The Old Gods Waken

The First Silver John Novel

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) was a writer who took some time to grow on me. The first piece of fiction of his I read was “Caretaker” in a back issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Oct. 1977). I came across his stories in various anthologies when I was picking up Weird Tales reprint anthologies. I like to revisit his weird short stories, especially in the collection The Valley So Low (1987).

I will admit, I prefer reading John Thunstone more than John the Balladeer. John the Balladeer (often called Silver John) was a series of soft horror stories that appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction from 1951 to 1962. The stories were collected into the book Who Fears the Devil by Arkham House in 1963. There was a Ballantine paperback in 1964, a Dell paperback in 1980, and a Baen paperback in 1988. John is a Korean War veteran who wanders North Carolina singing and collecting old folk songs with a guitar with silver strings. This is probably Wellman's best known series.

Wellman had left science fiction, horror, and weird fiction after Who Fears the Devil but returned in the mid-1970s appearing in small press magazines and horror anthologies.

Then he started writing novels starting in 1979. The Old Gods Waken was the first novel in his return to weird fiction. It is also the first John the Balladeer novel. Doubleday published the book in hardback. Most Doubleday hardbacks went to libraries and had smaller print runs than you would think. You used to find Wellman easily in libraries forty years ago.

John is visiting a friend, Luke Forshay who also has an interest in old folk music. Luke's father, Creed finds new neighbors, Brummitt and Hooper Voth have placed property markers on Forshay property. There are some words spoken on this. The Voths are from England having bought land with a reputation for strange owners and strange things. The Voth brothers speak in the Travelers language among themselves.

The tension builds with John visiting the Voths with a friend, Holly, a teacher at a university who collects folklore. There are spells and amulets used by the Voths. The novel really takes off with the Voths planning a pagan ceremony on June 23 during the Full Moon with human sacrifice.

John enlists the help of the Cherokee Reuben Manco as they battle a series barriers to rescue Luke Forshay and Holly. The Voths are mixing Druidism with some sort of supernatural things from a race of who inhabited the area before the Cherokees.

The novel is told in first person. It can be a jarring at times with John narrating in dialect. The novel runs 186 pages. Berkley reprinted four of the five John novels in 1984 as mass market paperbacks. I can't imagine that today.

Wellman's John the Balladeer stories have a devoted but unfortunately small fan base. They are a an antidote to graphic slasher horror novels.

Manly Wade Wellman was a pulp generalist like Robert E. Howard in that he wrote weird, detective, westerns, science fiction, and later some sword & sorcery. His prose style is direct and straight forward. Check out the adaptation of his story from Weird Tales, “The Valley Was Still” for Twilight Zone.

I will discuss some of his science fiction in the future

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