The Curse of Yig

🔀 For the 1953 collection of stories and essays by Zealia Bishop see The Curse of Yig (book)

The Curse of Yig
Full story	online here
Author	Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Cthulhu Mythos
Genre(s)	Horror short story
Publisher	Weird Tales
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𝓦𝐓 "The Curse of Yig" is a 1928 short story by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop in which Yig, "The Father of Serpents", is first introduced.

Background

Bishop supplied the story idea and some notes, paying Lovecraft to flesh them out in 1928. It could be said the tale was "ghost-written"; however, others class it as a "collaboration". Bishop then sold the story under her own name to Weird Tales magazine. It was published first in the November 1929 issue (Volume 14, Number 5) on pages 625-36.

It was the first of three tales Lovecraft wrote for Bishop, the others being The Mound and "Medusa's Coil". In fact, The Mound might be regarded as a sequel to "The Curse of Yig", featuring the same first-person narrator and the same general setting, as well as the return of some secondary characters such as Chief Grey Eagle and Grandma Compton.

Synopsis

Based in Oklahoma around 1889, a newly arrived couple learn about the local legends surrounding a "Snake God", Yig, who takes vengeance on anyone who kills a serpent by killing them or turning them into a half-snake monster. The husband has a snake phobia, which isn't helped by the wife disturbing a nest of rattlesnakes.

The husband and wife go through rituals to keep Yig away, but in the end it fails, and in fear the woman kills her own husband in the dark, thinking he is Yig. She is taken to an asylum, and dies there.... But not before giving birth to a half-snake creature.

Plot Summary

Original Weird Tales illustration by Hugh Rankin

While researching snake lore in 1925, the unnamed narrator finds that while most of the residents of Oklahoma are unwilling to talk, there is a rumor that Dr McNeill is keeping a terrible relic in the Guthrie Asylum.

He is well-received by the aging doctor, who reveals that the relic is in fact a living victim of the curse of Yig. After being taken to see it in the basement, the horrified narrator is gently led back to the doctor's plush office to hear the full story, from the afternoon till late at night. After explaining the local customs surrounding Yig, the Doctor moves on to the story of Walker and Audrey Davis.

In the spring of 1889, public land was opened in Oklahoma, and the Davises left Arkansas to settle north of the Wichita River, with all of their worldly possessions and Wolf (an ancient dog) in a covered wagon pulled by two mules. They made slow progress, but given the time of year, they were unaffected by Walker's crippling fear of snakes. However, after hearing the Legend of Yig from a settler in Okmulgee, he became obsessed with protecting himself against the Serpent god and his minions.

Twenty-two days in, they were forced to shelter from the wind against a cliffside. Searching the rocks, Audrey found a nest of newborn rattlesnakes, which she promptly crushed with a rifle butt. But rather than being reassured, Walker was petrified. He believed that she had angered Yig, and so sought out a Wichita Chief, Grey Eagle, who taught him a long protective charm to ward off evil.

Finally arriving at their plot north of the Wichita River, they began ploughing their land before building a wide-chimneyed one-room log cabin. They soon found friends in the surrounding area, including the nearby Comptons. Sally Compton told Aubrey a story from Scott County about a man who was bitten by so many snakes that his body popped.

By midsummer, the Davises had managed to raise a barn, dig a well, and take in a fair crop without encountering many snakes. Though he would often go to the main Wichita village for advice, they were far from reassuring, and warned him to keep up his prayers when the autumn corn harvest came.

With the constant ritualistic drumming from the village and Walker's chanting, his paranoia began to wear on Aubrey, who became increasingly aggravated. The harvest-home festivities and the fiddle-playing of Lafayette Smith brought a welcome respite, until a Halloween celebration on Thursday, October 31st, when the long hot spell came to an end. By four in the afternoon, a large party, including Laffayette, the Comptons and the Rigbys, crowded the Davises' cabin. After hours of dancing, their guests returned home at 10 o'clock, leaving the Davises alone. After this point, Dr McNeill admitted that the details would become more vague.

Awaking from a dream where Yig appeared to her as the devil, Aubrey found Walker sitting up, listening to a distant cricket-like singing mixed in with the tom-toms. Walker decided that the sound must be varmints outside, and lit a lantern to deal with them, only to find that the floor was covered in an innumerable mass of rattlesnakes. Fainting, Walker fell to the floor and left Aubrey alone in the pitch dark. Panicking, she felt helpless to save Walker and Wolf, wondering why she hadn't been killed first, before realising that as per the curse, she was to be turned into a snake.

As time ticks by, she is unable to utter any protective chants, but still the snakes don't attack. Though she had come to despise it, over the preceding months, she found that when the drumming stopped, the defense against evil was gone. Emerging from the covers to look out of the window, she heard the pop of Walker's venom-filled corpse, and watched as a figure began to block the light of the window and stumble towards her. Terrified, she begs for her life before lashing out with a nearby axe, cutting down the lumbering shape.

The next morning, Sally Compton went to investigate the inactive cabin and found the door unlocked. The light of day revealed that the popping sound had been the bite-covered body of Wolf and not Walker, who in fact hadn't been bitten once, but had instead been hacked to death with an axe. Aubrey lay mindless on the floor. hissing and writhing.

In the following years, she showed brief signs of sanity, but in 1930, she gave birth to four abominations, only one of which survived, and by 1925 is kept in Room B 116.

Yig

Main article: Yig

"Yig, the half-human father of serpents, is a shunned and feared object in central Oklahoma," says the first mention of Yig in literature. "[O]ld settlers shiver at the secret Indian orgies which make the autumn days and nights hideous with the ceaseless beating of tom-toms in lonely places," the story adds.

Yig is "the snake-god of the central plains tribes," and described as

an odd, half-anthropomorphic devil of highly arbitrary and capricious nature. He was not wholly evil, and was usually quite well-disposed toward those who gave proper respect to him and his children, the serpents; but in the autumn he became abnormally ravenous, and had to be driven away by means of suitable rites. That was why the tom-toms in the Pawnee, Wichita, and Caddo country pounded ceaselessly week in and week out in August, September, and October; and why the medicine-men made strange noises with rattles and whistles curiously like those of the Aztecs and Mayas.

The snake-god's chief quality was "a relentless devotion to his children," making it taboo to kill snakes. Those "who flouted him or wreaked harm upon his wriggling progeny" would suffer the "curse of Yig," in which the deity would "turn his victim, after suitable tortures, to a spotted snake." The story summarizes the Yig lore the Davises gather from Wichita elders:

Yig was a great god. He was bad medicine. He did not forget things. In the autumn his children were hungry and wild, and Yig was hungry and wild, too. All the tribes made medicine against Yig when the corn harvest came. They gave him some corn, and danced in proper regalia to the sound of whistle, rattle, and drum. They kept the drums pounding to drive Yig away, and called down the aid of Tiráwa, whose children men are, even as the snakes are Yig’s children.

Characters

1925

• The Narrator - A young American Indian ethnologist who travelled through Guatemala before ending up in Oklahoma in 1925, looking for snake lore that would connect the Aztec deity Quetzalcoatl to the Plains Indian god Yig.
• Dr McNeill - The old, well-read director of the Guthrie Asylum.
• Major Moore - One of the settlers who pointed the narrator towards Dr McNeill.
• The Thing - The only surviving "child" of Audrey Davies, held in room B 116 of the basement of the Guthrie Asylum's east wing. In addition to a terrible stench, it was described as a prone, hairless humanoid, with speckled brown skin on its shoulders, and a flat head with beady black eyes.
• Stevens - One of the three men trusted to feed the Thing and clean out its quarters, until his death a few years before.

1889

Audrey by Amy Abshier

• Walker Davies - A tall thin settler from Franklin County, Arkansas, described as having being sandy with grey eyes. Despite being fairly brave he was mortally afraid of snakes having been warned by an old Native American woman as a child.
• Audrey Davies - Walker's wife, a short, lean woman with straight dark hair. After accidentally killing her husband, her hair greyed and fell out, leaving patches of blotchy skin.
• Old Wolf - Walker's dog, an ancient coyote/shepherd mix.
• Joe Compton - The Davises' neighbour and fellow ex-Arkansan, who lived two miles away and helped Walker to dig his well.
• Sally Compton - Joe's wife and a font of gory snake stories. Known as Grandma Compton by 1925.
• Clyde Compton - The Compton's infant son, who would later go on to be a prominent figure in the state.
• Lafayette Smith - A fiddler from southern Missouri, who lived three miles east of the Davis homestead.
• Tom Rigby - One of Davises' neighbours.
• Jennie Rigby - Tom Rigby's wife.
• Zeke - The Rigby's collie.
• Chief Grey Eagle - The local Wichita leader, who tried to help Walker.

Locations

The locations in the story are more or less real places, mostly in Oklahoma.

1925

• Guthrie - Home to an insane asylum in central Oklahoma.
• Binger - A small village in Caddo County with a railway line passing through. It grew up around the site of the Davises' homestead.

1889

• The Ozarks, Franklin County - The starting point for the Davises, in Arkansas.
• The Indian Territory - A vast area of Oklahoma belonging to the Native American population, opened up for settlement by the American Government. The landscape was made up of roadless red sand and rolling hills.
  • Okmulgee, Creek County - An early stop on the Davises' journey, where they first hear the Yig legend.
  • Kickapoo County
  • Canadian River - After crossing this river, the Davises meet the first of the real Plains Indians: Wichitas.
  • Newcastle - The Davises crossed the Canadian near here.
  • Wichita River - A waterway south of the Davis homestead.
  • New Reno - The nearest town to the Davises, 30 miles down the track to the northeast.

Republication

The story has appeared in a number of horror anthologies, including:

• A Treasury of American Horror Stories, ed. Frank D. McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh & Martin H. Greenberg, Bonanza/Crown Books 1985
• Tales of the Dark #3, ed. Lincoln Child, St. Martin's Press 1988
• The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions, H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham House 1989