PJ Holden's Blog

It came from outer space. December 13th, 1795: an “extraordinary stone” arrived in Yorkshire, England. At 28X36 inches, weighing 56 lb, the Wold Newton Meteorite remains the largest ever recorded in Britain. A monument still stands in the field where it struck. 

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In a field in England,  in the East Riding of Yorkshire to be more precise, amid the grass and  nettles there stands a lone curious 24 foot (7.3 metre) red brick  obelisk. Constructed more than 200 years ago, the column has,  appropriately enough, something of a cartoon space-rocket about it. A  plaque set into one face reads

Here On this Spot, Dec. 13th, 1795 Fell from the  Atmoſphere AN EXTRAORDINARY STONE In Breadth 28 inches In Length 36  inches and Whoſe Weight was 56 pounds.

The “EXTRAORDINARY STONE” arrived during a thunderstorm and landed  two fields from Wold Cottage, which was at the time home to a magistrate  named Major Edward Topham. It was Major Topham who would go on to have  the obelisk constructed in 1799. The stone created a hole 3.2 feet (1  metre) in diameter, embedding itself firmly into a layer of chalk  bedrock beneath the soil.

Topham’s shepherd was within 450 feet (137 metres) of the point of  impact. Nearer still was labourer John Shipley, who signed a deposition  published alongside a reprinted letter by Major Topham in the Gentleman’s Magazine for July 1797 stating that

He was within eight or nine yards of the stone when it  fell, saw it distinct seven or eight yards from the ground, and then  strike into the earth, which flew up all about him, and which alarmed  him very much.

The Wold Newton Meteorite was the largest ever observed to fall in  Britain, and is the second largest recorded in Europe (the largest being  the Ensisheim meteorite which in 1492 landed in a wheat field in what  was then Alsace). The great scientist and occultist Sir Issac Newton –  not yet seventy years in his grave when the stone landed in Yorkshire  -had famously stated that

To make way for the regular and lasting motions of the planets and comets, it is necessary to empty the heavens of all matter.

In other words, that there was no room in his model of space for free  floating objects such as meteorites. Having formulated the Law of  Universal Gravitation, Newton’s ideas were generally taken pretty  seriously. Consequently when the Wold Newton Meteorite was put on  display in London in 1797 many took pleasure in deriding it as a fake,  or at best a piece of debris thrown into the air by a volcanic eruption  (which was, needless to say, unlikely in Yorkshire). The then president  of the Royal Society of London, Sir Joseph Banks, was interested,  however. Working with the chemist Edward Howard, Banks compared samples  from the Wold newton meteorite with others and found what he considered  remarkable similarities. When his results were published, though many  were still dubious of admitting exactly what they proved, it did mark  the beginning of a new era of scientific interest in meteorites. English  naturalist, illustrator, and owner of a private museum James Sowerby  acquired the meteorite from Major Topham in 1804. It was sold on to the  British Museum in 1835. The Wold Newton Meteorite, now believed to be  4.6 billion years old, is still on display at the Natural History Museum in London today.

In addition to almost killing a farm labourer and kickstarting the  modern scientific study of meteorites, the “EXTRAORDINARY STONE” which  fell to Earth two centuries ago was also the catalyst for some of the  most inventive and influential crossover fiction of the twentieth  century. If you’re are a fan of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels, Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or even Bryan Talbot’s Grandville, or Showtime’s Penny Dreadful  then you have the Wold Newton Meteorite to thank. All these worlds  filled with characters from different novels, films, and TV series owe a  huge debt (acknowledged by both Newman and Moore, I might add) to the  writing of Philip Jose Farmer.

In Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke  (1972) Philip Jose Farmer presented the life story of Edgar Rice  Burroughs’ Tarzan as if he were a real person. In the book it was  revealed that two carriages, travelling along the road at the time, were  within 20 feet (6 metres) of the Wold Newton Meteorite when it landed.  The people travelling within were exposed to a burst of ionizing  radiation from the stone which caused mutations within themselves and  consequentially their future offspring. Ancestors of Lord Greystoke  (Tarzan), Solomon Kane, Captain Blood, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Harry  Flashman, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty (AKA Captain Nemo),  Phileas Fogg, The Time Traveler from The Time Machine; Allan  Quatermain, A.J. Raffles, Professor Challenger, Richard Hannay, Bulldog  Drummond Fu Manchu, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, The Shadow, Sam Spade, Doc  Savage, his cousin Pat Savage, Monk Mayfair, The Spider, Nero Wolfe, Mr.  Moto, The Avenger, Philip Marlowe, James Bond, Lew Archer, and Travis  McGee, were among those present. According to Farmer then, the strength,  intelligence, and general superhuman qualities of all these pulp heroes  and villains are the result of the impact in that muddy Yorkshire field  in 1797. The connected roster of characters has become known as The  Wold Newton Family.

Wold Newton Universe is a term created by author Win Scott Eckert in the late 1990s. Eckert became fascinated with Farmer’s cross-over fiction after reading Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and went on to collaborate with the man himself on the Wold Newton novel The Evil in Pemberley House which was published shortly after Farmer’s death in 2009. Eckert sums up the concept of the Wold Newton Universe thusly:

It is theorized here that there are many other  characters, heroic and otherwise, who also exist in the Wold Newton  Universe; some, although of course not all, may actually be members of  the Wold Newton mutant family, not described by Mr. Farmer.

All fiction then, may be imagined to co-exist in the same fictional  universe and therefore all fictional characters may be assumed to have  the possibility of encountering each other given a suitable opportunity.  We’re used to the idea in comics perhaps more than we are elsewhere but  Universal Studios had Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, werewolves and  more, all appearing together on the silver screen back in the 1940s. In  2012 we were informed that Prometheus and Blade Runner officially take place in the same fictional future; a future where the aliens from the Alien films already do battle with the predators from the Predator films.  Marvel (now owned by The Walt Disney Company) are pushing their own  shared universe superhero films as hard as they can, and DC (owned by  Time Warner Incorporated) are starting to do likewise. Cross-over  fiction is big business these days but not so much in Wold Newton  apparently.

Wold Cottage, the former residence of Major Edward Topham, is now an award winning Bed & Breakfast  and though their website does mention the meteorite, perhaps  unsurprisingly, it makes no connection between it and Farmer’s work. I  did email to ask whether they were aware of Philip Jose Farmer’s writing  and The Wold Newton Family but have, as yet, received no response.

The full Wold Newton Family Tree (as published in Tarzan Alive) can be viewed at www.pjfarmer.com, as can The Fabulous Family Tree of Doc Savage (as published in Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, 1973).

REFERENCES
http://www.woldcottage.co.uk/meteorite/
http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp2.htm
http://woldnewtonresource.wikia.com/wiki/Wold_Newton_Meteorite
http://web.archive.org/web/20070809201913/http://www.meteoritearticles.com/historyarticle.html
Asteroids, Meteorites, and Comets by Linda T. Elkins-Tanton

[This piece originally published on Daily Grail, February 2015]

The previous colours didn’t sit right with me at all. Now, the risk with a recolour is there will, of course, be people who prefer the original – and if I can beg your indulgence, the original is still here, but so is the recolouring. Which is, if nothing else, at least consistent.

High atop Mount Huaguo in China, a curious stone once stood. From that stone came forth an egg, and out of that egg was born a monkey. Faster than a meteor, strong enough to lift a mountain, wielder of magical staff Ruyi Jingu Bang. The Monkey King – Sun Wukong.

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In the worlds before Monkey, primal chaos reigned. Heaven sought order, but the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown. The four worlds formed again and yet again as endless aeons wheeled and passed. Time and the pure essences of Heaven, the moisture of the Earth, the powers of the sun and the moon all worked upon a certain rock, old as creation, and it became magically fertile. That first egg was named “Thought“. Tathagata Buddha, the Father Buddha, said, “With our thoughts, we make the world.” Elemental forces caused the egg to hatch. From it then came a stone monkey. The nature of Monkey was irrepressible! 

So proclaimed the narrator at the beginning of the first season of the English-dubbed Action Fantasy TV series Monkey (known to many as Monkey Magic, thanks to its ridiculously catchy theme tune of the same name). Monkey was made in Japan, where it was called Saiyūki (“Account of the Journey to the West“) and was first screened on Nippon TV between 1978 and 1979. 

The novel Xī Yóu Jì (“Journey to the West“) on which the TV series Monkey was based, was first published anonymously in China around 1592 and is widely regarded as one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. Journey to the West draws upon ancient themes and sources, including Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, and Confucianist, Taoist, and Buddhist philosophy. Legends of the Monkey King pre-date the novel by many hundreds (possibly even a couple of thousand) years. 

Da Tang Sanzang Qujing Shihua (“The Story of How Tripitaka of the Great Tang Procures the Scriptures“) is the title of a seventeen-chapter novelette, written in the late 13th Century CE (some three centuries before Journey to the West), which is thought to have been created to serve as a prompt for oral storytelling. In the text, our simian hero is given the name Hou Xingzhe (“Monkey Pilgrim”), but his origins and adventures are easily recognisable as those of the Monkey King. [1]

Hanuman, the Indian Monkey God, has roots which stretch back at least four thousand years; mentioned as the “divine monkey” in the Vedic Rigveda, written between 1500 and 1200 BCE. It is believed by many that stories and images of Hanuman travelled East from India to China along with Buddist pilgrims and that tales of Monkey King drew upon these influences. 

In the Chu kingdom (700 – 223 B.C.E.), which encompassed the central Yangtze River Basin, the people revered gibbon monkeys, especially white ones. Robert van Gulik explains that the Chu kingdom was an ancient center of mystical beliefs and witchcraft out of which Taoism evolved. Chu folk culture considered the animal world on a par with human society and believed that some animals were rich in qi, or the mystical power of the cosmos. Taoism raised the status and power of the gibbon, which was regarded as one of the animals with the expert knowledge in inhaling qi, thereby acquiring occult powers. Among the many magical abilities credited to these monkeys is the ability to assume human shape and prolong their life several hundred years. [2] 

The above quote is taken from a 1998 work by Hera S. Walker entitled Indigenous or Foreign? A Look at the Origins of the Monkey Hero Sun Wukong, demonstrating that mystical, magical monkeys have been around in Chinese myth for a long, long time. 

REFERENCES

[1] https://journeytothewestresearch.com/2016/10/16/the-literary-precursor-of-journey-to-the-west/ 

[2] http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp081_monkey_sun_wukong.pdf 

Petrified. A maiden, raped in the Temple of Athena by the God Poseidon. Cursed by the Goddess as if the crime were hers. You cannot look her in the eye. Medusa. Serpent-haired terror. Even after death, to look upon that face was enough to turn any into stone.

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Great Perseus then: With me you shall prevail, 

Worth the relation, to relate a tale. 

Medusa once had charms; to gain her love 

A rival crowd of envious lovers strove. 

They, who have seen her, own, they ne’er did trace 

More moving features in a sweeter face. 

Yet above all, her length of hair, they own, 

In golden ringlets wav’d, and graceful shone. 

Her Neptune saw, and with such beauties fir’d, 

Resolv’d to compass, what his soul desir’d. 

In chaste Minerva’s fane, he, lustful, stay’d, 

And seiz’d, and rifled the young, blushing maid. 

The bashful Goddess turn’d her eyes away, 

Nor durst such bold impurity survey; 

But on the ravish’d virgin vengeance takes, 

Her shining hair is chang’d to hissing snakes. 

These in her Aegis Pallas joys to bear, 

The hissing snakes her foes more sure ensnare, 

Than they did lovers once, when shining hair. 

The above is Ovid’s account of how Medusa came to be transformed into a serpent-haired creature we all know today, taken from his Metamorphoses, Book the Fourth. In Ovid’s version (first published in 8 CE), it is the new, Roman God Neptune who attacks the young maiden, rather than his older Greek equivalent Posideon, and the Goddess Minerva rather than Athena who takes it upon herself to curse the victim, rather than the perpetrator. 

Medusa (meaning “guardian” or “protectress“) was one of three siblings; the Gorgons, whose name translates as “grim” or “dreadful“. Daughters of the primordial sea God and Goddess, Phorcys and Ceto, the sisters were born in the caverns beneath Mount Olympus. In the oldest legends the Gorgons were monstrous from birth — chimeric creatures with wings, boars tusks, bronze clawed hands, and yes, snakes for hair — but, as the myth evolved, so did the relationship between the sisters.  

Medusa was the youngest of the three, Euryale (whose name meant “far-roaming“) was the middle sister, and Stheno (whose name meant “forceful“) the eldest. Not only was Medusa the last to be born, but she was also born mortal, which only made her sisters all the more protective of her. Medusa having been raped by the Sea God, and then cursed by the Goddess of Wisdom and Weaving, her sisters naturally stood up for her, and so they too were cursed and transformed. Snakes for hair, and eyes which would turn any who looked into them to stone. 

Perseus, son of Zeus, was tricked into promising to bring back the head of Medusa as a gift for King Polydectes, ruler of the island of Seriphos, who wished to wed his mother. Aided by the Goddess Athena (evidently still not yet satisfied with the level of suffering she had caused Medusa and her sisters), and his father,  Perseus set out on an epic quest to behead the youngest Gorgon. Using a highly polished shield as a mirror, Perseus was able to look up Medusa without turning to stone. Like a coward, he struck while she slept. From the body of the Gorgon sprang forth Pegasus (“he who sprang“) and Chrysaor (“sword of gold“) – chimeric children, and proof of Posiedon’s rape of Medusa. 

Hearing of their sister’s murder, Euryale and Stheno pursued her killer, but Perseus escaped their wrath using a magical helmet of invisibility. Medusa’s eyes retained their petrifying power even after death, and Perseus wielded her severed head as a weapon, turning all manner of beings to stone. Not least King Polydectes, who in Perseus’ absence had raped his mother. 

I’ve made a couple of tentative steps in putting the fokllore thursday strips on Redbubble, here:  https://www.redbubble.com/people/pjholden/

As time wears on I’ll be putting them ALL on, but if you have any favourites let me know.

They’ll stay on redbubble well… probably forever but I’ll be looking for other venues for getting prints done so if redbubble doesn’t suit you, let me know where does – or, if you have a specific strip you love that you want available on redbubble and if it’s not there I’ll prioritise adding it!

Right now, I’ve uploaded the Boudicca strip (a very early popular strip) the recent Hensbane (because I thought it was kind of pretty), Vrillon (which made me laugh) and today’s strip of Bakekujira.

UK playground food folklore:

Green crisps are poisonous.

Eat apple or orange pips, and a tree will start to grow inside you.

Blue Smarties make you hyperactive.

Swallow gum and it will stay in your guts for two months, maybe even wrapping itself around an organ.

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Everyone knows it’s true. Passed down from class to class, from year to year; the cold hard facts about the perils of what lurks in your lunchbox, or what you’ve managed to sneak into your pockets for playtime. 

Green crisps are poisonous, eat them and you will die! Or, at least, end up with a belly-ache.

The reason some crisps end up with a green edge isn’t mold or fungus, it’s actually because the potato which they’ve been made out of hasn’t been properly “earthed up”. Parts of the spud exposed to sunlight as they grow turn green because of chlorophyll in the plant. Chlorophyll can contain a chemical for solanine, which is the same toxin produced by deadly nightshade, BUT you would have to eat a whole family pack of entirely green crisps before you felt any real ill effects. 

Spit out the pips when you’re eating an apple or orange, or else you’ll end up with a tree growing inside you.

Obviously, you won’t, but it is worth noting that there have been cases where people have been found to have fir trees and peas growing in their lungs! Apple seeds, if chewed produce (a tiny amount of) hydrogen cyanide, which starts to become risky if you eat an awful lot of them. We’re talking like five or more apple’s worth, consumed in a single sitting for a child though. Orange pips are harmless and actually pretty good for you, but if you chew them they taste very, very bitter. 

Blue Smarties were banned for a time because they contained a colouring agent which was found to cause hyperactivity in children who ate them. 

Blue Smarties (first introduced in 1988) disappeared from packs between early 2006 until mid-2008, being replaced with white ones. Why? Because in 2006 manufacturer Nestlé decided to remove all artificial colouring from the sweets. The problem was, even though they found a way to replicate all the other colours using natural alternatives, they couldn’t get the blue right. They cracked it in 2008 though, and since then blue Smarties get their colour from a seaweed called Spirulina. Before 2006, blue Smarties were coloured with a synthetic dye called Brilliant Blue FCF (also known as E133) which, although not proven to cause hyperactivity, does have the capacity for inducing allergic reactions in some people, especially asthmatics. 

Swallow chewing-gum or bubble-gum, and it will sit in your stomach or intestines for weeks, months, maybe even years. Even worse, the sticky, stretchy stuff might just wrap itself around some of your internal organs while it’s in there.

Why shouldn’t you swallow gum? Because it’s made to be chewed over and over and to not break down in the process of chewing. So, it’s a choking hazard. Obviously. Gum is also nigh-on impossible to digest, but that doesn’t mean it will just sit in your stomach or guts indefinitely. Much like sweetcorn, gum (in most cases) will make an all but intact reappearance next time the consumer visits the toilet. That said, swallow a lot of gum over a long period, and you are (understandably) going to get a bit clogged up…

Folklore is about stories told and re-told, exaggerated, embellished, and improved upon by generation after generation but, as the above illustrates, there is always a kernel of truth in even the simplest and silliest sounding tale. 

Jack in the Green – the Green Man personified via a disguise of ivy and leaves – features in many folklore festivals across the UK. No Jack’ is more striking though than the floral Garland King, who rides a shire-horse into the village of Castleton, Derbyshire.

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May is an important month in the British folklore calendar, falling  as it does midway between spring equinox and summer solstice. It is the  month when the rising sap reaches its culmination; buds become blooms,  lambs are in the field, and chicks are in the nest. The Old English name  for the month was Þrimilci-mōnaþ (“month of three milkings”)  while the modern name is thought by some to derive from the  pre-Christian goddess Maia to whom a pregnant sow would be ritually  sacrificed on the first of the month. Associations with fertility and  with plenty are abundantly clear in both cases.

Although many surviving customs such as the crowning of May Queens  (young women picked for their beauty and virtue to act as May  personified for the day), dancing around the Maypole (a relic of  pre-historic dendrolatry, or phallic pagan fertility symbol, depending  on who you ask/believe), and so on, chiefly take place on May Day there  are many varied traditions spread throughout the month.

Jack in the Green makes an appearance in many May festivals. Although the custom of dressing “Jack” in leaves and flowers, set into a large wicker frame which he wears seems to date from the 18th century, many folklorists have argued for more ancient origins.

In Castleton, Derbyshire (www.castleton.co.uk) May the 29th is Garland King  Day. The Garland King rides a cart-horse wearing a large wooden frame  completely covered in flowers and greenery so that only his legs are  visible. At the apex of the King’s floral finery is fixed a posy of  especially fine flowers and this is known as the Queen. Following the  King is a second Queen, on horseback like himself. Up until 1956 the  Queen (or ‘the Woman’ as she was then) was always a man in female dress.  The Garland King leads a procession which makes its way through the  village, via the six public houses (naturally), into the churchyard.  There the great garland is hoisted up on ropes to the top of the church  tower, and the Queen posy is laid at the foot of the village War  Memorial. 

This is the strip that started it all. I’d been casting around for something to draw between work, and I saw a tweet John had posted about a Church close to him, and it was such a poetic little tweet it felt like I could adapt it in to comic form without doing too much heavy lifting. 

It was so much fun to just take the tweet, split it up and visualise it. I’m not sure how John would have written it as a script, but certainly this is how I felt it would work. 

After I did that, and it took very little time, I asked John if he’d like to do some more, and we talked about a few options (him writing one tweet length short stories, was one idea) but then I think John suggested the folklore thursday that he was already tweeting about, and LO! like a bolt from the blue, that seemed like the obvious answer. I’d get to write and draw a new comic every week, playing with the form as best as I was able, sometimes pushing the story telling and somethings just illustrating something. I think I did the first one colour and I’d planned on going b&w but it didn’t take too much effort to go colour on every single story. (And even limiting the colour became a fun visual play thing).

I hope, once we’re a full year into the whole strip-per-week we can look for a publisher (or possibly go kickstarter).

My ideal is a large format, hardback with a strip per page, and on the opposite side the tweet and a short essay by John on each subject. Giving us a gorgeous big coffee table style book, perfect for folklore lovers.

Anyway, that’s the hope. 

Normal service should resume next week. Stay safe everyone! (And stay in doors as best as you’re able!)

No folklore thursday this week From me. We lost my father-in-law today. He’d been seriously ill for over a year (and had spent much of it in hospital). He went home and eventually back in to hospital a week Or so ago. original complain was pancreatitis and then stomach problems and then, finally, we discovered he also had advanced lung cancer.

Nothing coved-19 related, but it did rob us of some Of the dignity of visiting him in hospital, and meant his grandkids couldn’t see him in those final days.

My kids are heartbroken, as is my wife.

I never did ask him If I could marry his daughter (though by that stage we’d been living together 8-9 years already) and he was fond of mentioning that fact.

Anyway, I wrote and drew this comic strip about my mum, who I lost 16 years ago (15 at the time of drawing the strip). Enough people have commented about this strip and how it resonates with them that I think it’s worth posting up here.

Annette’s dad gave her away at the wedding, I’m pretty sure it was one of the best days of his life,