Robert E. Howard's Wanderlust Heroes

 It is interesting that Robert E. Howard, who spent most of his life in Cross Plains, Texas, and who indeed seldom left the state, would write about characters who left their home to find fantastic adventures in foreign lands.

Kirby O’Donnell would end up in Afghanistan, as did Francis X. Gordon after he travelled the world. Sailor Steve Costigan roamed the Asiatic Seas, and Cormac Fitzgeoffrey fought in the Crusades.

Conan of Cimmeria left his native land at a young age, and for all we know, never returned. Kull acted in defiance of tribal law and was exiled from Atlantis, never to return. Solomon Kane had few tales in his native England, but most of his adventures took place in Africa. Whereas Conan or Kull never went home again, Kane's homecoming was commemorated in a poem.

Of these three popular Howard characters, Conan stands out for several reasons; he travelled the most, experiencing the many lands and cultures. Wherever Conan was, he often adopted native dress, language, and weapons, sometimes forsaking his broadsword for a tulwar, scimitar, or cutlass. In some stories, he spoke disdainfully of civilized culture, sometimes criticizing it next to his own. It is perplexing that if Conan felt that way about civilized culture, he did not return to Cimmeria. He must have realized that other cultures possessed more loot and that it was easier to pillage them. 

With Solomon Kane, the Puritan was always dressed in black and was never without his rapier; he was known to use a brace of pistols if they were handy. His only ‘native’ weapon was the Staff of Solomon, given to him by the ancient African shaman, N’longa. Kane only used the staff in Africa. Wherever Kane went, he was always himself, for his life was rooted in God.

As king of Valusia, Kull often struggled to adapt to their ways and laws, even though he had lived there for years. In a famous scene in By This Axe I Rule, Kull smashes a stone tablet of ancient Valusian laws and declares that as king, he will set the laws. This echoes back to the harsh tribal law that Kull opposed on Atlantis. He believed burning a woman at the stake because of whom she married was harsh and unjust. This idea of justice was something Kull carried with him regardless of where he lived.

Both Kirby O’Donnell and Francis X. Gordon could blend into Eastern cultures. O’Donnell often used the disguise of a Kurdish merchant. These two remind me a bit of Lawrence of Arabia. 

It takes a special kind of man to leave his homeland and journey to some far-off place. Definitely, many of Howard’s characters had wanderlust. They were risk-takers and explorers, the kind of men who needed new experiences and had the desire to learn just what they were made of, something like an existential quest. These were not the type of men to do 9-to-5 jobs and valued family life. These men would live a life alone. I wonder if that type of person would ever truly feel at home anywhere. But that is the price for adventure.

I think down deep, Robert E. Howard would have loved to travel to other countries and seek adventure, but something held him back. Many of us who are tied to our families and our 9-to-5 jobs will forever be grateful for that.

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Robert E. Howard, Kipling, and the Picts

                                                                                                                                                               

Robert E. Howard wrote a good deal about the Picts. He mentioned them in his tales ofConan, Kull, and, naturally, Bran Mak Morn. The Picts are also mentioned in several short stories where they do not play a large role. He may have been enamoured with them for personal reasons, believing he was connected by blood. Howard’s interest in Picts may also have been spurred on by the poem A Pict Song by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling was a favorite of Howard and probably influenced the El Borak stories. It looks like A Pict Song also influenced Howard’s The Song of a Mad Minstrel, particularly the first two stanzas.

A Pict Song

By Rudyard Kipling

Rome never looks where she treads.   

   Always her heavy hooves fall   

On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;   

   And Rome never heeds when we bawl.   

Her sentries pass on—that is all,

   And we gather behind them in hordes,   

And plot to reconquer the Wall,

   With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk—we!

   Too little to love or to hate.   

Leave us alone and you’ll see

   How we can drag down the State!

We are the worm in the wood!

   We are the rot at the root!   

We are the taint in the blood!

   We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak—

   Rats gnawing cables in two—

Moths making holes in a cloak—

   How they must love what they do!   

Yes—and we Little Folk too,

   We are busy as they—

Working our works out of view—

   Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,

   But we know Peoples that are.   

Yes, and we’ll guide them along

   To smash and destroy you in War!

We shall be slaves just the same?

   Yes, we have always been slaves,

But you—you will die of the shame,

   And then we shall dance on your graves!

       We are the Little Folk, we, etc.

Rudyard Kipling

The Song of the Mad Minstrel

I am the thorn in the foot, I am the blur in the sight;
I am the worm at the root, I am the thief in the night.
I am the rat in the wall, the leper that leers at the gate;
I am the ghost in the hall, herald of horror and hate.

I am the rust on the corn, I am the smut on the wheat,
Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet.
I am canker and mildew and blight, danger and death and decay;
The rot of the rain by night, the blast of the sun by day.

I warp and wither with drouth, I work in the swamp's foul yeast;
I bring the black plague from the south and the leprosy in from the east.
I rend from the hemlock boughs wine steeped in the petals of dooms;
Where the fat black serpents drowse I gather the Upas blooms.

I have plumbed the northern ice for a spell like Frozen lead;
In lost grey fields of rice, I have learned from Mongol dead.
Where a bleak black mountainstands I have looted grisly caves;
I have digged in the desert sands to plunder terrible graves.

Never the sun goes forth, never the moon glows red,
But out of the south or the north, I come with the slavering dead.
I come with hideous spells, black chants and ghastly tunes;
I have looted the hideen hells amd plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest to cheer me by word or look,
There was never a man or beast in the blood-black ways I took.
There were crimson gulfs unplumbed, there were black wings over a sea,
There were pits where mad things drummed, and foaming blasphemy.

There were vast ungodly tombs where slimy monsters dreamed;
There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes where unborn demons screamed.
There were ages dead to Time, and lands lost out of Space;
There were adders in the slime, and a dim unholy Face.

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone, and the brain froze in my skull--
But I won through, I alone, and poured my chalice full
Of horrors and dooms and spells, black buds and bitter roots--
From the hells beneath the hells, I bring you my deathly fruits.

Poem by Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard

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