Tag Archives: yule goat

Hopeless Tales

The piper at the gates of dusk

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Did you see Mark Hayes come dancing through the streets last night? The church bell hammered out a lonely chime for the solstice, as night consumed the town. Did you watch from your window, as he moved between the pools of light? His trousers were full of the patterns of darkness, and they did not move in accordance with his dance.

Like the pied piper he went, only I’m fairly sure what he had there was a slightly out of tune crumhorn. The Yule Goats loved it. I heard the clatter of their bones upon the cobbles, I witnessed their monstrous cavorting as they passed through the brighter spaces nearer to the lamps.

What will we do if ever those lamps go out? That blessing of protection from the worst abominations of the darkness. I wish I knew how the lamps work, so that I could contribute to their ongoing light. But even so, I was not thankful that I could see the bone goats.

I followed after them. Some of us felt that compulsion, in the wailing call of the pipe and the horror of bones in motion. Some of us – a mere handful of troubled souls – followed them all as they made their winding journey. We had to know what would follow, no matter how terrible it might be.

They came to that place where witches have been burned. There, the bone goats fell upon Mark Hayes. He made no resistance as they devoured him. How bones could consume, I do not know, and yet they fed. Where they fed, they grew, becoming fleshy themselves, then in turn to be torn apart by other goats in an orgy of mutual consumption. In the end, only one goat remained, bigger by far than all that had preceded it. This goat leapt into the night, running across roofs before disappearing from sight.

Nothing remained of Mark Hayes, but the fallen crumhorn and those cursed trousers.

But then, this is not the first time he’s died so frankly all bets are off.

Hopeless Tales

The horror of goats

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Stop, I beg you. Stop making these monstrosities and leaving them, in the streets. This morning I found one on my windowsill. They are everywhere now, multiplying in unspeakable ways. I am afraid that somehow they are able to recreate themselves, an onslaught of uncanny entities rising up as an army.

And yet I think you are making them, my fellow islanders. You are decking some of them with cheerful ribbons and setting them out before your own homes as though these bones could be festive.  Does no one else look at this hideous things and think of their own bones? Are they not an expression of mortality? An invitation to death?

I have nightmares that if I died in the street someone might truss me up in ribbons and display me as a bone goat. Yet the children laugh gleefully over these horrible things. I hear them chanting that the Yule Goat is coming. The Yule Goat. The Bone Goat. The Hungry Ones in ribbons.

I’m sure this is Mark Hayes’s doing, or that he is driven onwards by his most accursed ancestral trousers. Whenever I see that troubling weave, the dark that is too dark, the cloth that seems to watch you, I feel my skin prickle with apprehension. In my nightmares he leads the flock of bone goats, and they dance for him.

(Text by Nimue. The bone goat image started life as something Nimue made, and that Keith has developed digitally. There is no doubt that it exists purely because of Mark’s cursed trousers.)

Hopeless Tales

An appeal to common sense

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Our resident folklore expert, Idris Po has come forward to comment on this year’s sudden craze for Yule Goats.

He states that the small ones should be made from dried grain stalks, and should not in fact contain seaweed. No part of them should move of its own free will. The faces should be arranged to suggest sweetness, not to imply some kind of deranged nightmare beast. Po comments that the use of fish bones as a raw material, with fish guts as a binding – while innovative – really isn’t in keeping with tradition. The pungency isn’t in the least bit festive.

Traditionally, larger Yule Goats are made of straw and rope. At least, he hopes that the current construction on he green is intended to be a Yule Goat.

Having seen the aforementioned construction, I remain uncertain about it. Granted, some of our goats do have very large, and alarming mouths. Creatures of Hopeless typically have three to five limbs, so again this may not be cause for alarm. It’s the metal cage on the inside that worries me, and no one I talked to was willing to discuss why the (maybe) Yule Goat has a metal cage inside it.

It would be nice, I feel if this year we could break with tradition and get through winter without some sort of community murder project. I know they aren’t usually deliberate, but the Yule Goat has death by misadventure written all over it. And other things, although you have to get in rather uncomfortably close to read the text on the fabric scraps.

(text by Nimue, image by Nimue and Keith)

Hopeless Tales

The Yule Goat may be coming

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Last year’s Yule Goat Extravaganza turned out to be a sorry little event. Only three of us went along and at the time it hardly seemed newsworthy. Putting bells on a goat barely counts as festive, and as the goat escaped within a few minutes of my arrival there wasn’t much spectacle at all. I only mention it now because rumour has it that a new Yule Goat Extravaganza will happen this year. Even bigger and better than last year! Which in fairness is a really low set bar.

The rumours are at present short on details. Will we set fire to the Yule Goat? Will the Yule Goat set fire to us? Or instead, will the head of the Yule Goat explode in a sudden burst of utter darkness from which the tentacles of a ravening elder god will inevitably emerge?

Those of you who were only driven temporarily mad by the whole business with the Yule Rabbit a few years ago have every reason to feel cautious. There’s often a fine line between well meant community activities and accidently starting a cult and summoning something unspeakable. And potentially unreasonably amorous. I still have nightmares.

Perhaps we could ditch the festive chanting this year? Could those attending find it in their hearts to leave all cursed family heirlooms at home, refrain from bringing occult texts and keep the morris dancing to an absolute minimum. Thank you.