The Xothic Legend Cycle

I HAVE always been pretty confident that August Derleth borrowed the title for his novel The Lurker at the Threshold from Robert Hitchins' 1911 novel of spiritualism The Dweller on the Threshold, and equally sure that Lin Carter derived the title of the following story, “Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods”, from the anonymous 1888 lost race novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. We know Derleth appreciated Hitchins' work, though he happens not to mention this particular novel by name as far as i know, while Lin Carter, being a fan of lost race novels and having written some himself, would have to have been familiar with Strange Manuscript. Lucky for me, both Derleth and Carter are in no position to prove me wrong.

The present tale shares certain features in common with "The Winfield Heritance" both make passing reference to Harold Hadley Copeland and his researches, as well as to the terrible Xothic legend cycle, and both have some link with Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold. It is interesting, moreover, that whereas "The Winfield Heritance" branches off from the third episode of Derleth’s Lurker—the "Narrative of Winfield Phillips", in which the eponymous Phillips plays Dr. Parker to Seneca Lapham’s Solar Pons—"Strange Manuscript" builds instead on the first and second episodes, “Billington’s Wood” and “Manuscript of Stephen Bates.” Not only are Seneca Lapham and Winfield Phillips not mentioned in “Strange Manuscript", but Carter has ignored the events of the third episode entirely. In that concluding segment, Derleth had arbitrarily swept away all that preceded, including the identity of the monster as Ossadogowah, the son of Tsathoggua, substituting Yog-Sothoth. Carter here has returned to the original conception of Tsathoggua, Junior. While even Lin Carter lacked the chutzpah to dare substitute a new conclusion to Lurker, something I ventured with "The Round Tower" (see The Dumwich Cycle), in "Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods" he did at least try to tie up some of the loose ends Derleth left hanging.

We ought also to note the connection between this story and Carter’s Book of Eibon chapter, “The Feaster from the Stars", in which the same entity is conjured. "Strange Manuscript" is also woven into the fabric of the Xothic cycle by virtue of the connection of its protagonist with the Hoag family of Arkham, whose scion, Captain Abner Exekiel Hoag, first brought back the manuscript of the Ponape Scripture. The sonnet cycle “Dreams from R'lyeh” provides another glimpse of the heirs of this tainted line.

I have noticed an intriguing little blip in a couple of Mythos tales (maybe there are more) which may be worth pointing out, and that is the occasional presence of odd variants on familiar biblical names. I have always liked August Derleth’s "Alijah [for Elijah] Billington in The Lurker at the Threshold, and Lin Carter has an odd spelling of Ezekiel in the name "Abner Exckiel Hoag." Of course, as in names like "Xavier”, the "X" could be said as either an "x" or a "z." I assume "Exekiel" is to be pronounced with a "z." The name "Abner Exckiel Hoag” seems to stem from two sources, "Hoag", a common enough New England name, was the lost name of a friend of Lovecraft to whose collected poems HPL wrote the introduction. James E. Hoag’s "To the American Flag", in fact, mistakenly appears attributed to Lovecraft in the latter’s own Collected Poems! "Abner Exckiel" is a pair of biblical names, those of the military chief of staff tor King David, who cried to dissuade him from the disastrous census of his people (2 Samuel 24), and the Exilic Jewish priest-prophet Ezekiel. Lin Carter had combined both names long before, in his Belmont novel The Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), where there is a mystic seer named, improbably for an Oriental, "Abdekiel.”

"Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods" first appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu #54, Easteride 1988.