"You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?”“It would be a rare place for a gallop.”
“You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?”
“Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest.”
Stapleton laughed. “That is the great Grimpen Mire,” said he. “A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!”
Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion’s nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.
“It’s gone!” said he. “The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It’s a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire.”
“And you say you can penetrate it?”
“Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out.”
“But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?”
“Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.”
The Great Grimpen Mire is the result of me playing with an early (pre 1.5) version of Gbloink! on Windows 3.1.
The sounds are from an original 8-bit SoundBlaster card and fed through a cheap echo FX unit. This gives the three central pieces a squelchy kind of sound as all the chords and instruments are fed through the same "slap-back" effect. Tracks are further muffled through having been recorded initially onto cassette.
The last track, Poisonwood wasn't originally part of this set. In fact, it's the first ever recording from Gbloink!, made in around 1997. Recorded, untreated, straight onto cassette, this track is so early that Gbloink! didn't even have major and minor scales at the time (hence its chromaticism).
Poisonwood is dedicated to the memory of my friend Argi, who was the first recipient of one of my original "unique" (as in, only one copy ever existed) Gbloink! tapes (which this piece began.)