17.3.12

The Banshee wails and brings depressing mortal woe in picture book form on St. Patrick's Day...

For St. Patrick's Day I decided it'd be nice to delve into Irish folklore and write a peppy picture book tale drawing on the rich mythology of the Emerald Isle. I was going to offer up a happy story about Leprechauns but changed my mind and contemplated the question of what happened to the snakes that St. Patrick drove abroad. Does anyone care for asylum seeker snakes? Are refugee lizards - the unfortunate dislocated victims of a religious publicity stunt - a concern for any international NGO?

Unfortunately, these potential story threads got passed over as I ended up writing a mournful tale of the Banshee. The Banshee's wail is an omen of death which I quite like as an idea because I'm a bit morbid like that. Today's writing effort - titled "I Hear the Banshee Howling" - takes that notion and depicts the dying moment of a hermit old woman who lives in apparently the most isolated cottage in Ireland. It's a ghost story yarn and a snapshot of the end of someone's life.

My thoughts are that it's very stark and miserable and after dwelling too long on the inevitability of death I'm eager to write something more fun (maybe Leprechauns would have been a better option). I also think that "I Hear the Banshee Howling" is another case that really, really needs incredible imagery to be effective. On the page it's a stream of words that might strike some as having some kind of poetry or potency about them. What I see in the text are the foundations on which an incredible artist (one who can pull off astounding landscapes and bring forth great emotion and tragedy from their paintbrush or pencils) can work a masterpiece.

It could be a beautiful picture book - potentially a profound memento mori, a hair-raising horror sequence or simply a nice portfolio of sketches of the Irish countryside. Of course it all depends on the artist should any artist take it up.

That then is my attempt to summon up a supernatural chiller and get a touch of Irish folk spirit into affairs to coincide with St. Patrick's Day. It ended up being very depressing. Tomorrow, I think I'm going back to gonzo craziness and slap-happy stupidity after today's excursion into grim mortal rumination. Yes, Leprechauns would have been a good choice...

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