‘The Bowmen’ & ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ – Arthur Machen

‘The Bowmen’ and ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ can be found in the collection ‘The White People and Other Weird Stories’.

I’m always keen to read more ‘Weird Fiction’ as it appears to be a fairly loose definition taking in a lot of genres that perhaps didn’t have a name of their own back in the day. ‘This barbarian fellow fighting monsters in a made up world… bit weird isn’t it?’ 😉 Okay, maybe it didn’t work quite like that but it’s still interesting to see what got lumped in under ‘Weird’ because no-one really knew where to put it. I’d heard that Arthur Machen was a person to read more of, if you wanted to read Weird Fiction’, and as usual, it’s taken me a little while to get round to it but here I am 😊 And also as usual, I had no idea where to start so thought I’d go for a ‘little taster’ and tackle the two shortest stories, in the collection, first…

Perhaps because of the limited space to work with (I believe these stories were originally published in newspapers?), ‘The Bowmen’ and ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ are fairly straightforward ghost stories with the ‘twist’ in the tale signposted early on. The clue is in the title for both tales and that’s really not giving anything away, it’s just a fact.

If you can see what’s coming then, is it really worth reading these tales? I’d say so.

You may have seen what’s coming but Machen’s protagonists don’t and Machen does an amazing job of conveying not only the glimpse into a other-worldly space, existing alongside ours, but also people’s reactions to it. For me, that’s what’s pushed these two stories into the realm of ‘Weird Fiction’, people having to readjust their world view in the face of something that can’t possibly exist but is still there, right in front of them.

It’s also worth reading these two pieces in the context of the time that they were written, namely the First World War. ‘The Bowmen’ in particular is required reading when placing the ‘Angels of Mons’ incident into context. Both pieces also have that air of propaganda about them with the line between good and evil very clearly defined and tales told to stir the blood (and I’m assuming, increase the recruitment intake for the armed services). I really don’t need to tell you who sits on which side of that line, do I?

‘The Bowmen’ and ‘The Soldier’s Rest’ are pieces that are very much ‘of their time’ then and written with a clear purpose in mind. There’s enough ‘Weird’ to them though to have them stand out in other ways too and if they’re anything to go by, I think I could get a lot out of Machen’s longer works. Lets see…