The Valley Was Still

In our weird fiction bookclub, we have been reading stories by Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). One of them is "The Valley Was Still," originally in Weird Tales in August 1939. If you're a fan of The Twilight Zone, you will recognize this story, for it was adapted to that series as "Still Valley," first broadcast on November 24, 1961. Rod Serling wrote the teleplay.

"The Valley Was Still" is set during the Civil War, a conflict its author, a Southerner, might have called the War Between the States. (I have a friend from South Carolina whose father jokingly calls it "the War of Northern Aggression.") I think Wellman was a good writer in general. Some of his stories might be called merely serviceable. Others are inspired. I'm thinking here in particular of his tales of John the Balladeer, who wanders over his native land with his silver-string guitar in hand. "Sin's Doorway" (Weird Tales, Jan. 1946) isn't a John the Balladeer story, but you might call it a proto-John story. It's an excellent story in my opinion and one truly weird. The antagonist Levi Brett's "critter," called Parway, is a creepy and sinister monster. Being a forester, I will have to remember that a hazelnut branch makes an effective weapon against witches and other evil things.

The protagonist in "The Valley Was Still" is a Confederate cavalryman named Paradine. Leaving his spooked companion behind him on the hilltop above, he rides down into a town that has gone completely still. There he finds a large group of Union soldiers frozen in place. He also encounters the cause of this witchcraft, a sorcerer named Teague, who is a seventh son of a seventh son. Teague has cast a spell over the men. He is capable of far more. Teague offers Paradine, and by extension the whole Confederacy, a deal: if Paradine will sign his soul over to the devil (his name never spoken), the South may win the war. Paradine considers:

He imagined the Confederacy as a Faust among nations, devil-lifted, devil-nurtured--and devil-doomed.

And quickly reaches his conclusion:

Better disaster, in the way of man's warfare.

Paradine refuses the deal, and so his war will be lost.

In moral terms, "The Valley Was Still" is not a simple story. Some people might say that the South did in fact make a deal with the devil, that its cause was from the beginning immoral and unjust. Some might say that the Confederacy was not made up of godly men or of true Christians, that by continuing in the evils of slavery they allied themselves with the Enemy. But given a chance to make a true Faustian bargain, Paradine refuses, and so, again, the war is lost to him. (Instead of being a Faustian character, he becomes Quixotic.) In other words, Paradine has his guiding moral principles and moral constraints. He may go only so far and no farther. He proves himself in the end a Christian man and releases the frozen Union troops in the name of Christ "and through the word of God." He and they will soon war with each other once again.

* * *

Wellman's story was in the August 1939 issue of Weird Tales. A month after it appeared, Europe was at war. A year before--exactly a year before, in August 1938--William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called "Under Ben Bulben." The last lines of the poem would be Yeats' epitaph:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by!

In releasing the Union soldiers from their curse, Paradine echoes Yeats' words. I will convert Wellman's prose into verse form:

Ye horsemen and footmen,
Conjured here at this time,
Ye may pass on
In the name of Jesus Christ,
And through the word of God.

It's clear that Manly Wade Wellman was highly literate and widely read. I wonder if he could have read "Under Ben Bulben" before writing his story. The answer is probably not, as "Under Ben Bulben" wasn't published until July 1939 and then only in a limited edition. By then, William Butler Yeats had been six months in his grave.

* * *

I write about this today because of another moral issue that has come to the forefront in America this week. The difference between now and then--between 2022 and 1862--is that there no longer appear to be any moral principles or moral constraints on one side of this issue, which has so much in common with slavery. The people who oppose what is about to happen in our country have apparently made a pact with the devil, or they would if they could in order to keep it from coming about. They seem already to have signed their names in his book, literally in blood. They must fear that their lone, perverted anti-sacrament is at risk and that they will soon no longer be able to ride over the world, dealing death as they go and fully at will. In their words and actions, some of them would even appear demon-possessed.

It's ironic that these things would happen in the week leading up to Mother's Day. Or maybe it's happening at Mother's Day by intent. The people who array themselves against Life have their plans for this weekend. Call it an observance of the first Anti-Mother's Day, in which they will protest or disrupt the Catholic Mass on the true Mother's Day, and on the Sabbath. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. Maybe instead a light will go on before them, maybe the first of lights, maybe a beginning . . .

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley