Episode 533 - The Maker of Gargoyles

It could have been worse — if the town hadn't paid Reynard for his work, he might have sculpted a defecating gargoyle like the one on the Freiburger Münster in Germany (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mooning-gargoyle-of-freiburg-minster).

okay, why are we known for our bridges if we have GARGOYLES? that's not fair.

I wasn’t ready for Andrew’s “Gee, I wonder if anything like that is going to happen.”

The Screaming Moist

Hippocampus Press has a collection.

Amazon has The Averoigne Archives for the kindle.

Ben Gilbert

Does anyone have a recommendations of where I can get all the averoigne stories in a single book?

All this conversation about werewolves and France reminds me about Sarah Vowell's book Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, which is about the life of the Marquis de Lafayette and his tour of the US many years after the Revolution. Early in the book she recounts an episode from his early teens, in which he spent several weeks camping out on his family's vast country estate, seeking to kill a mysterious beast that was ravaging the French countryside.

Clint Page

What a great month of podcasts from you two! And Andrew's reading is a treasure as always! Smith's Averoigne stories are collectively a lot of fun, and I'm so glad you all finally have gotten around to covering them. The Colossus of Ylourne has been one of my favorites by Smith; his dry and cynical sense of humor comes through in that story as much as it does in stories like "The Testament of Athammaus." (There's some DNA in common between Smith's sense of humor and Lovecraft's; Herbert West is a clear example of their similar treatment of necromancy as a joke.) By the way, I think Smith's knowledge about southern France, and his use of it as a template for Averoigne, is entirely based on reading. Like Lovecraft, Smith relied heavily on encyclopedias and travel guides to create the historical context for the places he wrote about. (Well, and for Lovecraft dreams of being in Paris with Poe!) Smith was fluent enough in French as well to be able to read a lot of original sources, too. There's a lot of similarities between Averoigne and Auvergne, and, in correspondence with Smith, Lovecraft assumed (also from his book-based knowledge) that the former is a fictionalized version of the latter. It just goes to show how much imagination these fellas had in drawing from writings about places to create their universes.

Ben A

The Gargoyler sounds like a Silver John monster 😊

It made me think of Robert Westall’s The Stones of Muncaster Cathedral though that story was more M.R. James than C.A. Smith.

Ben Gilbert

In keeping with the gargoyle theme I just remembered this nice little (MR Jamesian) story http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveWatchman.html

I did like how the sculptor wasn't exactly a villain, but really just a jerk with too much sculpting talent and not enough self-reflection. He seemed honestly horrified at the carnage and did his best to get "revenge" afterwards. If only he had spent his sculpting time thinking really hard about well-made omelets or a nice crusty baguette, it could have been a happy story!

Peter Larsen

Surely I am not alone in thinking immediately of the monsters from the id in Forbidden Planet. I'm starting to suspect the writers of that (obvious retelling of The Tempest) were not entirely original... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2BYyeS-fIU

I just randomly learned about this idea that 297 years of our history, in fact... Never existed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis But that theory concerns the years 614 to 911, so it doesn't explain why you have no memories from the 1100's.

I also had a look at Angles. It's a small place with only slightly more inhabitants than the podcast has patrons. The church is a big lump of a building with plain walls on the outside and few windows. The only ornamentation seems to be the aforesaid Malebete, although it's not quite as impressive as one might hope: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%AAte_d%27Angles. According to wikipedia, another entrance was built in the side of the church so that the local women could enter without it seeing them and their beauty being sucked up by the beast. And thus it is that the women of Angles are no longer condemned to ugliness. There's a better photo of the beast here: https://mediatheque.parc-marais-poitevin.fr/fr/gargouille-de-l-eglise-notre-dame-des-anges-d-angles-jac-pommier-11285-frx1addedf01de12000000005245656d4f40000000000000005.htm?AD=1

Steve

"Oh well, back to my depravities!" is how I'll be signing off every email from now on 😂

Loved the episode, it reminded me of the cartoon "Gargoyles" which I highly recommend. Also as March is closer and closer now, I would like to take this time to tell you about "I am Legend" book that is AMAZING. It is not that long and is pretty Weird. We didn't get Poevember in 2020 and March is for Draculas is my only constant in 2021. It's a rock that I can rely upon and "I am Legend" would make me whole again.

Tom Král

> stenchful wind of its wide vans. Normal for skater shoes

Thunk

I'm sure Chris knows Gargoyles. Any big enough Trek fan knows that most of the cast wound up doing voice acting for the show.

Victor Badger

Great episode, but after listening I was filled with the unnatural compulsion to share that when I worked at the Local Comic and game shop, one of my co-workers was a Magic:the gathering player who insisted that people call him Blaze. He was exactly what you would expect a Magic player who insisted on being called Blaze was like. There was even rumors of an overheard phone conversation where he plaintively cried out "Grandma! Call me Blaze!"

Victor Badger

Love the stories and the podcast! In reference to the bear monster ( https://abookofcreatures.com/2015/07/13/malebete/), I was a bit worried when you were saying malabite instead of malebete. It's more like "mal-bet". The former has a very different translation in French (https://www.deepl.com/en/translator#fr/en/mal%20a%20bite). I nearly spilled tea on my keyboard. There's a French saying which springs to mind, "tu parles francais comme une vache espagnole", Candide was one of the few books I read at school that I enjoyed, Sartre's Les Mouches being another, so please have a few practice runs of Cunégonde beforehand. Although, to be honest, it was intended as a smutty pun in French too.

Steve

Also, not a gargoyle, but my favorite Downtown Pittsburgh grotesque (if it's even that) is a lion guarding a bank: https://www.wesa.fm/sites/wesa/files/styles/x_large/public/201705/lion_outside.jpg

Allow me to be the first to raise the topic of the Gargoyles cartoon of the 90s, of which this story reminds me (for obvious reasons). You guys were probably a little too old for it, but it was a really great show and tied in tons of folklore and, weirdly, lots of Shakespeare. Not quite to Batman the Animated Series level of quality, but very good. The head gargoyle (?) was named Goliath and was voiced by Keith David. That's all...nothing insightful to add.

You joke about the difference between 1138 and 1289, but this is one of the more hotly contested periods of European history among medievalists. People either refer to it as the "crisis of the twelfth century" or as the twelfth century Renaissance. The aftermath of the Norman Conquest and the First Crusade saw monumental transformations sweep across western Europe. This was a time when bureaucracy slowly began creeping into the otherwise autocratic governance of monarchs, after the spectacular failures of rulers like King John of England. It was also the age when grand cathedrals and monasteries were built, and I think the Maker of Gargoyle might be riffing on the real-world Basilica of Saint-Denis (finished in 1144). Is this relevant to the Averoigne stories? I'm not sure, but historians gotta historian.

Jeppe Mulich

This has been my favourite month in quite a while. I LOVE CAS!

Alan Ricks

Fun story, but the most surprising take away is that there is apparently a Gargoyle of Grendizer!!! As an anime fan, and a "Super Robot" nerd, I was very pleased by that little but of info

Wulf Mungus