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Chapter I - Introductory
The antiquity of the Tale of Terror; the element of fear in myths,
heroic legends, ballads and folk-tales; terror in the romances of
the middle ages, in Elizabethan times and in the seventeenth
century; the credulity of the age of reason; the renascence of
terror and wonder in poetry; the "attempt to blend the marvellous of
old story with the natural of modern novels."
The history of the Tale of Terror is as old as the history of man.
Myths were created in the early days of the race to account for
sunrise and sunset, storm winds and thunder, the origin of the
earth and of mankind.
The tales men told in the face of these
mysteries were naturally inspired by awe and fear. The
universal
myth of a great flood is perhaps the earliest Tale of Terror.
During
the excavation of Nineveh in 1872, a Babylonian version of the
story, which forms part of the Gilgamesh epic, was discovered in the
library of King Ashurbanipal (668- 626 B.C.); and there are records
of a much earlier version, belonging to the year 1966 B.C.
King Ashurbanipal (668-
626 B.C.
The story
of the Flood, as related on the eleventh tablet of the
Gilgamesh
epic, abounds in
supernatural terror. To seek the gift of
immortality from his ancestor, Ut-napishtim, the hero undertakes a
weary and perilous journey.
He passes the mountain guarded by a
scorpion man and woman, where the sun goes down; he traverses a dark
and dreadful road, where never man trod, and at last crosses the
waters of death.
During the deluge, which is predicted by his
ancestor, the gods themselves are stricken with fear:
"No man beheld his fellow, no more could men know each
other. In heaven the gods were afraid ... They drew
back, they climbed up into the heaven of Anu. The gods
crouched like dogs, they cowered by the walls."[Frazer, Folklore of the Old Testament , I. iv. § 2.]
Another episode in the same epic, when
Nergal, the god of the dead,
brings before
Gilgamesh an apparition of his friend, Eabani, recalls
the impressive scene, when the witch of Endor summons the spirit of
Samuel before Saul.
Nergal
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