Bran Mak Morn: The Poems

by Frank Coffman

(To start, Mr. Coffman focuses on two short poems. “The Drums of Pictdom” first appeared in the “Foreword” of the Dell paperback, Bran Mak Morn, 1969 and as “Poem (Previously published as “The Drums of Pictdom”) in Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, Wandering Star, 2001 and Ballantine (Del Rey), 2005. “The Song of Bran” is an epigraph for the story, “Kings of the Night” which first appeared in Weird Tales, November 1930.)

Thoughts on Robert E. Howard’s Two Epigraphs,
“The Drums of Pictdom” and “The Song of Bran”

Robert E. Howard’s two epigraphs, “The Drums of Pictdom” and “The Song of Bran” are both examples of his use of the literary ballad form (also known as the “Common Measure” in hymnals). The quatrains, alternating 4-3-4-3 accented syllables display both the “Standard Ballad” rhyme scheme of ABCB in the former and the more hymn-like ABAB in the latter. As is typical of Howardian ballads, the lines are in regularized iambic-anapestic meter, rather than in the pure accentuals of the folk ballad.

As far as content is concerned, it seems to me that “The Drums of Pictdom” is flawed by the seeming suggestion that the “Drums of Pictdom [sounding]” “in [the speaker’s] heart” are a deterrent to daily work, “toil,” and “sweat.” If the speaker could or would answer the call of the drums, would “toil” and “sweat” somehow be obviated? The verse is mechanically polished, but logically lacking.

(To my mind, “The Drums of Pictdom” is REH’s own feelings about the “Picts.” I think he really did obsess about a mysterious people (the first settlers of the British Isles) who he called the Picts. Picts occur in most of REH’s character driven series: Kull, Conan, Bran Mak Morn, and REH’s Cthulhu Mythos stories. The drums of Pictdom were a real thing that REH had to pound out on his typewriter! It really was (in a good way) an obsession.)

“The Song of Bran” is by far the superior poem of the two: mechanically, musically, and meaningfully. “The Caesar” captures the fact that this is but one of many who have or who will rule the great empire. “Lolled” is an excellent word choice suggesting the decadence of the emperor—and, perhaps by extension, the decaying of the empire. The many rolling long O sounds in the opening lines, along with the ringing consonances on R and N (“ivoRy,” “thRoNe,” “iRoN”) make fine music (being one of the essential things in which poetic language surpasses the prosaic). The hard K sounds of “breaK” and “King” ring forcefully, like the clash of swords. The Romans will meet “a race” heretofore unnamed in a land heretofore unknown. This will eventually lead to the building of a great wall to keep that “race” safely well to the North.

(I find it interesting that REH refers to the Picts (in this instance) as a “race without a name.” History now tells us that “Picts” was a name (Latin: Picti) that the Romans gave to the Celtic tribes of Scotland that painted themselves blue and carved intricate symbols into the large stones throughout their landscape. If REH’s conception of a short misshapen race in the British Isles has any basis in fact, they truly are “without a name” other than possibly “fairy” or “the little people.”)

A Discussion of Robert E. Howard’s Poem “A Song of the Race”

(“A Song of the Race” was first published in Bran Mak Morn, Dell, 1969. It has been reprinted several times.)

With Robert E. Howard’s poem “A Song of the Race,” we have certainly the most important of the poems relevant to Bran Mak Morn and Howard’s interpretation of the Picts. The poem is interesting in that it is a frame story—a story within a story— Bran Mak Morn requests that a court singer relate “ a song of the race,” as the poem’s title indicates. The story thereafter related by the girl singer, who has “eyes as dark as the seas of night” and “lips as red as the setting sun” (typical, of course, of Howard’s inclusion of the beautiful damsel in most of his fictional work) is the tale within the third-person outer frame of the request for the story. The outside narrator’s voice continues through the first three stanzas of the poem, with the description of the girl in stanza two and the description of the amazing harp upon which she plays in stanza three. Meanwhile, Bran awaits the tale seated on “the throne of kings.” We also find that it is sunset at the time of the request for the song. This may or may not be significant, but the symbol of sunset is almost always archetypally important, with its obvious meaning of an ending, a finality, at least a transition.

This technique of the frame narrative is reminiscent, it seems to me, of Homer’s use of the technique in The Odyssey, Book 6, in which Nausicaä, daughter of King Alcinous of Phaecia, and her handmaidens, discover the shipwrecked Odysseus stranded on their shores. Much of The Odyssey is then related in the first person by Odysseus himself, who is asked by Alcinous, at a banquet in Odysseus’ honor, to relate his own story. The technique of the frame narrative is nowise new, but Howard uses it to good effect in this poem.

The girl begins the story in stanza four, presenting Howard’s interpretation of the Picts as the “first of the race of men,” having come “far from unknown lands,” and clearly from the West where “the seas burn red with a sunset flame.” This mystical and completely un-historic view of the Picts is Howard’s invention. Certainly, in Howard’s day, the Picts were a decided mystery as far as historians were concerned. Their origin, their language, and their customs, even to this day, remain somewhat clouded in uncertainty. But it is almost certainly the case that they share ethnicity and, perhaps, national relationships with other tribes and groups that gravitated to what is now Scotland.

In stanza five, the girl maintains that the Picts are both “first and last of the race.” A Gilded Age is passed, and she references the deaths of both Mu and Atlantis— fabled civilizations from both the Pacific and the Atlantic, with the possible suggestion that the Picts have derived from either or both, or that they are, at least, contemporaneous with those lost worlds.

Stanza six returns to the third person frame with Bran listening attentively and still sitting on “the throne of kings.” Also, the fact that it is sunset is reinforced, as “the seas burn red with the sunset flame.” [Tangentially here, it must be noted that Howard uses the archaic form of the past tense of to sit (the word “sate”) in all but his first stanza use of the normal “sat.” Likely, Howard is attempting to add formality and importance to the poem through the use of an archaism. This is not an unusual technique in an attempt to add formality to a story, but it might be seen as a flaw that the archaic version is not used consistently. Why use “sat” in the first stanza? For that matter, the use of the archaic form could easily be seen as “overwriting,” perhaps even distracting and detracting from the force of the poem.]

In stanza seven the singer recommences her tale, shifting to “the tale the ancients tell, promised of yore by the god of the moon.” She reinforces the notion that the Picts are both first and last of men and that even “when the world shall crumble,” the Picts will be last. Transitioning into stanzas eight through ten, the further prophecy is made that a man of the race, quite possibly referencing Bran Mak Morn himself, will be that last man to observe the predicted final cataclysm. [Another tangent here is the notice that the deity of the moon is a God and not a goddess. This varies from almost all Indo-European mythologies in which a goddess of the moon is the norm. Whether this shift to a male deity has any significance is a possible matter of conjecture, discussion, and debate.]

With the final two stanzas the singer has finished her tale; the song is done. The narrative shifts back to the third person frame, and we have a blend of narration and description of the coming of night, befitting the theme of the end, as likely the sunset had predicted. As always with Howard, the poem is lush with imagery and descriptive detail. While it is only conjecture, I think it interesting that the poem is done in 12 stanzas. Homer’s two epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, are each done in 24 “books” (sections or chapters we might say). While we will never know for certain, it is possible that this micro-epic by Howard, perhaps reflective of the first-person narration of Odysseus as a frame story, was rounded into 12 stanzas, half the number of the larger works.

Technically, the poem is written in what are formally known as “Sicilian Quatrains” each stanza rhyming alternately XYXY. It is composed in Howard’s typical blend of iambic and anapestic meters, and the accent count each line is four, thus making the meter of the poem iambic–anapestic tetrameter. It could also be considered a “long-line literary ballad” due to the four-beat lines and the rhyme pattern. As is always the case with Howard’s verse, the poet makes fine use of sound effects. The poem is rich in alliteration and other phonic effects. As for the alliterative patterns, many lines contain two or more words beginning with the same consonant sounds. Both assonance and consonance are also used in the poem, with the noticeable repetition of vowel sounds in proximity words and both internal and terminal consonant sounds often noticeably repeated.

“A Song of the Race” is Howard’s most important verse narrative regarding the character of Bran Mak Morn and his people, the Picts.

A Review of Robert E. Howard’s Poem, “The Bell of Morni”

(“The Bell of Morni” was published in Bran Mak Morn: The Last King, Wandering Star, 2001 and Ballantine Books (Del Rey), 2005 for the first time. It is listed in the table of contents as “Poem – Previously Unpublished.”)

Robert E. Howard’s Bran Mak Morn poem, usually titled “The Bell of Morni,” is typical of his verse in that it is an imitation of the Standard/Folk Ballad of tradition in form, yet atypical in that it is a poem of, primarily, description, rather than a condensed narrative.

Also, though Howard uses the customary 4-3-4-3 accent pattern and ABCB rhyme scheme, his measuring of lines differs from the folk ballad in that he is clearly using modern accentual-syllabics, rather than the medieval patternings of strictly accentual verse. The lines flow in polished iambic-anapestic measures, thus forcing an estimation of the poem as a “literary ballad,” despite its compliance with the rhyme pattern and accent-counting of the folk form.

As described, the bell is a thing to dread, created by no human hands, long-hidden and silent “for a thousand years…!” The dead await its peeling, and will revive, called “into the day” when that occurs. It is “laden with dooms,” awaiting “the Hand that shall wake its voice.…”

All in all, the poem achieves a sense of awe and dread of the ringing of the bell—this harbinger of doom. The imagery is stark and dreadful, befitting the subject.
There are a couple “nods,” it seems to me, detracting from its descriptive perfection and well-wrought atmospheric development. One of these might simply be in the common, perhaps, “mistitling” of the poem. Is it “the bell of THE Morni” (as in the text of the poem), or simply “the bell of Morni?” Otherwise, the ungrammatical use of “Await FOR” rather than simply “Await its sullen boom” is certainly non-standard [“Wait FOR” would work].

The other disparity is the use of capital-G “God” (seemingly a Judeo-Christian element in an otherwise pagan poem) about a bell cast in “no earthly fire” and not made by mortals. We also have the “grinning dwarves” which might throw a Norse-mythic wrench into the machinery of a poem allegedly related to Pictdom. Howard, it seems to me, is often “guilty” (if we can call it that) of this anamythic blending or confusion of sources.

All in all, a finely wrought example of Howard’s virtuosity with formal verse, with which he excels Lovecraft and most other Weird Tales and “pulpster” poets—with the exception of Clark Ashton Smith. But quite remarkable for one of such a young age—given that the great majority of his verse is composed prior to his 25th year.

(This covers all the Bran Mak Morn related poetry except for the poetry contained in “Men of the Shadows.” Although that poetry should be examined in its own right someday, I will have to wait until Frank decides to take a poke at it. That story was reviewed as a whole (without commentary on the poetry) in a previous blogpost and my comments on “Song of the Race” are here.)

Frank Coffman is about to release his fourth large poetry collection: WHAT THE NIGHT BRINGS. His third collection, ECLIPSE OF THE MOON, has been nominated for The Elgin Award from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association. Check out Mind’s Eye Publications: mindseyepublications.com