The Curse of Yig

1929 short story by Lovecraft & Bishop

For the 1953 collection of stories and essays by Zealia Bishop, see The Curse of Yig (book).

"The Curse of Yig"
Short story by H. P. Lovecraft Zealia Bishop
Title page of "The Curse of Yig" as it appeared in Weird Tales , November 1929. Illustration by Hugh Rankin.^[1]
Text available at Wikisource
Country	United States
Language	English
Publication
Published in	Weird Tales
Publication type	Periodical
Media type	Print (magazine)
Publication date	November 1929

"The Curse of Yig" is a 1929 short story^[2] co-written by H. P. Lovecraft and Zealia Bishop that introduces Yig, "The Father of Serpents."^[3]

Plot

[edit ]

In 1889, a couple arriving in Oklahoma learn about local legends of a "snake god" called Yig. According to the legends, Yig takes vengeance on anyone who kills a serpent, either by killing them or turning them into a half-snake monster. The husband, who has intense fear of snakes, is horrified when his wife kills a nest of rattlesnakes at one of their campsites, fearing Yig's vengeance. After building their cabin, the husband insists on practicing various rituals from the native tribes to ward off Yig, which irritates his wife. One night, the woman, in fear, mistakes her husband for Yig and kills him. She is then taken to an asylum, where she dies ... after giving birth to four half-snake creatures.

Background

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Bishop provided the story idea and some notes, and paid Lovecraft to flesh it out in 1928. Bishop then sold the story under her own name to Weird Tales magazine. It was first published in the November 1929 issue (volume 14, number 5) on pages 625–36.

It was the first of three tales Lovecraft wrote with Bishop; the others were The Mound and Medusa's Coil .

Republication

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The story has appeared in a number of horror anthologies, including:

A Treasury of American Horror Stories, ed. Frank D. McSherry, Jr., Charles G. Waugh & Martin H. Greenberg, Bonanza/Crown Books 1985, ISBN 0-517-48075-1
Tales of the Dark #3, ed. Lincoln Child, St. Martin's Press 1988 ISBN 0-312-90539-4
The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions , H. P. Lovecraft, Arkham House 1989 ISBN 0-87054-040-8

References

[edit ]

^ "Publication: Weird Tales, November 1929". ISFDB. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
^ "Publication: Weird Tales, November 1929". ISFDB. Retrieved March 19, 2021.
^ Joshi, S.T.; Schultz, David E. (2004). An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Hippocampus Press. pp. 55–56. ISBN 978-0974878911.

External links

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The Curse of Yig title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
The full text of The Curse of Yig at Wikisource
Online text at hplovecraft.com
The full text of The Curse Yig at Free Classic Short Stories, Novels, Poetry and Books on Writing

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Short stories	"The Beast in the Cave" "The Alchemist" "The Tomb" "Dagon" "A Reminiscence of Dr. Samuel Johnson" "Polaris" "Beyond the Wall of Sleep" "Memory" "Old Bugs" "The Transition of Juan Romero" "The White Ship" "The Street" "The Doom That Came to Sarnath" "The Statement of Randolph Carter" "The Terrible Old Man" "The Tree" "The Cats of Ulthar" "The Temple" "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" "Celephaïs" "From Beyond" "Nyarlathotep" "The Picture in the House" "Ex Oblivione" "Sweet Ermengarde" "The Nameless City" "The Quest of Iranon" "The Moon-Bog" "The Outsider" "The Other Gods" "The Music of Erich Zann" "Herbert West–Reanimator" "Hypnos" "What the Moon Brings" "Azathoth" "The Hound" "The Lurking Fear" "The Rats in the Walls" "The Unnamable" "The Festival" "The Shunned House" "The Horror at Red Hook" "He" "In the Vault" "Cool Air" "The Call of Cthulhu" "Pickman's Model" "The Silver Key" "The Strange High House in the Mist" "The Colour Out of Space" "The Descendant" "History of the Necronomicon" "The Very Old Folk" "Ibid" "The Dunwich Horror" "The Dreams in the Witch House" "The Thing on the Doorstep" "The Evil Clergyman" "The Book" "The Haunter of the Dark"
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Novels	The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
Collaborations	"The Green Meadow" "Poetry and the Gods" "The Crawling Chaos" "The Horror at Martin's Beach" "Under the Pyramids" "The Curse of Yig" The Mound "Medusa's Coil" "The Horror in the Museum" "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" "Out of the Aeons" "The Tree on the Hill" "Till A' the Seas" "In the Walls of Eryx"
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Related	Aklo Dream Cycle Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown (documentary) Sonia Greene (wife) The Thing in the Moonlight
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