Click to Subscribe
‘Deeds of Men’
Roundelay of the Roughneck by Robert E. Howard
© 2020 James LaFond
OCT/16/20
Reading from pages 104-107 of a Word from the Outer Dark
Howard admitted in a letter that “roughnecks” had been among the group of men he had used to assemble characteristics from the most dynamic mythic hero in all of human history, Conan the barbarian. I am currently living with a man who worked the oil fields of the north a half century after Howard wrote of the oil workers of the South. He said, “During the Oil Boom Evenstan [Wyoming] was a good place to get punched in the mouth.” According to him the mixture of hardworking and hard-drinking men, sometimes engaged in criminal activity, was “a scary situation.”
Roundelay of the Roughneck is the one poem he wrote about these men.
The poem is structured of 16 verses, all four lines, except for verses 11 and 12 which are of 2 lines each.
Below are some samples:
Verse 2
“Let poets seek the tinted reek,
Perfume of ladies gay,
Of winds of wild outlands I speak,
The lash of far sea spray.”
Verse 4
“Prospector; king of battle ring;
Tarred slave of tide’s behest,
Monarchs of muscle shall I sing,
Lords of the hairy chest.”
In Verse 6 Howard chants his favorite mantra, that real men “mock death,” which echoes down to our extreme sissy age populated by billions of godless souls clinging to miserable life like drugged gods that dread their own tragic end in bitter hatred of the Eternal God living outside of Time. Here Howard reminds in heathen wise that only the hero who dares death has access to Eternity.
Verse 15
“In the marshy swamp, in the jungle damp,
Tall trees in marching lines,
That echo again to the tusker’s tramp,
Where the tiger glides through the vines.”
Verse after verse Howard equated the rough labor of the oil hand on the margins between civilization and the wild places with the life of adventure in far lands. This was not just fancy, as these men did travel to exotic climes in serves to the oil industry and their tales of departure and return seem to have inspired the wanderlust of his mythic heroes who would labor with sword rather than wrench.
The roughneck, perhaps, represents the interaction with lethal habitats by socially obsolete men, which, in this reader’s view must have informed a portion of Howard’s high regard for the barbaric state over the civilized, as the men who serve civilization on its margins tend to mirror the barbarian much more than their distant master.
‘I Chucked the Grind’
book reviews
‘Half Orphans’
eBook
let the world fend for itself
eBook
uncle satan
eBook
song of the secret gardener
eBook
the first boxers
eBook
menthol rampage
eBook
blue eyed daughter of zeus
eBook
your trojan whorse
eBook
the fighting edge
eBook
the year the world took the z-pill
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
sons of aryas
eBook
triumph
eBook
within leviathan’s craw
eBook
son of a lesser god
eBook
america the brutal
eBook
fanatic
eBook
on combat
eBook
into leviathan’s maw
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
ranger?
eBook
the combat space
eBook
barbarism versus civilization
eBook
logic of force
eBook
orphan nation
eBook
broken dance
eBook
the gods of boxing
eBook
under the god of things
eBook
honor among men
eBook
fiction anthology one
eBook
on the overton railroad
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
the sunset saga complete
eBook
songs of aryas
eBook
wife—
eBook
hate
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
the greatest lie ever sold
eBook
advent america
eBook
the greatest boxer
eBook
time & cosmos
eBook
fate
eBook
predation
eBook
night city
eBook
book of nightmares
eBook
when you're food
eBook
taboo you
eBook
all-power-fighting
eBook
solo boxing
eBook
dark, distant futures
eBook
logic of steel
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
z-pill forever
eBook
the lesser angels of our nature
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
beasts of aryas
Shep     Oct 18, 2020

IIRC, the oil fields were where Kirby "The Iron Man" Karnes got his start.
James     Oct 20, 2020

Thanks, I had forgot and had to give the book away!
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message