John the Balladeer

[Charlatan]

http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/03-S ... 87_toc.htm

I read one of these stories as a little kid (Desrick on Yandro) in a short storeis collection called Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Gallery, and recently, in a fit of nostolgia, tried looking up the story online. Lo and Behold, I found it and the rest of a series of stories starring the eponymous bard, the mysterious John the Balladeer, and the rather unusual circumstances he finds himself in, often but not always as a result of his own songs sparking some idea in the heads of his listeners.

These stories aren't quite horror, though curses and oaths and dark supernatural things abound. They are set, as near as I can figure, in the corners of the Appilachian mountains and South. John himself, about which almost nothing is revealed, is an interesting take on a bard. I can't tell if it's just his Bardic Knowledge that helps him out, but he sometimes seems a little more than just a normal bard. There's more than a few hints of 'holy man' or 'supernatural agent' about him, though he's never actually presented as being anything other than regular human with just a little bit of uncanny luck and knowledge of ...irregular things.

Though instersting reading in and of themselves, I thought that the setting and characters of them might be helpful to others creating domains and adventurs based on stores and folklore of the eastern American mountain regions, or Gothic Earth.

[order99]

I have a few of the Silver John novels...the man seems highly knowledgable, well-connected and extremely lucky, but I haven't seen him manifest anything blatantly supernatural. At one point the reader gets to meet the wife John goes on about, the novels always segue into the regional cuisine and local color-the books (and the protagonist) always seem to have both feet firmly entrenched in the mundane world.

If John does have an unearthly ability, it seems to be his unerring sense of timing and location-aka his always finding those supernatural crisis in the making in time to make a difference. This could just be a case of the 'Jessica Fletcher Syndrome' though.

On a related note-see if you can dig up a copy of Manly Wade Wellman's Worse Things Waiting metanthology from the late Carcosa Press. There are things in that tome which will haunt you forever...

Definitely a Wellman fan.