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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doug McCrae" data-source="post: 8327776" data-attributes="member: 21169">Further to <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-problem-with-evil-races-is-not-what-you-think.680980/page-2#post-8320478" target="_blank">my post upthread about a theory of "little people" euhemerism</a> – that European stories about fairies, dwarves, and other "little people" are based on a real, but now extinct, non-white race of small stature that once inhabited the continent – Bobby Derie's blog article <a href="http://onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2019/01/conan-and-little-people-robert-e-howard.html" target="_blank"> Conan and the Little People: Robert E. Howard and Lovecraft's Theory</a> extensively covers Howard and HP Lovecraft's discussion of the topic.Lovecraft first encountered it in the writing of Arthur Machen. But the version that influenced him the most was in Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921). Lovecraft to Lillian D. Clark, Mar 1924:In this book [Witch-Cult...] the problem of witchcraft superstition is attacked from an entirely new angle… an hypothesis almost exactly like the one used by Arthur Machen in fiction… i.e., that there has existed since prehistoric times, side by side with the dominant religion, a dark, secret, and terrible system of worship nocturnally practiced by the peasants and including the most horrible rites and incantations. This worship, Miss Murray believes, is handed down from the squat Mongoloid peoples who inhabited Europe before the coming of the AryansLovecraft and Howard both believed in the theory. Lovecraft to Elizabeth Toldridge, Mar 1929:Prior to the Druids, & to the Aryan race which evolved them, Western Europe was undoubtedly inhabited by a squat Mongoloid race whose last living vestiges are the Lapps. This is the race which bequeathed the hideous witch-cult to posterity, & which lingers in popular folklore in the form of gnomes & kobolds, evil fairies & "little people."Howard to Lovecraft, Aug 1930: "I readily see the truth of your remarks, that a Mongoloid race must have been responsible for the myths of the Little People, and sincerely thank you for the information."Both used it in their published work. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1927):Much of the power of Western horror-lore was undoubtedly due to the hidden but often suspected presence of a hideous cult of nocturnal worshippers whose strange customs—descended from pre-Aryan and pre-agricultural times when a squat race of Mongoloids roved over Europe with their flocks and herds—were rooted in the most revolting fertility-rites of immemorial antiquity.Derie:Robert E. Howard would go on to write more "Little People" stories, some of which sold and others which did not—"The Children of the Night" (WT Apr-May 1931), "The Black Stone" (WT Nov 1931), "The People of the Dark" (Strange Tales Jun 1932), "Worms of the Earth" (WT Nov 1932), and "Valley of the Lost" (also as "The Secret of Lost Valley"). In his fiction, while Howard focused on Machen, Lovecraft focused on Murray, referencing Murray or the witch-cult explicitly in "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Haunter of the Dark," "The Whisperer in Darkness," "The Dreams in the Witch House," and "The Trap" (with Henry S. Whitehead)... Some elements from The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, particularly the calendar-feast, find their way into The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and "The Dunwich Horror"—the great homage to Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan."</blockquote>

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