The Desrick on Yandro (fiction)

• title: The Desrick on Yandro
• author: Manly Wade Wellman
• publication: 1952
• pages: ~11
• setting: Folk Mythos

Summary

John the Balladeer (AKA Silver John or Hillbilly John), while singing a folk-song to city-folk about the desrick on Yandro (an old-fashioned fortified shack on a mountaintop named after the family that owns it) attracts the interest of greedy, skeptical, and sneering Mr. Yandro, who, upon learning that his ancestor had generations before abandoned a wealth of gold on the mountain top to jilt the love of a witch who lived in a cabin there, coerces John into accompanying him to the top of the Yandro mountain, braving the unnatural dangers of the remote mountaintop, to enter the witch's desrick cabin and claim the gold, the only thing Mr. Yandro truly believes in. John agrees, and, honor-bound, guides Mr. Yandro to the cabin, where Mr. Yandro meets an unnatural doom....

Spoilers

Synopsis

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John the Balladeer (AKA Silver John or Hillbilly John), while singing a folk-song to city-folk about the desrick on Yandro (an old-fashioned fortified shack on a mountaintop named after the family that owns it) attracts the interest of greedy, skeptical, and sneering Mr. Yandro, who, upon learning that his ancestor had generations before abandoned a wealth of gold on the mountain top to jilt the love of a witch who lived in a cabin there, coerces John into accompanying him to the top of the Yandro mountain, braving the unnatural dangers of the remote mountaintop, to enter the witch's desrick cabin and claim the gold, the only thing Mr. Yandro truly believes in. John agrees, and, honor-bound, guides Mr. Yandro to the cabin, where Mr. Yandro meets an unnatural doom at the claws of the supernatural beasts of the woods, and the witch's ghost, who has been waiting for generations for her greedy lover - whom Mr. Yandro resembles exactly - to return to her.

Associated Mythos Elements

• film: adapted as part of Legend of Hillbilly John (1974 film)...
• setting: Folk Mythos
• character John the Balladeer
• races:
  • Witch
  • Haints
  • Bammat (not to be confused with Behemoth)
  • Behinder
  • Culverin
  • Flat (race)
  • Skim (race)
  • Toller
• family: Yandro (for home the mountain is named)
• location: a mountain "desrick" (an old-fashioned word for an old-fashioned sort of cabin designed as a fortification against savage natives and beasts of the woods)

See Also

External Links

Link to outside reviews or helpful pages.

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