Comments on: HAUNTOGRAPHY: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:46:07 +0000

In Dorothy L. Sayers’s Nine Tailors, the cursed bell is called “Batty Thomas”, from the man who had it made, one Abbot Thomas: I’ve never quite been able to unearth an actual buried reference in this fact — there is treasure hidden in the relevant church, and a not very similar code to uncover it…

Also — even less relevantly– one of Wimsey’s uncles us called De La Gardie, which makes him a relative of Count Magnus!

By: ledge

ledge — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:17:25 +0000

(so keep yer filthy hands off. OR ELSE.)

By: ledge

ledge — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:16:40 +0000

I read your description of Cthulhu tentacles and thought “hmm that’s not how I recall it”, my impression is of a more traditional revenant, a horribly stale and musty one. But the text does indeed say “legs or arms or tentacles”, leaving it open to the reader’s subconscious to decide whatever is the most discomfiting. But it also says there are “several” of these limbs so that does suggest something not entirely human.

Another interpretation of the inscription could be “keep that which is committed to thee and this treasure, boyo, is not“

By: marna

marna — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:52:09 +0000

Interesting!, re.the BBC adaptation. The man-servant's interesting, too. He's a bit of a closed book, I think. Towards the end of Part II the narrator says:

Brown was present, but how much of the matter was ever really made plain to his comprehension he would never say, and I am unable to conjecture.

Which suggests a huge aura of otherness to Brown. Servant! Not one of US. This is rather unpleasant.

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:45:39 +0000

and also hurrah! a merry terr0rw0bs to all our readers

By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît

a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:44:38 +0000

In the BBC dramatisation, the final scene — of a still prostrate Somerton back home convalescing in a bath chair — cuts into a last shot, from the air, as a sinister figure, or is it two, crosses the lawn purposefully towards him…

So they definitely read it that the leathery being will pursue the finder, as per yr suggestion — and indeed, as per count magnus

I think there’s a good chance that the latin has been translated “carelessly” throughout: it’s MRJ’s kind of joke, as is the idea that Somerton has got himself in trouble because he isn’t quite as educated as he thinks he is. The interesting thing to me is that the man-servant — coded literate but only just — seems bothered largely on his master’s behalf: he saw the spector of the abbot but, while disliking it, is not in any sense afraid, is also MRJ-ish: as if terror is a kind of hysteria that arises out of too great learning, or rather, learning at once too great and not quite great enough.