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The Very Old Folk - H. Lovecraft

The Very Old Folk

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Это запись сна, где главным героем является римский военный сотрудник в Баскской стране около Помпело. Каждый год местность охватывают ужасные горные люди, похищающие граждан и проводящие жестокие ритуалы на Субботе. Рассказчик хочет возглавить военную экспедицию, чтобы разгромить этих горных людей, поскольку чувствует приближение зла, которое охватило местность из-за беспорядков между гражданами и горными людьми. Эти горные люди приехали для торговли, но некоторые из них были убиты и позже исчезновений не происходило до времени Субботы. Вторжение проводится под руководством местного жителя, рожденного римскими родителями.

Помимо этого, хочу добавить, что главный герой сна, римский военный сотрудник, является опытным и храбрым воином. Он имеет глубокое знание местности и традиций Баскской страны, что делает его оптимальным кандидатом для лидирования в экспедиции против горных людей. Он также обладает уникальными навыками, которые помогут ему успешно справиться с врагами и восстановить мир и порядок в регионе. У главного героя есть сильное внутреннее убеждение, что только он способен пресечь зло, затрагивающее его родную землю, и защитить ее жителей. Весь регион полагается на его лидерство и мужество, в надежде на то, что он приведет их к победе и освобождению от угрозы со стороны горных людей.

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The Very Old Folk

From a letter written to “Melmoth” (Donald Wandrei) on Thursday, November 3, 1927

It was a flaming sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of Pompelo, at the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must have been in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a senatorial proconsul instead of a prætorian legate of Augustus, and the day was the first before the Kalends of November. The hills rose scarlet and gold to the north of the little town, and the westering sun shone ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and plaster buildings of the dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus some distance to the east. Groups of citizens – broad-browed Roman colonists and coarse-haired Romanised natives, together with obvious hybrids of the two strains, alike clad in cheap woollen togas – and sprinklings of helmeted legionaries and coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the circumambient Vascones – all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by some vague and ill-defined uneasiness.

I myself had just alighted from a litter, which the Illyrian bearers seemed to have brought in some haste from Calagurris, across the Iberus to the southward. It appeared that I was a provincial quæstor named L. Cælius Rufus, and that I had been summoned by the proconsul, P. Scribonius Libo, who had come from Tarraco some days before. The soldiers were the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion, under the military tribune Sex. Asellius; and the legatus of the whole region, Cn. Balbutius, had also come from Calagurris, where the permanent station was.

The cause of the conference was a horror that brooded on the hills. All the townsfolk were frightened, and had begged the presence of a cohort from Calagurris. It was the Terrible Season of the autumn, and the wild people in the mountains were preparing for the frightful ceremonies which only rumour told of in the towns. They were the very old folk who dwelt higher up in the hills and spoke a choppy language which the Vascones could not understand. One seldom saw them; but a few times a year they sent down little yellow, squint-eyed messengers (who looked like Scythians) to trade with the merchants by means of gestures, and every spring and autumn they held the infamous rites on the peaks, their howlings and altar-fires throwing terror into the villages. Always the same – the night before the Kalends of Maius and the night before the Kalends of November. Townsfolk would disappear just before these nights, and would never be heard of again. And there were whispers that the native shepherds and farmers were not ill-disposed toward the very old folk – that more than one thatched hut was vacant before midnight on the two hideous Sabbaths.

This year the horror was very great, for the people knew that the wrath of the very old folk was upon Pompelo. Three months previously five of the little squint-eyed traders had come down from the hills, and in a market brawl three of them had been killed. The remaining two had gone back wordlessly to their mountains – and this autumn not a single villager had disappeared. There was menace in this immunity. It was not like the very old folk to spare their victims at the Sabbath. It was too good to be normal, and the villagers were afraid.

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