Long Lankin...

I plundered the folk section of our store’s CD range the other day, in order to provide some tunes for the clients and I discovered a Steeleye Span collection that I had not seen before. I hadn’t listened to this group in an age, so – if nothing else - it promised to be a good run down memory lane. There were the inevitable mainstays – “All around My Hat”; “Cam Ye O’er Frae France” – but then I heard one song that I’d completely forgotten about: “Long Lankin”.

The song is based on a story first published in Kent by Bishop Percy in 1775 and concerns the lord of a castle who, being summoned to London, must leave his wife and newborn child behind:

“Said the Lord unto his Lady as he rode over the moss

‘Beware of Long Lankin that lives amongst the gorse.

Beware the moss, beware the moor, beware of Long Lankin;

Be sure the doors are bolted well

Lest Lankin should creep in.’

“Said the Lord unto his Lady as he rode away

‘Beware of Long Lankin that lives amongst the hay.

Beware the moss, beware the moor, beware of Long Lankin;

Be sure the doors are bolted well

Lest Lankin should creep in.’”

So far, so good. These two verses are delivered by Maddy Prior to a slow and mournful accompaniment of fiddles and pipes (with the usual Steeleye Span electronic input which irritates so many purist folkies). The scene is quickly established – the lord of the castle has left, and the presence of some wilderness-dwelling being is highlighted as a possible threat.

“‘Where's the master of the house?’, says Long Lankin;

‘He's 'way to London’, says the nurse to him.

‘Where's the lady of the house?’, says Long Lankin;

‘She's up in her chamber’, says the nurse to him.

‘Where's the baby of the house?’, says Long Lankin;

‘He's asleep in the cradle’, says the nurse to him.”

Suddenly, the tempo changes: everything gets sharp and angular and we get one of those jarring time-signature changes that Jethro Tull is so renowned for. Suddenly, Lankin is with us and another character – that of the Nurse – is introduced. We quickly discover that the two are in cahoots, and that they have an evil plan:

“We will pinch him, we will prick him,

We will stab him with a pin;

And the nurse shall hold the basin

For the blood all to run in.”

And they waste no time going about it:

“So they pinched him and they pricked him,

Then they stabbed him with a pin;

And the false nurse held the basin

For the blood all to run in.”

The basin is an interesting sidelight on these horrible events. The story has travelled widely across England and America and was well known even before Bishop Percy committed it to print in the late 1700s. Other re-tellings have Long Lankin named as “Lambikin”, or “Lamikin”, and this has led some commentators to think that perhaps our villain was afflicted with leprosy, giving him an obvious pallor (and probably forcing him to live in the wilderness, away from others). An old folk treatment in grimoire circles for the disease – probably not widely used – was to bathe in the blood of a newborn child. What we’re seeing here then, is less of a Nurse and more of a Witch. But there’s still more villainy to come:

"‘Lady, come down the stairs,’ says Long Lankin;

‘How can I see in the dark?’, she says unto him.

‘You have silver mantles’, says Long Lankin,

‘Lady, come down the stairs by the light of them.’

Down the stairs the lady came, thinking no harm;

Lankin, he stood ready to catch her in his arms.”

The song skips over some of the salient points of the original legend. In that version, the Lady of the House, bothered by the sound of her child screaming downstairs, calls out to the Nurse to do something about it (go parenting!). The Nurse responds, offering a list of things that she claims to have tried to stop the baby’s cries and then says that nothing but the presence of its mother will calm it down. The Lady is stymied by the lack of a light to guide her down the stairs but is persuaded to use the light provided by her “silver mantles” in order to find her way. Rather than a fireplace accoutrement, this is in fact her expensive outer robe – a kind of cloak worn indoors in order to provide warmth. Using the reflected light provided by this garment, the Lady proceeds downstairs to her doom:

“There was blood all in the kitchen,

There was blood all in the hall;

There was blood all in the parlour,

Where my lady she did fall.”

The jaunty tone adopted for these verses is quite at odds with the nature of what is happening and reminds me starkly of the short story “Frolic” by Thomas Ligotti. Both works display the evil doings of a gleefully capering psychopath on a rampage. The tone continues on into the next verse as well.

“Now Long Lankin shall be hangéd

From the gallows, oh, so high;

And the false nurse shall be burnéd

In the fire close by.”

And so, our villains are destroyed, and Justice is seen to be done. Or is it? Certainly, given all of the preceding awfulness, it’s a relief that the source of the horror has been removed, the role of the False Nurse here as Witch is underscored by her being burnt at the stake. But has every aspect of the story been truthfully retailed up until this point? A few scraps, it turns out, have been carefully omitted:

The story upon which this song is based is often referred to as “Lord Wearie’s Castle”. It tells how Lord Wearie contracted a down-and-out Mason to build for him a castle appropriate to his current standing. The Mason – Lankin – did as he was bid and, when it came time for Lord Wearie to pay up, he was surprised to be turned down. ‘I haven’t the cash to pay you,’ says the backstabbing Lord, ‘unless I were to sell some of my lands and I certainly won’t be doing that.’ Lankin shakes his fist and storms off, telling the Lord he’ll rue the day that he reneged on his contract. Later, Lord Wearie is summoned to London, and he gives his wife explicit instructions to seal the castle against an incursion, specifically by Long Lankin; however, Lankin had the foresight to install a small window in the castle at a point where it would be overlooked (such chinks in the security of a grand building were often created by medieval builders, mainly as last-resort escape routes, but also for nefarious reasons). Consequently, when the castle staff were bolting the windows, they missed one of them.

We might conclude that Long Lankin’s response to being cheated by the ruling class was a trifle extreme, but can we really say he didn’t have cause? It starts to look like this is a snow-job, to prevent any ignominy falling upon the ‘noble’ classes and to paint Lankin as a mindless serial killer, or some kind of goblin. The song concludes with a coda back to the starting verse, adding a peculiar hint of possible repetition to the narrative:

“Said the Lord unto his Lady as he rode over the moss,

‘Beware of Long Lankin that lives amongst the gorse.

Beware the moss, beware the moor, beware of Long Lankin;

Make sure the doors are bolted well

Lest Lankin should creep in.’”

This might be interpreted as not so much a general warning about marauding home invaders, but also about scheming Lords who might’ve tired of their current spouse and who are looking for a way to dispose of them.

Thus, a disgruntled workman with anger management issues is transformed into a bogeyman of legend and is committed to folklore. The Steeleye Span song is perhaps the best-known and most easily obtained version of the story – available on their album “Commoner’s Crown” (1975) and reinterpreted by them on their ‘best of’ album Present (2002), a selection of fan favourites re-recorded by the band’s current lineup. Martin Carthy, Dave Swarbrick and Alasdair Roberts have all recorded versions as well (along with many others).

Naturally others have toyed with the ideas promoted by this narrative. British author John Banville’s early collection of short stories is entitled Long Lankin (1970) and explores ideas of destructive relationships and the things that can tear people apart – in a relationship sense: it’s not everybody’s cup of tea and it plays heavily off the notions implicit in Lord Wearie’s perfidy. Lindsey Barraclough, on the other hand, has taken the supernatural elements further in her dark fantasy novel Long Lankin (2011), firmly entrenching the titular character as a paranormal entity preying upon a family and its grand estate. And a character called “Lankin” appears as a retainer of an amoral fairy court in the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, Lords and Ladies (1992).

*****

In terms of gaming and especially Call of Cthulhu roleplaying, this premise can be pillaged in all kinds of interesting ways. The poem – or a performance of it by one of the many folk bands out there – can form a handy touchstone for your party of adventurers, as well as being a nice piece of mood-setting music to play in the background. The setting, of course, would have to be one replete with moors and bogs, especially of the peat variety.

First of all, you need to decide if this is a Mythos event taking place; some other type of paranormal happening; or a scubidüberism. Let’s take them one-by-one:

Mythos Event: there are quite a few Mythos entities that conform to a notion of Long Lankin as bogeyman. His defining traits would seem to be paleness; bloodthirstiness; and an ability to creep in to places undetected. Spawns of Abhoth; Crawling Ones; Broodlings of Eihort; Trolls; The Worm That Walks; Worms of the Earth; Xo Tl’mi-Go; the Lesser Old One, Lam; the Roman deity Summanus; any of these may be used to represent the villain from the poem. It might take a little bit of massage, but any of these might be a way of embodying the legendary bogeyman in a real, Mythos-affected reality.

Paranormal Event: Here we can turn to folklore for some inspiration. We know from the song that Lankin and his pal, the False Nurse, were executed together; from years of reading “Hellboy”, we know that a funeral pyre curse issued by a witch at the moment of her death can lead to all kinds of demonic consequences. Given her willingness to catch blood in a basin, the witch may well have been allowed to return to the world as a Vampire; she, in turn, may have resurrected her partner-in-crime, Long Lankin, as a Ghost, a Skeleton, or, better still, a Scarecrow made from hay and moss and gorse (and possibly some of his bones).

Scubidüberism: Obviously, with this kind of tale, there needs to be a reason as to why someone would go to all the trouble of impersonating an entity who died in the distant past, but which now has resurrected itself to continue its depredations. Perhaps Lord Wearie’s castle stands in the road of a new highway development? Or has the land been ear-marked for a new suburban offshoot of the local township? As usual with these takes on the supernatural, the Investigators should immediately ask themselves “cui bono?” How the perpetrators go about faking the existence of Long Lankin – and how far they are willing to push it – is entirely up to the Keeper. Alternatively, perhaps there is simply a serial-killer out there who has decided to adopt the mantle of Long Lankin, becoming his new incarnation…

*****

Horror can be found anywhere (even in the folk music section of your local music store! In fact, especially in the folk music section of your music store, given some of the vicious peccadilloes of that musical form…). Oftentimes, the more benign-seeming a cultural tradition appears, the more sinister can be the things that it codes for – look at the sources for many of the world’s so-called Fairy Stories (and keep in mind that these are meant for children!). If you’re looking for inspiration for your next Call of Cthulhu session, try taking a trip through the nursery…