James and I continued our way for a while, then turned to each other and said 'Something has happened to F.H.!' We felt so sure of this that we called to the other two men, who returned. We agreed that they should go back to the mountain to where she was last seen, and search for her, while I should continue down, and meet them at the cottage.
The teller of the tale set out on her way down the mountain, keeping a sharp lookout for the missing F.H. She sat down and heard 'a funny kind of crying' behind her, the crying of a lost child. She looked about her and saw a figure which she took to be James, waving to her. She walked towards the figure; but there was no one there. She sat down again, and admired the view, and 'someone laughed,' directly behind her. The figure that seemed James again appeared and disappeared, and the narrator at last reached the cottage, expecting to find there the girl with the injured knee.
The cottage people told me she had not been there all the afternoon. Presently she came in very angry, saying that early in the afternoon I had come down the mountain and waved to her, but had not waited for her to come up. (She had not gone very far, as she stumbled in a bog, and found the walking too hard.) Obviously I had not done any such thing.
At half-past seven, the men came back. They had seen nothing of the missing girl, F.H. One of the men, James, had twice seen, 'out of the tail of his eye,' a club whirling down on him, and he had, each time, taken flying jumps to avoid it. The party were feeling extremely worried about the disappearance of F.H., and the narrator began to question the man of the cottage. Were there holes or quarries on the mountain into which one might fall? Nothing of the kind. Might there be children on the mountain? All the children had been at school.
Then:
'What about the Little People?'
He became very severe, and turned to go out, saying 'We do not talk about that.'
And poor, missing F.H.? They found her, at last, in a police station at the foot of the mountain. And she told a very odd story.
She does not know, (writes the narrator,) she cannot possibly imagine what happened to her. She can only say that it was as though she had lapsed into, complete unconsciousness, and all the while thought she was walking beside us. She was in reality walking straight away from us. She does not know what it was that 'took' her suddenly; she said it was as though there were no time for a moment, and some strange force were pulling her away. Then she realised that we were not there, and heard the crying of voices. She went in the direction of the sound, thinking she would find someone; on crossing a ravine, the voices were still audible, and she heard someone blowing a horn, but no one was in sight. Then she thought she saw a small person beyond and below her, possibly a child; she went down towards it, but on crossing another ravine, found no one, though the voices still continued. After this, she realised she was lost, and headed for the white roadway below her, and walked about eight miles to a police barracks, where we later found her.
I believe every word of that strange story; but I find it difficult, or rather, impossible, to give the grounds of my belief. Sometimes we can appeal to the character of the teller of the tale; but I know nothing of the character of the lady who tells this tale of Mount Nephin. She is, or was, a university lecturer; and it might be urged that university lecturers are not in the habit of making up outrageous fictions. This is, probably, a true proposition; but it falls very far short of demonstrating the veracity of the story. I can only say that, to me, the whole narrative reeks of the truth; I am convinced that the persons of the tale really experienced the impressions and sensations which they say that they experienced.
And what, or who, caused these impressions and sensations? There, I must be content to symbolise with F.H., who lost her way. 'She does not know, cannot possibly imagine, what happened to her.' I neither know, nor can I conjecture the causes of the things that happened to this party of hill climbers. Were they harried and misled by the Little People, the Daioine Sidhe, the fairies? I am with the 'man the cottage' here; I don't want to talk about that — because I know nothing of it. Tradition, even wild tradition, is often trustworthy in a high degree: I could bring forward many instances in proof of that proposition. But the original traditions of the Little People have been hopelessly corrupted by literary inventions: the fairies of Shakespeare, and Herrick and the other Elizabethans have travelled far from their native hills and wilds. I dare not say that the people who climbed Mount Nephin in July, 1929, were beset by fairies; but I think we may say that experiences such as theirs were the foundation of the older fairy lore.
Mount Nephin is a real place.
When I read "The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin" this morning, it reminded me of the utterly strange mountain ending of The Green Round. Imagine my surprise upon discovering just now that Machen used the Mount Nephin anecdote for that very finale!
Jay
9 April 2022
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