by Benjamin Lomax

Created on: November 24, 2010

“Moon-Bog” is a short story by the creator of the Cthulhu mythos, second only to Edgar Allen Poe as the master of macabre short fiction, H.P. Lovecraft. It was written in early 1921 and originally published in Weird Tales Magazine in June of 1926 and reprinted in The Lurking Fear and other stories collection in 1971.

This story has a very strong ancestral heritage slant, focused particularly on Ireland via the protagonist, an Irish American named Denys Barry, who became wealthy in America and was able to pursue his dream of buying back and restoring his ancestral estate in Ireland. The story was written with a particular affinity for its audience (unusually attentive to that information as Lovecraft typically was), a gathering of amateur journalists in Boston for St. Patrick’s Day.

Barry returns to Kilderry (a fictitious town in Ireland) and purchases the keep that belonged to his ancestors, greeted with great joy by the locals with his promise to employ them in the work it will take to restore the structure. But this joy meets with displeasure when he announces his plan to drain the nearby bog to create more arable land, a response that astounds Barry. Ignoring their resistance, he goes forth with the plan. The local construction workers and then the household servants begin to abandon him, disappearing in the night, whispering of ominous portents.

Indeed Barry and the American friend he invites to join him (who narrates the story) soon begin to experience sounds and visions of a most supernatural bent, all of which appear to originate from the bog. The American looks out the window late at night and witnesses the bog-wraiths dancing with the hypnotized locals and laborers in rhythmic patterns. Gradually Barry goes mad and dashes off into the bog to dance with the spirits therein, never to be seen again.

The story relates directly to Lovecraft’s own desire to buy back his ancestor’s home in England and is similar to a work by Alfred Lord Dunsany called “The Curse of the Wise Woman” and with Lovecraft’s affinity for Dunsany it likely inspired this story. This is an interesting take on the modern (then and now) American lack of respect for history in the pursuit of their own interests, and the response of spiritual elements older than we can conceive. The story is only slightly horrific and more introspective, well worth the short read.

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