THE DEEP ONES: "The Desrick on Yandro" by Manly Wade Wellman

"The Desrick on Yandro" by Manly Wade Wellman.

Discussion begins on August 14, 2024.

First published in June 1952 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?79437

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

Who Fears the Devil?
John the Balladeer
Owls Hoot in the Daytime and Other Omens
Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://baencd.freedoors.org/Books/John%20the%20Balladeer/0671654187___3.htm

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

No online audio versions found to date.

MISCELLANY

https://nclhof.org/inductees/1996-2/manly-wade-wellman/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manly_Wade_Wellman
https://tinyurl.com/38x5tphr

The Flat, the Behinder, the Bammit... It a regular Mad Monster Party. I always enjoy the adventures of Wandering John. Wellman so nails an authentic Appalachian vibe (I'm in eastern Pennsylania, so we do get that here a bit, although not anywhere near as much as in the author's own North Carolina), from the landscape to the rhythms of speech, that I sometimes find my self speaking in the same manner until the spell wears off.

Wellman often refers to real-life folk songs of the region, even if he might change the words a little now and then. I wonder if there is a good collection of related recordings I can easily find. I know that The Smithsonian had one such recording project going on in the 20th century which I'm pretty sure was was released.... I guess there's always good ol' Doc Watson, too!

I read the Planet Stories editon of Who Fears the Devil? at the end of 2011. I'v just started the Haffner Press The Complete John the Balladeer with a reread of "O Ugly Bird" and "The Desrick on Yandro". I enjoyed the stories a lot in 2011 and they've stuck in my memory but I think I appreciated them even more this time round.

It's probably not the best place to look, but I tend to go to YouTube to look for performances of folk songs and the like (I have slowly been working through The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs and trying to find recordings or performancies of the songs in it). The film adaptation of Who Fears the Devil, a.k.a The Legend of Hillbilly John, is also currently uploaded to YouTube, I think from a Videodisc.

Always loved that one of the various monsters populating the mountain is just a silent mammoth.