EP No. 19 — The 6th Song: “The Beast of Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith”

Much like the corpus of our favorite TV Show/Movie/Franchise/Intellectual Property/… “Art”, this story has something of a tortuous production background, interference from the studio…er, the publisher (Weird Tales) resulted in at least two versions, and later editors have combined these in various arrangements. A number of synopsizes further confuse the issue of original authorial intent, and so we present here Clark Ashton Smith’s masterful tale, “The Beast of Averoigne” as originally printed in the May 1933 issue of WEIRD TALES. Many thanks to The Eldritch Dark for their work in preserving and presenting Smith’s tales, poems and other writings to the greater public through their website http://www.eldritchdark.com/ as well as the tireless efforts of Karl Eckler the Elder, who lent his time, patience and voice to this recording. This reading is presented here both as a surprise Hallowe’en Treat to our listeners, but also because over the last 18 numbers of Twin Peaks, we have learnt well that, “strange abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the galaxies; and the gulf is haunted by that which it were madness for man to know.” What seems at first a simple werewolf tale in disguise hints at a meaning as deep and old as the stars, and the dark between them, which is the dark in the woods and the human heart. Enjoy!