A Song of the Werewolf Folk by Robert E. Howard

“A song of the Werewolf Folk” is a short poem written by Robert E. Howard. It doesn’t appear to have been published until 50 years after he died, when it appeared in Etchings & Odysseys #10, published by The Strange Company on January 1, 1987. Only 1,000 copies were printed.

“A Song of the Werewolf Folk” has since been republished in a few Robert E. Howard anthologies including The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard and The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard.

About Robert E. Howard

Robert Ervin Howard was an American writer of pulp fiction. Often considered to be the man who began the sword and sorcery subgenre, Howard was the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Howard began writing fiction when he was just nine years old. In December 1922, aged 16, his work began paying off when The Tattler (Brownwood High School newspaper) printed two of his stories: “‘Golden Hope Christmas” and “West is West”. Then, in 1924, after years of having his stories rejected by Weird Tales, he made his first sale to the magazine with a caveman story called “Spear and Fang”. This marked the start of Howard’s career as a pulp fiction writer and Weird Tales subsequently became one of his main outlets for weird fiction.

 

A Song of the Werewolf Folk

By Robert E. Howard

(Online Text)

Sink white fangs in the throat of Life,
Lap up the red that gushes
In the cold dark gloom of the bare black stones,
In the gorge where the black wind rushes.

Slink where the titan boulders poise
And the chasms grind thereunder,
Over the mountains black and bare
In the teeth of the brooding thunder.

Why should we wish for the fertile fields,
Valley and crystal fountain?
This is our doom–the hunger-trail,
The wolf and the storm-stalked mountain.

Over us stalk the bellowing gods
Where the dusk and the twilight sever;
Under their iron goatish hoofs
They crunch our skulls forever.

Mercy and hope and pity–all,
Bubbles the black crags sunder;
Hunger is all the gods have left
And the death that lurks thereunder.

Glut mad fangs in the blood of Life
To slake the thirst past sating,
Before the blind worms mouth our bones
And the vulture’s beak is grating.

Robert E. Howard (1906 – 1936)