Spassky at a Safe Distance, Issue 16
“Half a Halloween”
1: Introduction
2: Spassky’s Assorted Somethings
3: Story + Bonus
1
I suggest you read this one backwards, upside-down, and after a severe concussion – it will make more sense that way.
In short – I’m screwed. I’ve managed the “weekly Spassky” for five weeks running – been a 24 karat golden boy – and am left, on the sixth, helpless. I wanted to publish two Spooky Spasskies for Halloween, one before and one after…and by a circumstance wholly independent of me, and suggesting no want in my temporal comprehension, the significance of this week as being the week before the week of Halloweek was…withheld…from me until ten minutes ago.
Of course I had a back-up Spassky, but that’s now electrons – I suppose Lady Luck is having an affair with someone on the stock-exchange…
So here I am, at 23:05, scrambling to put something Spooky together.
I should go to bed – nobody reads these things anyway. I tried to come up with a clever retort to that statement, but I can’t. I really should go to bed.
2
I don’t want to write about the genesis of Halloween, I really don’t. It’s all about starving Victorian children (in the sense of the adjective, not the verb – they starved well enough on their own). It’s just a depressing subject – what is now a bit of sportive, seasonal extortion, “give us treats – or else” was then about the only thing keeping the working class on this side of (Mort)ality. “Soaling”, they called it. Every Halloween and Christmas, people with dough and sweet spices (and a means to bake them, but sometimes not) would make “Soal Cakes”, a simple, filling bread for your eight-year-old to eat between shifts in the mine.
(Poor) people would, like trick-or-treating, knock on people’s doors (traditionally knock – some were more exotic), ask for Soal Cakes, sing Soaling-Songs, and hopefully get some cakes.
That reminds me…
“Soaling Songs?” I hope you ask. “Spassky, do you know any Soaling Songs?”. You’re asking me about folk music? I’m practically an oracle!
You want a Soaling Song? I’ll give you a Soaling Song: a Soaling Song sung by the greatest folk-trio ever, with original lyrics (from around 1860, I think), a live performance from 1965, in ghostly black-and-white (appropriate – those who sung it would’ve probably been in greater parts dead). I’ve linked it as this Issue’s Bonus; it’s called A-Soalin’. Okay, it actually combines three (original) Soaling Songs – seamlessly – into one (to a wonderful effect). You might get confused by the last one, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; it’s a Christmas Soalin Song, but it would probably have been sung around Halloween, too. Just give it a listen, “brings life to history” and all that. Bear with the three second intro in Fr-nch, the rest is in glorious Soaliny English. I’ll beat this “dead horse” to gelatin, you know – I’ve linked it for a reason.
300 words to go…
Did yóu know they made Jack-O’-Lanterns out of turnips? They did that.
Why is Jack so O’Lantern, then? Well, according to Irish folklore (a reliable source if there ever was one), it all started with a man named Jack.
Jack made a deal with the devil. But then the devil tricked Jack and turned him into a sort of vagabond spirit, doomed to walk the Earth until forever. For good measure, Satan cursed him so that he was blind to the light of the sun, the moon, fire – anything that gives off light. That is, all light except candlelight from inside a turnip, because no one in Hell – and the devil would know – puts candles inside turnips, and tries to foil the devil’s curses by doing it.
So we make Jack-O-Lanterns to light Jack’s lonesome way through the world: “Then since Jack’s unfit for heaven/And hell won’t give him room/His ghost is forced to walk the Earth/Until the day of doom/A lantern in his hand he bears/The way by night to show/And from its flame he’s got the name/Of Jack O’Lantern now.”
“Way to lighten up the mood, Spassky – Jesus Christ.” Hey – it’s late, okay; my brain’s four fifths the Sandman’s, one fifth mine – I claim no ownership for what comes out of it.
Why are eyelids so damn heavy?
Okay, change of subject: the Story of the Week. It’s The Monkey’s Paw, certainly one of the twenty greatest short stories ever, and as for horror stories, it’s definitely in the top ten – certainly better than anything Edgar Poe ever wrote. Then again, what isn’t?
I thought I linked it in some previous Spassky, but it doesn’t look like it. Could be my eyes again. Weird…it’s one of my favourite stories.
Well isn’t this fitting – it’s Midnight! We part at Midnight, and on the Halloween Issue as well. I feel like disappearing in a smoke cloud and cackling in a high tenor that echoes much louder than the geography or architecture would allow for.
Then a cloud, that has hitherto shrouded the moon, passes in a wisp; wolves howl from afar (and rather too anear) and, dazzling, does the snowy moon reveal herself; and you shiver, not for the rain, pricking your neck with ice, nor for the warbling wind, but because it’s the hallows’ eve, and Jack a-Soals, and you haven’t any cakes, and you’re alone, and you don’t know where, nor why or wherefore, for I have no idea how to end this thing – and before you know it, I, and this thing, are gone!
3
Bonus: A-Soalin’ (Performed by Peter, Paul and Mary — Video, 1965)
Story of the Week: The Monkey’s Paw (W.W. Jacobs, 1902)