I’d like to thank Will Oliver for this guest post and apologize for taking so long to get it up and for the funky look of the poetry. Formatting poetry in WordPress is surprisingly nontrivial.

Howard’s originally titled Conan story, “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” saw publication as “Shadows in the Moonlight” in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. In that story, a “great parrot” appears voicing a strange cry:

As she peered timidly into the shadows between the trees, something swept into the sunlight with a swift whirl of wings: a great parrot which dropped on to a leafy branch and swayed there, a gleaming image of jade and crimson. It turned its crested head sidewise and regarded the invaders with glittering eyes of jet.

“Crom!” muttered the Cimmerian. “Here is the grandfather of all parrots. He must be a thousand years old! Look at the evil wisdom of his eyes. What mysteries do you guard, Wise Devil?”

Abruptly the bird spread its flaming wings and, soaring from its perch, cried out harshly: “Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!”‘ and with a wild screech of horribly human laughter, rushed away through the trees to vanish in the opalescent shadows.

And later, the same “Wise Devil” again issues forth that same haunting cry:

Night-birds murmured slumberously. The yells of slaughter dwindled behind them, masked in the distance to a confused jumble of sound. Somewhere a parrot called, like an eery echo: “Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!” So they came to the tree-fringed water’s edge and saw the galley lying at anchor, her sail shining white in the moonlight. Already the stars were paling for dawn.

H.P. Lovecraft apparently read the story and praised it in a non-extant letter. Howard then replied in a July 1934 letter,

Thanks for the kind things you said about my “Shadows in the Moon-light.” (My original title was “Iron Shadows in the Moon.”) I’m afraid I can’t claim originality in regard to the parrot and his repetition of the god’s invocation. I got the idea from a poem of Noyes’, entitled, I believe, “The Parrot.”

Alfred Noyes

“Noyes” is, of course, Alfred Noyes (September 16, 1880—June 25, 1958), most famous for his poems “A Song of Sherwood” and “The Highwayman.”

In that letter, Howard also shared some of the poem with Lovecraft in which he prefaced it by telling him, “As I remember, it goes something like this . . .

"When the king and his folk lay dead,
     And  the murderous horde was gone,
He gnawed through his cage and fled
     To the sheltering woods alone.

But after an endless age,
     He was taken by man once more;
And swung in a sturdier cage
     By a white-washed ale-house door.

Through the long hot afternoon,
     From his place by the blistered wall,
He whistled a dark old tune,
     And called as a ghost might call:

“Farlo, merillo, geray!”
     And the wondering people heard
The voice of the dead that day
     Talking again in a bird."

Howard adds one additional stanza that he was especially fond of, telling Lovecraft, “The poem ends on what seems to me a powerful and shuddersome note:

"And once, oh dreadful and wild,
     In the blaze of the noonday sun,
It shrieked like a frightened child
     That into the dark has gone.

“I don’t know whether I’ve quoted it correctly or not,” Howard wrote, “But shucks, you’ve probably read it anyway. Noyes is one of my favorites. I like the music of drums and wind-harps that throbs through so much of his poetry.”

So, how accurate was Howard’s memory of the poem? Here is the poem reprinted from Noyes’ Dick Turpin’s Ride and Other Poems (Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1927):

THE PARROT

When the king and his folk lay dead,
  And the murderous hordes had gone,
He gnawed through his cage and fled
  To the swallowing woods alone;
But, after an endless age,
  He was taken by man once more;
And swung in a sturdier cage
  By a sun-bleached wine-house door.

And there, on a hot white noon,
  From his place on the blistered wall,
He whistled a dark old tune
  And called, as a ghost might call,
Farlo—Merillo—Rozace,
  With a chuckle of impish glee,
The words of the vanished race
  That none knew now but he.

Farlo—Merillo—Geray!
  And the spell-struck listeners heard
The tongue of the dead that day
  Talking again in a bird;
And his eyes were like blood-red stones,
  For round him the wise men drew,
And coaxed him with terrapin bones
  To tell them the words he knew.

Sleek as a peach was his breast,
  His long wings green as palms;
Then, beggar-like, whine for alms;
  And, whiles, like a girl in flight
He’d titter, then mimic a kiss,
  And chuckle again with delight
In that wicked old way of his.

He’d courtesy low, and he’d dance
  On his perch, and mockingly leer,
And stiffen himself and prance
  For the grey-beards listening there;
And once—O, dreadful and wild,
  In the blaze of that noonday sun,
He shrieked, like a frightened child
  That into the dark had gone.

Overall, the two were very similar. However, there are some noted differences in Howard’s recollection. The first, and my favorite change, is when he recalls Noyes’ “By a sun-bleached wine-house door” as “By a white-washed ale-house door.” Sun-bleached versus white-washed creates very different imagery and since we know Howard loved his beer, the change to “ale-house door” is one difference a Howard fan can appreciate.

The next difference comes with Noyes line “And there, on a hot white noon,” in which Howard changed it to “Through the long hot afternoon.” In this case, Noyes’ line creates a better word play, though both still convey the same thing.

Howard then skips a section of Noyes’ poem, so we miss the near-repetition of the parrot’s words. However, he does recall these two lines by linking the introduction to Noyes’ first use of the parrot’s words to the second. And while Noyes’ line after the second usage is “And the spell-struck listeners heard,” Howard recalls it as “And the wondering people heard,” which rolls a little neater than Noyes’ line, or at least it simplifies it.

The only other difference noted is Howard does not capitalize the mysterious words of the parrot (save for the first word in the sentence), while Noyes’ does, which suggests they are probably people’s names.

In any event, Howard’s usage of the Noyes’ poem demonstrates Noyes’ contribution to the story of Howard’s most popular character.

Will Oliver, in the words of Robert E. Howard, is just “some line-faced scrivener,” who has been a fan of the greatest pulp author since discovering him in 1979. He is a member of REHupa, has published on Howard in The Dark Man: The Journal of Robert E. Howard, and is currently at work on a biography of his life and times.