Neil Gaiman on Kazuo Ishiguro's Buried Giant

Illustration by Peter Sis
NYT

To my surprise - because I think of him as writer, not as literary critic - Neil Gaiman has reviewed Kazuo Ishiguro's new novel, The Buried Giant, and he did so in the New York Times (February 25, 2015). For now, I'm more interested in what Gaiman says about writing than about Ishiguro's story, so I'll focus on Gaiman's thoughts on writing:

Fantasy is a tool of the storyteller. It is a way of talking about things that are not, and cannot be, literally true. It is a way of making our metaphors concrete, and it shades into myth in one direction, allegory in another. Once, many years ago, a French translator decided that my novel "Stardust" was an allegory, based on and around John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim’s Progress" (it wasn't), and somewhat loosely translated the book with footnotes to that effect. This has left me a little shy of talking about allegory, and very shy of ever mentioning "The Pilgrim's Progress."

Perhaps I can use some of Gaiman's insights on fantasy's relation to myth and allegory the next time I'm invited to an international conference on storytelling. I also like his remark about fantasy being "a way of making our metaphors concrete," a point particularly worth some exploration and explication. As an aside concerning Bunyan's famous allegory, Pilgrim's Progress, allow me to note that I recently helped my wife translate a Korean fantasy story by the nationalist Korean writer Sin Chae-ho (1880-1936), titled Dream Sky (1916), and I described Sin's story - set in 1907 (three years before Japan colonized Korea) - as follows:

Sin Chae-ho's nationalist novella Dream Sky, written in 1916, reads like a cross between The Apocalypse of St. John and Pilgrim's Progress. The first several lines depict the protagonist Hannom seeing a divine figure revealed in the heavens who announces the necessity of struggling for national survival. Battles in the sky follow and reflect battles on earth. Hannom, however, is called on not merely to observe and record, but also to join in a celestial battle against Japanese invaders. Yet, he encounters various tests and temptations along the way that distract him from his goal of reaching the battle, and that teach him of his own weaknesses and shortcomings. (Sin Chae-ho, Dream Sky, 1916, pages 3-4)

I think I had more cause to connect Sin's story to Bunyan's (also to St. John's), though perhaps I was making an error of judgement similar to that of the French translator. But back to Gaiman on writing:

Kazuo Ishiguro is a remarkable novelist, both for the quality of his work - because his novels share a careful, precise approach to language and to character - and because he does not ever write the same novel, or even the same type of novel, twice. In "The Buried Giant," his seventh and latest, he begins with clear, unhurried, unfussy language to describe the England of some 1,500 years ago, in a novel as well crafted as it is odd.

The words "careful, precise approach to language" and "clear, unhurried, unfussy language" sound like praise to my ears. Gaiman goes on to talk about the book itself, but in a way that reveals still more about his own views on writing:

"The Buried Giant" is a melancholy book, and the mist that breathes through it is a melancholic mist. The narrative tone is dreamlike and measured. There are adventures, sword fights, betrayals, armies, cunning stratagems and monsters killed, but these things are told distantly, without the book's pulse ever beating faster. They are described unflinchingly, precisely, sometimes poetically. Enemies are slain, but the deaths are never triumphant. A culmination of a planned trap for a troop of soldiers, worthy of a whodunit, is described in retrospect, once we already know what must have happened. Stories drift toward us in the narrative like figures in the mist, and then are gone. The excitements that the book would deliver were this a more formulaic or crowd-pleasing novel are, here, when they appear, not exciting, perhaps because they would be young people's adventures, and this is, at its heart, a book about two [old] people who are now past all adventure . . . . Fantasy and historical fiction and myth here run together with the Matter of Britain, in a novel that's easy to admire, to respect and to enjoy, but difficult to love. Still, "The Buried Giant" does what important books do: It remains in the mind long after it has been read, refusing to leave, forcing one to turn it over and over. On a second reading, and on a third, its characters and events and motives are easier to understand, but even so, it guards its secrets and its world close.

Ishiguro is not afraid to tackle huge, personal themes, nor to use myths, history and the fantastic as the tools to do it. "The Buried Giant" is an exceptional novel, and I suspect my inability to fall in love with it, much as I wanted to, came from my conviction that there was an allegory waiting like an ogre in the mist, telling us that no matter how well we love, no matter how deeply, we will always be fallible and human . . .

That expression "Matter of Britain" reveals that Gaiman is familiar with scholarly discourse on medieval Arthurian romance writing, which further tells me that I ought not be surprised that he would be chosen to review this book by Ishiguro. Gaiman admires Ishiguro's story, but worries that this fantasy novel might hide an allegory, which makes the story unlovable, at least for Gaiman. I seem to recall that Gaiman loved the Narnia stories as a child, but realized - as he grew older - that the stories were Christian allegory, which bothered him for the pretense at being one thing but actually being another, a kind of deception, to his mind. Or am I thinking of a character in a Gaiman story? Speaking of Gaiman's writing, he has a new book out, the story collection Trigger Warning.

I should note that my own story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, borrows a Shoggath's Old Peculiar from Gaiman - and is not an allegory!

Neil Gaiman: That 'Oceanic' Feeling . . .

Neil Gaiman
He's got the whole world
in his hands . . .
Photo by Carolyn Cole
L. A. Times

A few years ago, I got onto a Neil Gaiman kick and read several works -- I even went so far as to 'borrow' his Shoggoth's Old Peculiar as the tempting drink in my Bottomless Bottle of Beer novella -- so when I happened across a review of his most recent story, I grew interested again:

On June 18, Gaiman's new novel, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" (William Morrow: 192 pp., $25.99), arrives. A dark fairy tale about a bookish 7-year-old boy growing up in England with distracted parents and a neighbor who remembers the big bang, it's the author's first book for adults since his bestselling 2005 fantasy "Anansi Boys." (Rebecca Keegan, "Getting to know Neil Gaiman," Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2013)

Big Bang, eh? Must be science fiction. Or pornography! I better read it to find out! I didn't read Anansi Boys, I stopped spending money when I saw how expensive his graphic Sandman was! But I might order this recent novel. I liked his Graveyard Book. He seems, by the way, a man generous with his time:

Gaiman is remarkably accessible to his audience, quickly replying to their tweets and chronicling his thoughts in an online diary.

I can vouch for this. When I read The Graveyard Book, I grew curious about the source of the "nobody owns" poem and did a lot of searching online for that. I even emailed Gaiman's agent for words possibly from the horse's mouth. Gaiman himself replied:

The first reference I found to it was in a book on Death Customs in England, which referred to it as a trad nursery rhyme and had it in the form I listed in the book.

When we were copyediting, we wondered about the grammer on who and whom and that, and then I found myself spending a week on the internet doing exactly the journey you did, and coming to similar conclusions. But liking the version I'd read first the best, and liking the idea that it was a nursery rhyme the best -- and really not knowing if the poem was echoing something older or not. So I left it...

That was unexpected, quite generous, in fact. Anyway -- to change horses in 'mistdream'-- about his recent Ocean book:

Gaiman began the novel as a short story to explain himself to his new wife, musician Amanda Palmer, who was away recording an album. But as he wrote, the story took on a life of its own.

Not so very autobiographical, but neither is autobiography sometimes:

"It's not autobiographical, but the lead character is very much me age 7, in the geographical landscape that I grew up in," Gaiman said. "It's about memory and about family and magic, and it gets very scary and weird."

I suppose that says some autobiographical thing about the man that Ms. Palmer will learn to appreciate:

"I'd get up every day and go, 'Well, it's got to be finished by the end of the week, hasn't it?' And then the end of the week would happen and I was going, 'Well, it's not a short story, it's obviously a novelette,' and then I thought, 'Well, it's not a novelette, it must be a novella,' and I did a word count and I went, 'Bloody hell, this thing's 56,000 words, that's a novel. Not a long novel, but it's a novel.'"

That's sort of how my novella got written, just kept growing . . .

Dario Rivarossa: "BBB: Drinking Culture"

Drinking Culture

Dario Rivarossa

My Italian friend Dario Rivarossa, artist and all-around Renaissance man, is still posting his idiosyncratic images inspired by my story about a bottomless bottle of beer -- images that regular readers have seen posted here before, but not with the accompanying words from my story, at least, I think not. The passage below has the Naif reading a review of a play that he doesn't realize is partly about his own life, in its consequences, anyway:

I turned to the entertainment pages . . . and noticed a review of some new play. That one caught my eye because of the weird title: The Call of Cthulhu. . . . Baffled, I read on, learning much about Cthulhu but nothing about a beer called Shoggoth's Old Peculiar.

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 136

In Dario's accompanying illustration, note Cthulhu's bottle head with its emanating tentacles, one of which has captured a person, most likely the Naif in my tale. I'm unsure where to look for Cthulhu's eyes, nor do I know where to sniff out the location of Cthulhu's nose.

Dario's reference is to the short story version, but the somewhat expanded version with Terrance Lindall's many illustrations can be seen in part here . . . and ordered here.

New Fiction: Story by Horace Jeffery Hodges, Illustrations by Terrance Lindall

First Sip

Terrance Lindall

A few days ago, I announced an upcoming publication of my story, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," a Faustian tale of more than fifty pages of text, which will first appear in an anthology, then later as a novella accompanied by another fifty interspersed pages or more of illustrations, of which you can read the first several paragraphs at that blog entry announcement. One commentator asked about the concept behind the story and the process of writing, so I explained:

I was enjoying a beer after exercise last January and had the abrupt thought that a bottomless bottle would be great.

I then was struck by the further thought that this could make a great temptation story. The Faustian plot was an obvious one.

When I had time in February, I wrote about 50 pages in two weeks and had the entire story. I read it to a friend trained in law because I needed advice on the courtroom scene, and he helped me rework the terminology.

I've spent some time -- when I wasn't busy with student papers -- proofreading and sharpening some points, partly due to good advice from friends.

The story is a cautionary one, of sorts, that questions scientism and postmodernism, but with humor. I try to work in a lot of allusions to other works with similar themes concerning deals with the devil -- or other such arrangements.

There are verbal echoes of Milton's Paradise Lost, Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, Goethe's Faust, Gaiman's "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar," and many other stories. I've put these there to be noticed, but I don't have citations since this isn't scholarship, but a creative, intertextual work.

Most of all, I try to tell a good story.

Readers will have to be the judge of that, naturally, and the story won't available until later this year, but the video of text and illustrations (8.5 minutes) is still available, along with another video that continues the story (3.5 minutes)! Incidentally, the videos contain plot spoilers, but if one ignores the text and focuses upon the images, the videos can be safely watched.

Take a look, for Terrance Lindall's illustrations alone are worth your time!

Old Peculiar . . .

Theakston's Old Peculier

I read a short story a year or two ago by Neil Gaiman titled "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" and wondered if any brew actually has such a name. A recent online search turned up one by that name at the Blue Cat Brew Pub, but I'm guessing that any brew named "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" will have been inspired by Gaiman's story. I did find an Old Peculier that undoubtedly predates the story, but not a Shoggoth's, obviously, and the spelling differs (as Kevin Kim points out in a comment). It sounds flavorful:

Distinctive banana and black cherry aroma leading to a magnificent Christmas pudding kaleidoscope of flavour. Rich, Smooth and Sweet.

But if this Old Peculier inspired Gaiman, it did so more for the name than the flavor, because here's what a Shoggoth's tastes like:

The beer had the kind of flavor which, he suspected, advertisers would describe as full-bodied, although if pressed they would have to admit that the body in question had been that of a goat.

That's from pages 151 to 152 of Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, at least in my 1998 Avon Books edition. I would have expected the Theakston's to have a similar taste, "the kind of flavor that one could describe as full-bodied, but . . . also [with] a hint, oddly enough, of something eldritch and gamey . . . something redolent of goat. Maybe satyrical?"

But I guess not . . .

Neil Gaiman: "Lookin' like a Gothy Bob Dylan"

Neil Gaiman

Lookin' Like a Gothy Dylan

Photo by Eric Ogden

(Image from The New Yorker)

Some scholar over at the Milton List alerted us (an ecletic group of misfits) to Dana Goodyear's New Yorker piece on Neil Gaiman, "Kid Goth: Neil Gaiman's fantasies."

Goodyear's is a mostly engaging portrait of Gaiman that incidently also alerted me to the news that Gaiman probably has more women fans than male readers. I'm not sure what that says about me, especially since he's particularly popular among female Goths, starting with his early career as a DC Comic-book writer:

"Young women dressed in black and black eyeliner would walk into the comic store and pick up 'Sandman' and just walk out."

So says Karen Berger, Gaiman's editor at DC Comics, back when he was writing the Sandman series. I've still not read The Sandman, so I suppose that I'm not yet one for eyeliner. About Gaiman's career as a comic-book writer, Goodyear quotes another writer:

"He's got incredible storytelling drive," the novelist Michael Chabon, who has written extensively about comics, says. "The stories just exfoliate off each other, and mythology and folklore are so confidently and freely appropriated, with such chutzpah."

Goodyear doesn't bother to identify Chabon because she assumes that all readers will recognize the name. I do, because my oldest brother gave me his well-read copy of Chabon's Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, but I couldn't dredge up his 'unpronounceable' (for me) name the other day when I was alone in Seoul's biggest bookstore. Chabon tells us how to pronounce it:

"Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi."

Thanks, man. How are those pronounced? But I'm talking about Gaiman, and so is Goodyear, who opens her portrait with this gambit:

In "The New Mother," a children's story published by Lucy Clifford in 1882, two previously well-behaved little girls turn so bad -- dousing the fire and breaking the clock and dancing on the butter -- that their mother is forced to go away, and a new mother, a demon with two glass eyes and a horrible wooden tail, comes to take her place. At the story's end, the girls flee to the forest to live; they miss their mother terribly and long in vain for the chance to redeem themselves. Sometimes, at night, they sneak back to their old cottage, where through the window they can see the glint of the new mother's glass eyes.

Gothic horror was thoroughly out of fashion in children’s literature when, in the early nineteen-nineties, the writer Neil Gaiman began to work on "Coraline," a book aimed at "middle readers" -- aged nine to twelve -- in which he reimagined Clifford's demon as "the other mother," an evil and cunning anti-creator who threatens to destroy his young protagonist. "The idea was, look, if the Victorians can do something that deeply unsettles kids, I should be able to do that, too," he told me recently.

I've read both stories but never made the connection, just as I didn't notice that The Graveyard Book is a retelling of Kipling's Jungle Book. I'm suddenly struck as I write this by how 'Calvinist' Clifford's story is -- it's about damnation, expulsion from the 'garden' with no means of redemption for the preterite. Gaiman's Coraline, on the other hand, is about self-redemption by outsmarting the demon. Children love the book:

Gaiman reported to the nursery, where there was a long crafts table covered with bins of pompoms, googly eyes, and crayons . . . . Gaiman stood at one end of the table.

"I wrote 'Coraline,'" he said.

"Yay," a few of the children said, mechanically.

Gaiman ventured that some of them might have seen the movie and been frightened.

A tiny five-year-old in a cape looked up. "I was scared by it," he said. "I was really scared."

"My cousin, who's one, she was screaming," another child said.

Well . . . maybe not all children love the story, unless a wildly screaming one-year-old means "I like this very much!" I ought to say, children who can read love the book. I can read, and I loved it.

But I've said enough. Go forth and read for yourself -- and discover why Milton fans like Neil Gaiman. Meanwhile, a special Gypsy Scholar award to the reader who can identify the quote in today's blogpost heading . . .

"So, it's settled. Pullman is sinister."

Philip Pullman

Sinister?

(Image from Philip Pullman)

An old Ozark friend who teaches elementary children has posted an interesting response to my Pullman inquiry:

I might make a suggestion. I assume that all of you are adults; therefore, you are reading Pullman's and Rowling's books from that perspective. If you read Pullman's series along with 5th and 6th graders, then very rarely does any religious discussion arise. Children LOVE any book where a child overcomes adults. Books where they must survive using their wits against the adult world in general. When I was a child, it was the Boxcar Children who survived on their own, or Madeline l'engle's books. After having spent years now in discussion with children about Harry Potter, they identify with his struggle to overcome the adult world. Mean teachers, horrible foster family, etc. Bad guys out to get you, or the bad kid that the good ones ultimately overcome. I have always maintained that the genius of Pullman and Rowling was mixing the above with a little magic. It takes a rare elementary student to assess these books as good vs evil in a religious sense.

Well, just a few thoughts from an elementary literacy person!

Since these two authors have primarily made their retirement stash from selling to elementary students then I applaud them for cluing into the buying audience. Of course, the great aspect, of both writers, I believe, is giving adults something to discuss also!

Jeanie's central point is this:

"Children LOVE any book where a child overcomes adults."

As I wrote in my reply:

So, it's settled. Pullman is sinister.

I'm glad that this issue has been settled. I now know that I must forbid my children to read His Dark Materials. Still awaiting answer is the question of Pullman's shallowness.

But to be serious for at least one moment . . . Jeanie has clearly identified a crucial element in Pullman's appeal for young readers. Children defeating adults. That's also true of Coraline and The Graveyard Book, both by Neil Gaiman.

Now if only I could find a book that shows an adult like me how to defeat adults.

The 'uncultured fop' speaks again: Ban Good Omens

Good Omens

Ban The Book?

(Image from Amazon.com)

Faithful readers know that I have previously called for banning John Milton's writings for inciting violence, and I must now also call for a ban on the book Good Omens.

I realize that a mere three days ago, I was praising the book for its positive portrayal of a character with the good name of Hodges, but I have since come to see darker aspects to this book. In my opinion, it encourages suicide bombing. Consider this scene depicting the death of Agnes Nutter:

Thirty seconds later an explosion took out the village green, scythed the valley clean of every living thing, and was seen as far away as Halifax.

There was much subsequent debate as to whether this had been sent by God or by Satan, but a note later found in Agnes Nutter's cottage indicated that any divine or devilish intervention had been materially helped by the contents of Agnes's petticoats, wherein she had with some foresight concealed eighty pounds of gunpowder and forty pounds of roofing nails. (Good Omens, page 109)

As Hillary Clinton might say, "it takes a village" out entirely! The problem is that are intended to like Agnes Nutter. Why, her name even appears in the book's subtitle: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. Granted, she's called "Witch" . . . but that seems to be intended in a positive sense, else why would her 'prophecies' be called "nice"? Kind of like how my paternal grandmother was a water witch. But unlike my grandmother, not all witches are nice! Agnes Nutter's final act hardly seems nice at all! Yet, she is portrayed positively, even more so than Mary Hodges! We should therefore not be astonished to discover a statistical correlation between the publication of this book and an uptick in suicide bombings.

Unconvinced? Then, go read Scott Atran's article, "The Moral Logic and Growth of Suicide Terrorism" (The Washington Quarterly 29.2 (Spring 2006), 127-147). See especially page 128 for Table 1, and note that for the decade of the 1990s, the annual number of suicide bombings shot up from 4.7 for the period from 1981 to 1990 to 16 for the period 1991 to 2000.

Good Omens was published in 1990.

In calling for a ban on this book, I realize that I shall no doubt once again be called "an uncultured fop, a boob, an imbecile!!!" Such are the slings and arrows of outraged ill humor.

I can do no better than to quote myself on this:

"I'll continue tilting the windmills of my mind as I call on my partron saint, Don Quixote, that great knight beatified for ultimately recognizing the danger of unregulated books."

May other noble knights of Don Quixote's order join me.

The good name "Hodges" . . .

Good Omens

by

the

Honorable

Neil Gaiman

and

Terry Pratchett

(Image from Wikipedia)

The good name "Hodges," oft maligned in this world through the literary works of the likes of Jane Austen, finds itself blessed in Gaiman and Pratchett's Good Omens.

Oh, you weren't aware that Austen maligns the good name of "Hodges"?

Well, consider chapter 27 of Emma, in which a certain cook named "Mrs. Hodges" -- in her depiction by the voluble Mrs. Weston quoting some servant named "Patty" quoting some other servant -- comes across as cross:

Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid her not mind it, and be sure not to say any thing to us about it, for Mrs. Hodges would be cross sometimes.

All this displeasure over missing apples! As though the fruit hadn't been intentionally "sent away"! As though Mrs. Hodges had inordinate charge over the Garden of Eden and had discovered her precious apples gone! What a proud, overbearing, self-important cook! (Not anything like a genuine self-effacing Hodges.)

By contrast, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett offer us in the "Wednesday" chapter of Good Omens a Hodges with character, a Hodges who develops, a Hodges who improves through adversity. Formerly known as Sister Mary Loquacious, she must rebuild her life when her Chattering Order of Saint Beryl -- a rather unusual order of 'nuns', admittedly, but let's not dwell on that -- finds its hospital struck by lightning shortly after a newborn baby destined to change the world is gently taken home by his unsuspecting 'parents'. Left for the first time to her own devices, her order disbanded, her convent largely destroyed, Sister Mary changes:

Then something very strange happened to her. Left alone in the rambling building, working from one of the few undamaged rooms, arguing with men with cigarette stubs behind their ears and plaster dust on their trousers and the kind of pocket calculator that comes up with a different answer if the sums involved are in used notes, she discovered something she never knew existed.

She'd discovered, under layers of silliness and eagerness to please, Mary Hodges.

She found it quite easy to interpret builders' estimates and do VAT calculations. She'd got some books from the library, and found finance to be both interesting and uncomplicated . . . . So she'd started reading the kind of magazine that talked about mergers. (page 99)

She decides to start her own business and advertises her newly founded Tadfield Manor Conference and Management Training Center:

It had turned out to be an overwhelming success, because Mary Hodges realized early in her new career as Herself that management training didn't have to mean sitting people down in front of unreliable slide projectors. Firms expected far more than that these days.

She provided it. (page 100)

I'm not yet certain what she's providing by way of service, for I've only reached page 100, but I'm sure that it's well-respected and highly successful, altogether a blessing -- rather than a blight -- on the good Hodges name.

Amen to Good Omens.

More Bone-Rattling on Neil Gaiman's Sources

"Rattle His Bones"

(Image from The Graveyard Book)

I had thought that I was finished with my investigations into bone-rattling, but here I go again. I could blame one of my commenters, Cynthia, but I was already digging deeper before her two comments posted.

Let's again recall the lines quoted by Neil Gaiman in the epigraph to The Graveyard Book:

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

Readers will remember that I remarked yesterday that I couldn't find the book mentioned by Neil Gaiman in his email to me explaining where he had found his version of these lines:

The first reference I found to it was in a book on Death Customs in England, which referred to it as a trad nursery rhyme and had it in the form I listed in the book.

I still haven't found a book with this title, but I did notice one titled The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral Since 1450, by Julian Litten (2007 [1991]), and I'm nearly persuaded that it's the one meant by Gaiman, for it apparently has a version very close to Gaiman's epigraph. I say "very close" because I've only seen a reference to Litten's book on a website titled Newcastle Workhouse, a local history site that quotes a similar version to the lines in question:

A pauper funeral was something to be avoided, not only because of its extreme simplicity but also for its significance in exhibiting one's failure to maintain a position, however lowly, in society. The covered hand-cart pushed along by a hunched-up attendant with the undertaker striding out in front and the mourners hurrying along behind, made a pathetic accompaniment to the children's rhyme, "Rattle his bones over the stones; he's only a pauper who nobody owns" (from J. Litten, The English Way of Death).

Litten's version is similar to Gaiman's in using "who" rather than "whom" but differs in using "he's" rather than "it's" . . . so I can't be sure that Gaiman meant The English Way of Death when he referred to Death Customs in England, though I'm sorely tempted to think so.

Gaiman also mentioned some uncertainty about which relative pronoun to use in the rhyme:

When we were copyediting, we wondered about the grammer on who and whom and that.

I hadn't recalled finding a version with "that," but upon Googling, I did find one also, in Experiments in Rethinking History (Routledge, 2004), edited by Alun Munslow and Robert A. Rosenstone, specifically, in an article by Chris Ward, "Impressions of the Somme: An Experiment":

Nineteenth-century English children's ryhme: 'Rattle his bones / Over the stones / He's only a pauper / That nobody owns' (page 120, note 40)

Note that Mr. Ward refers to these lines as a "Nineteenth-century English children's ryhme," which gets us rather close to Gaiman's attribution of the lines as a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme."

I had also previously wondered about a remark made by Trevor May on page 11 of his book The Victorian Undertaker (1996). He quotes a version of the lines in question:

Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns

Mr. May then identifies this as "the refrain of a widely sung song, 'The Pauper's Drive', set to music 1839." I noted that this was odd, for the poem was published in 1841 by Thomas Noel in his book of poetry Rymes and Roundelayes. However, I found a second reference to an 1839 date. The appropriately named Julie-Marie Strange -- appropriate for my strange inquiry -- gives this date of 1839 for Noel's poem on page 1 of her book Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 1870-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2005). She seems a little uncertain, however, for she notes "c. 1839" (i.e., "circa"), but she cites page 56 of Burial Reform and Funeral Costs (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), by A. Wilson and H. Levy as her source.

After I had located these references, I found that a regular commenter, Cynthia, had also done some lugubrious grave digging (but note that the Galveston Daily News misattributes the lines to Thomas Hood, a common error, it seems):

I found the following reference in a newspaper article regarding the death of someone:

To-day, he will be buried, and, in the language of the immortal Hood:

"Rattle his bones
Over the stones --
Only a pauper
Whom nobody owns."

Galveston Daily News (Galveston, Texas), June 22, 1883

Another reference, but not attributed:

An inquest was held to-day upon the body of the one killed, supposed to be a tramp, but the evidence failed to disclose who the man was, and so it's the old story over again,

"Rattle his bones
Over the stones,
It's only a pauper
Whom nobody owns."

Reno Evening Gazette (Reno, Nevada), July 20, 1891

I also found the earlier version of "The Pauper's Drive," and the newspaper printed the refrain in italics, rather than using quotation marks. This was printed in Decatur Daily Republican (Decatur, Illinois), June 29, 1876

This poem was printed in several papers, and only one used italics. The others did not use quotation marks or italics.

I also found a few political references/usages; this one being kind of amusing:

Next November.
Rattle his bones
Over the stones,
It's candidate Harrison,
Whom nobody owns.

--Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Hornellsville Weekly Tribune (Hornellsville, New York), July 13, 1888

"Potter's Field of Kings County--A Flagrant Outrage"

The motto of the Board is evidently happily timed to the familiar couplet,

Rattle his bones over the stones,
For he is a pauper that nobody owns....

New York Herald (New York, New York), May 31, 1869

In reference to a concert:

He sang Homer's "Rattle His Bones Over the Stones,"...

The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska), November 6, 1909

I also found a Buz Sawyer comic in the newspapers from 1953, that uses "Rattle his bones over the stones."

No references to nursery rhymes.

After a bit, Cynthia dug some more:

I found the following this morning, printed above the poem:

Thomas Noel was born at Kirkby-Mallory on May 11, 1799. He graduated from Merton College, Oxford, in 1824, and issued in 1833 a series of stanzas upon proverbs and scriptural texts, entitled "The Cottage Muse," [I think it is Muse] and in 1841, "Village Verse" and "Rhymes and Roundelays." The latter volume included a version of the "Rat-Tower Legend," and "Poor Voter's Song" and "The Pauper's Drive," often wrongly attributed to Thomas Hood. This poem is justly praised by Miss Mitford in her "Recollections of a Literary Life," and was set to music in 1839 by Henry Russell [but see below in my comments - HJH]. Noel also wrote the words of the familiar song, "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep."

Mansfield News (Mansfield, Ohio), October 15, 1902

Mary Russell Mitford published that book in 1852. You might already know that, but I didn't know who she was,and am not familiar with the book.

The Henry Russell song seems to be dated 1846 by another source online.

Here is a link to another explanation about the song/poem, in case you didn't see it.

Cynthia's digging turned up that discrepancy again between an 1841 publication of "The Pauper's Drive" and an 1839 date for when it was set to music. She also found that the poem was "often wrongly attributed to Thomas Hood," as I noted above and have frequently seen. This misattribution goes back at least as far as 1860 (one year before Thomas Noel's own death), for I found an erring reference in an article, "South Australian Institutions. The Adelaide Cemetery," printed in The South Australian Advertiser (Monday, February 20, 1860), which says of a poor man's funeral:

It was the ideal of a pauper's funeral, and the lines of Thomas Hood might have been appropriately quoted on the occasion

"Rattle his bones over the stones,
He is but a pauper whom nobody owns"

But the misattribution might even go back to 1846, as Cynthia has implied, for the link provided above by Cynthia states that "Henry Russell popularized the words by setting them to music, attributing them to Hood, and singing the piece when on tour," which "no doubt gave rise to the mis-apprehension as to the name of the author." Added to this is the information at this website on "The Music of Henry Russell (1812-1900)" that Russell set the words to music in 1846 (and surely not 1839, despite other sources), thus pushing the date of misattribution back almost to the time of the poem's publication in 1841! Perhaps the similarity of themes and names of the two poets Thomas Hood and Thomas Noel resulted in this confusion.

Thomas Noel (1799-1861) was well known in his day, but he should not be confused with his father Thomas Noel (1774-1853), the Leicestershire clergyman . . . though I think that I previously did confuse the two. I found a reference to Noel's father, the clergyman, on page 250 of Peter Quennell's Byron: The Years of Fame: The Years of Fame (2006) informing me that Reverend Noel presided as clergyman at the ceremony in which Lord Byron wed Annabella Milbanke -- and also that Mr. Noel was an illegitimate son of the aptly titled Lord Wentworth, whose name (i.e., "Thomas Noel") he was given.

Incidentally, the poet Thomas Noel -- who would be the grandson of Lord Wentworth -- was a friend to Lord Byrons' wife, Annabella Milbanke (Anne Isabella Byron), or at least Wikipedia says so.

And perhaps, finally, I have taken this far enough.

Neil Gaiman Replies

Horse-Drawn Hearse

(Image Borrowed from the Past)

I am still wondering about the origin of that epigraph used by Neil Gaiman for The Graveyard Book. Just to refresh our memories, here is that brief rhyme:

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

Gaiman cites it as a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme," but I've found nothing yet to substantiate that.

Because I'm obsessive, I decided to go to the source and therefore sent a query to Mr. Gaiman himself:

Dear Mr. Neil Gaiman

Sorry to bother you with an inane question, but about this:

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

Is this really a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme"? I ask because . . . I'm a bit obsessive. I have already done some digging around:

Gaiman's Borrowed Rhyme

James Joyce et al.: "Rattle his bones"

I found no nursery rhyme, however. Don't bother to reply unless this strikes your fancy. I understand that people are pressed for time.

Anyway, I'm enjoying your stories, which I've only recently learned about -- and through a review of the movie Coraline in Christianity Today, of all places. Now, I'm reading everything that you've written. Well . . . everything published that I can find.

Best Regards,

Jeffery Hodges

To my surprise, Mr. Gaiman replied within a couple of hours to my query about this rhyme:

The first reference I found to it was in a book on Death Customs in England, which referred to it as a trad nursery rhyme and had it in the form I listed in the book.

When we were copyediting, we wondered about the grammer on who and whom and that, and then I found myself spending a week on the internet doing exactly the journey you did, and coming to similar conclusions. But liking the version I'd read first the best, and liking the idea that it was a nursery rhyme the best -- and really not knowing if the poem was echoing something older or not. So I left it...

Thank you, Mr. Gaiman, for taking the time to provide this helpful explanation.

Of course, I now have a new obsession. I cannot find a reference online to Death Customs in England. I did find The Victorian Undertaker (1996), by Trevor May, which has a version of the rhyme on page 11 (and a lugubrious photo of a pauper's hearse on the following page):

Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns

Mr. May identifies this as "the refrain of a widely sung song, 'The Pauper's Drive', set to music 1839" (oddly enough, for the poem was published in 1841 by Thomas Noel in his book of poetry Rymes and Roundelayes).

I also found a similar book, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute (2001), by Ruth Richardson, and it has a version of the rhyme on page 375 that is closer to the one used by Gaiman:

Rattle his bones over the stones,
It's only a pauper whom nobody owns

Ms. Richardson cites Thomas Noel's poem and notes that it "has the well-known refrain" that I've just quoted, helpfully adding that "'owns' is another word for 'claims' in this context."

Interestingly, in Answers.com's entry on "funeral" (and seemingly only there), I found a note on the "pauper's funeral," in which "a cheap coffin [was] pushed on a hand-cart, as remembered in the children's rhyme":

Rattle his bones over the stones,
He's only a pauper whom nobody owns.

This couplet is attributed by Answers.com to Thomas Noel, citing "The Pauper's Drive," but note that the writer has also referred to the lines as a "children's rhyme," which returns us to a point close to Gaiman's original identification of the lines as a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme."

Perhaps this is as far as we can go, but since we now have Mr. Neil Gaiman's own words on the subject, we need not go further anyway.

PS: Since the time this post was written, I've published my own dark fantasy story, partly inspired by Gaiman . . .

James Joyce et al.: "Rattle his bones"

Announcement

Initial Publication of Ulysses

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I inquired about Neil Gaiman's borrowing of what he calls a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme":

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

Specifically, I wondered if it were truly a nursery rhyme, for it seems to 'ultimately' come from the refrain of Thomas Noel's 1841 poem, "The Pauper's Drive," published in Rymes and Roundelayes (pages 200-201):

Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!

My cyber friend and fellow Milton enthusiast Eshuneutics commented:

An intriguing question . . . I have never heard of it as a nursery rhyme. It is a Northern Chartist song, known in my city of Leeds. (I guess its northern/Manchester connection encouraged The Smiths to plagiarise the refrain) It must have been a popular ditty since Joyce uses it in "Ulysses". And that suggests its origin is in music hall rather than nursery rhyme. If it was ever a nursery-rhyme, it would be in Peter Opie's collection, but I do not recall it from that. A puzzle.

Eshuneutics certainly knows a good deal about things literary and popular, and he sends me off in several directions. I had in fact noticed the Joyce connection yesterday but didn't have time to look into that. Gaiman has surely read Joyce's Ulysses and might have been thinking of that, but Joyce's use of the lines differs in being abbreviated:

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.

This appears in Ulysses, Part II, "The Odyssey," Episode 6, "Hades," which describes the protagonist, Leopold Bloom, in a funeral carriage on his way to the funeral of Paddy Dignam, who died an undignified death in a drunken stupor, somewhat like Elpenor, a friend of the original Ulysses, Odysseus.

Here's a larger passage, which contains several allusions to the lines (which I've emboldened):

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.

--In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.

--But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life.

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.

--The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.

--Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We must take a charitable view of it.

--They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.

--It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella.

AND THEY CALL ME THE JEWEL OF ASIA, OF ASIA, THE GEISHA.

He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.

That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold.

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.

Zack Bowen discusses these allusions in Musical Allusions in the Works of James Joyce: Early Poetry through Ulysses (1974) but doesn't mention Thomas Noel's poem of 1841. I've not read Bowen's book, and Google Books doesn't provide all of the pages, so I don't know if Bowen explains what song is meant, whether the Chartist mentioned by Eshuneutics or some other. But Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman, in Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses (1988), refer readers to Noel's poem, calling it a song but saying nothing of a Chartist song using the lines in question. Earlier even than Bowen, Weldon Thornton wrote in Allusions in Ulysses: An Annotated List (1968) of Noel's poem but also cites this as a song noted by Helen K. Johnson, in Our Familiar Songs (pp. 630-32), who cites Noel for the words but J.J. Hutchinson for the music, but again no reference to a Chartist song.

No one seems to be mentioning any nursery rhyme at all.

Perhaps Gaiman is merely toying with us and misleading the scholars. He probably didn't get these lines from Shelagh Delaney's 1960 play, The Lion in Love, which has:

So rattle her bones all over the stones, she's only a beggar-man whom nobody owns.

Nor from The Smiths' 1984 album (i.e., The Smiths), which has seemingly borrowed from Delaney, for the playwright's lines are echoed in the song "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle":

So rattle my bones all over the stones / I’m only a beggar-man whom nobody owns.

I have the information on Shelagh Delaney and on The Smiths from "Culture isn't linear," which has some interesting things to say about literary 'borrowings'.

Still, Gaiman's own borrowing differs from all of these, including the 'original' poem by Thomas Noel, who used the personal pronoun "He":

Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!

Gaiman uses the less personal "It":

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

In doing so, he comes closer to a version cited by the psychiatrist Shobal Vail Clevenger on page 255 of Fun in a Doctor's Life: Being the Adventures of an American Don Quixote in Helping to Make the World Better (1909):

Rattle his bones over the stones,
It's only a pauper whom nobody owns.

The sole difference here is Gaiman's use of "who" rather than the more grammatical "whom." Clevenger is quoting something, or thinks that he is. Possibly, Clevenger gets it from the Reverend William Cochrane's Future Punishment; or Does Death End Probation? (1886), which differs from Clevenger's version only in punctuation:

Rattle his bones, over the stones,
It's only a pauper, whom nobody owns.

But this is about as far as I can take things . . . for now.

Gaiman's Borrowed Rhyme

Neil Gaiman

(Image from The Graveyard Book)

I've just finished Neil Gaiman's recent novel, The Graveyard Book, which tells the tale of an orphaned child raised by the inhabitants of a graveyard, who give him the name "Nobody Owens." I won't reveal the plot since this book has been published only this year. Instead, I'll merely draw attention to a little ditty that serves as the book's epigraph:

Rattle his bones
Over the stones
It's only a pauper
Who nobody owns

Gaiman identifies this as a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme," but it's one that I'd never heard. Being curious, I did some digging around online and found a similar refrain in a poem attributed to Thomas Noel:

The Pauper's Drive

There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot --
To the church yard a pauper is going, I wot;
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs;
And, hark to the dirge which the mad driver sings;
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

O, where are the mourners? Alas! there are none,
He has left not a gap in the world, now he's gone, --
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man;
To the grave with his carcass as fast as you can:
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

What a jolting and creaking and splashing and din!
The whip how it cracks! and the wheels how they spin!
How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurled!
The pauper at length makes a noise in the world!
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

Poor pauper defunct! he has made some approach
To gentility, now that he's stretched in a coach!
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last!
But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast:
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

You bumpkins! who stare at your brother con­veyed --
Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid!
And be joyful to think, when by death you're laid low,
You've a chance to the grave like a gemman to go!
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

But a truce to this strain; for my soul it is sad,
To think that a heart in humanity clad
Should make, like the brute, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend.
Rattle his bones over the stones! He's only a pauper, whom nobody owns!

This poem can be found on page 121 of The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3, Sorrow and Consolation, edited by Bliss Carman and commented upon by Lyman Abbot (J.D. Morris and Company, 1904).

According to Wikipedia, the British poet Thomas Noel was born on May 11, 1799 and died on May 22, 1861 and is credited with three volumes of poetry: The Cottage Muse (1833), Village Verse (1841), and Rymes and Roundelayes (1841).

Searching further, I found that the poem above appears on pages 200-201 of Rymes and Roundelayes (London: William Smith, 1841), for I located the text through Google Books, but the original differs somewhat from the version above:

The Pauper's Drive

There's a grim one-horse hearse in a jolly round trot;
To the churchyard a pauper is going, I wot;
The road it is rough, and the hearse has no springs,
And hark to the dirge that the sad driver sings: --
"Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!"

Oh, where are the mourners? alas! there are none; --
He has left not a gap in the world now he's gone;
Not a tear in the eye of child, woman, or man; --
To the grave with his carcase as fast as you can;
"Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!"

What a jolting and creaking, and splashing and din!
The whip, how it cracks! and the wheels how they spin!
How the dirt, right and left, o'er the hedges is hurl'd!
The Pauper at length makes a noise in the world!
"Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!"

Poor Pauper defunct! he has made some approach
To gentility, now that he's stretch'd in a coach;
He's taking a drive in his carriage at last;
But it will not be long, if he goes on so fast!
"Rattle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns!"

You bumpkin! who stare at your brother convey'd,
Behold what respect to a cloddy is paid,
And be joyful to think, when by death you're laid low,
You've a chance to the grave like a gemman to go.
"Battle his bones over the stones;
He's only a Pauper, whom nobody owns! "

But a truce to this strain, -- for my soul, it is sad,
To think that a heart in humanity clad,
Should make, like the brutes, such a desolate end,
And depart from the light without leaving a friend!
Bear softly his bones over the stones;
Though a Pauper, he's one whom his Maker yet owns!

My question -- you knew that one was coming -- is: Did Thomas Noel borrow the refrain from a "Traditional Nursery Rhyme"? Note that he puts that part of his poem in quotation marks . . . though this could easily be explained as being due to the fact that the "sad driver" is singing this "dirge."

Be that as it may, does anyone have any information about this "Traditional Nursery Rhyme"?

The Angel Islington: On Repentance

The Angel, Islington

'the Angel is inn'

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've just finished reading Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere, having taken a break from re-reading Jane Austen, and these words of the 'fallen' Angel Islington -- in reply to the question as to whether he intended to return to heaven -- struck me as familiar:

Not for me the smooth agonies of adulation, of hymns and halos and self-satisfied prayers. (Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), page 325)

They remind me, of course, of the famous words spoken by the fallen angel Mammon in Paradise Lost, who demurs at the thought of repentance:

. . . with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict Laws impos'd, to celebrate his Throne
With warbl'd Hymns, and to his Godhead sing
Forc't Halleluiah's (PL 2.239-242)

[Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, February, 2009.]

Both the Angel Islington and Mammon are somewhat finicky, delicate dandies with a taste for luxury, so Gaiman may have had Mammon in mind. But there's also Satan's famous monologue:

But say I could repent and could obtaine
By Act of Grace my former state; how soon
Would higth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feign'd submission swore: ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void. (PL 4.93-97)

[Thomas H. Luxon, ed. The Milton Reading Room, February, 2009.]

While the words uttered by Satan don't echo, the thought does. Heaven, it seems, is not a place to which an angel, once fallen, would wish to return.

The Angel Islington, by the way, holds Satan in low regard (and note that angels, being androgynous, are referred to by the neuter pronoun "it"):

Islington smiled superciliously. "Lucifer?" it said. "Lucifer was an idiot. It wound up lord and master of nothing at all." (Gaiman, Neverwhere, page 322)

Not that the Angel Islington, likewise imprisoned (albeit without torment), has much to show for his own ambition.

Anyway, the aims of fallen angels aside, I may have to alter my recent plan of reading only the classics rather than wasting my time on modern novels, and read all of Gaiman's works.

(I perhaps didn't mention this plan, and a good thing, too, or I'd have to publicly rather than parenthetically recant.)

But first, like Door, I need to re-open a book by Jane Austen.