Ron Curran ed. The Weird Gathering and Other Tales

....yeah' was going to post the rest of the contents, but had lost the will to live by that point...Thanks for tidying up for me!

Much crossover with Curran's earlier Witches, Wraiths and Warlocks (1971). A number of terrific, gory Gothic horrors among the selection, some containing 'supernatural' elements. Have skipped those stories told in verse.

Volney E. Howard - The Midnight Voyage of the Seagull: A Tradition of Salem: (Godey's Lady's Book, July 1842). To the astonishment and disgust of Sarah, his beloved daughter, Mr. Carew returns from a business trip in Boston with a new wife. Sarah bemoans her woes to fiance Dr. Horace Harden. The woman is French, and, as if that were not bad enough, everyone seems to think she's young, elegant and charming. Only Sarah sees her for what she is - an evil old witch!

Dr. Harden is introduced to the second Mrs Carew to find her just as wonderful as everyone - bar Sarah - says she is. This is too much for his sweetheart, who grows despondent, takes ill and is fast lost to idiocy!

Comes the day Dr. Harden tends a patient in terrible distress. Joe, the cabin boy aboard Mr. Carew's brig, The Seagull, confides that every Friday night, Mrs. Carew secretly boards the ship with a company of witches in cat guise, and force him to sail for a strange island to gather marsh-rosemary. Before the first such voyage, Mrs. Carew ordered Joe to throw the ship's Bible overboard. She threatens him with a curse should he ever betray their secret.

The very next Friday, Dr. Harden, disguised as the cabin boy, but with a toothache so he can cover his face, stows away aboard The Seagull. He overhears Mrs. Carew scheming with her hag of a mother. She plans to do away with her husband, inherit his everything and take Harden himself as her lover! The old baggage agrees to prepare a love philtre should her daughter's charms fail. As for Sarah, she is not, after all, a witless cretin. The evil stepmother has been drugging and beating the girl from day one!

Horden raises the alarm, and Mrs Carew and her mother are taken into custody, but neither live to face trial ...

Story is set some time before the Witch trials, and author wonders if perhaps it may have influenced the villagers thoughts and deeds over 1692-3.

Anon - The Witch: (Atkinson's Casket, 1827). Stoke Regis, during reign of James I. When Alice Thornwald, a doting young mother is rude to "matronly recluse" Rebecca Swarf, the old woman curses her that she will be the instrument of the child's death. So it proves when Alice is hung for taking a knife to the infant in its cradle. Eden Thornwald tells what he knows to the rector, who has Swarf arrested as a witch. Confessing all, she is burnt at the stake.

Frederick Gottschalck - The Witch Dance On The Brocken: (Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Nov. 1840). Short, atmospheric eyewitness account of a Witch's revel in the Hartz Mountains with the Devil himself fulfilling barbecue duties.

Anon - The Murderess: (Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1838). The author is at pains to insist he bears the sex no malice, but as a lawyer he regards it as proven fact that a woman once fallen from the righteous path is beyond rehabilitation. As he puts it; "once chained to crime and her fetters are riveted for life." He cites as evidence the case of a young Mary Stewart, brought before the court on a charge of infanticide. Mary's dignified manner and neat mourning attire impressed the sympathies of all - surely she could not have deliberately dashed her baby's brains against the wall prior to burying it on the common? The jury agree and return a verdict of "not guilty." After the trial, Mary hands the lawyer a document only to be opened on her death, which, as it transpires is only a year later, The lawyer breaks the seal on Mary's dramatic confession, the conclusion of which is particularly, gloriously horrible.

Thanks so much, Kev, for providing a much-needed laugh with the phrase Lady Ann Rankles (née Runt)--good stuff.

Those stories sound interesting, provided one can get past the sometimes stodgy "slick" mag style of the mid to late 19th cent.

cheers, Steve

I've found each of the above far easier and satisfying reads than much of the up itself wank packaged as "dark fantasy" from 'nineties through to present day. If there had been such a thing as an early nineteenth century Pan Book of Horror equivalent, the commendably unflinching likes of The Twin-Sisters, The Murderess and Female Revenge would surely have been in there, while The Midnight Voyage of the Seagull still impresses as a lively witchcraft novella. Curran's achievement in bringing so much rare material back into the light is especially impressive when you take into account he and those like him had to put in some real spadework, hunting down copies of rare publications in newspaper libraries & Co. No sitting in front of a screen and searching the word "ghost" in digitised newspaper archives for the 'seventies anthologist.

Anon - The Nymph of the Waters: (New York Mirror & Ladies Literary Gazette, 29 July 1826). An Undine variation. A siren of the Rhine is both blamed for distracting sailors so their ships perish on the rocks, and praised for showing young fishermen where best to cast their nets. Count Palatine vows to bring the nymph before the Palace and establish once and for all whether she be evil-doing witch or friend of sea-faring folk. Having no wish to leave the river, our heroine calls upon Neptune to save her. The Sea King duly intervenes on the nymph's behalf, and one of the Count's men makes fatal mistake of attempting to down her with a crossbow bolt.

Anon [Eliza Buckminster Lee] - Miriam Power: (Atkinson's Casket, March 1838, via Sketches of a New England Village in the Last Century, 1838). On the word of a vengeful, snake-eyed native American, Miriam, eighteen, a beautiful awful caring for an epileptic little brother, is brought before the court at Salem and charged with witchcraft. Will the usual bigotry and stupidity prevail? Yes, and no. Miriam is condemned to death, essentially for being a caring nurse, but there's always some do-gooder busy-body has to spoil it for everyone.

Anon - Aunt Rache: (Godey's Lady's Book, March 1833). Old Rachel is the storm prophetess of Plymouth Bay, New England. Sailors tip her a small sum to forecast tomorrow's weather before they set sail. She has never been known to err in her predictions. One day she warns one of her townsmen, John Burgis, the deacon's son not to throw in his lot with a rum bunch of "moon-cursers" and wreckers whose victims include her own husband. Furious, one of their number torch her hut that same night, signing his own death warrant.