by G. W. Thomas
in Issue 128, September 2022
Every fantasy role-playing adventure, many sword & sorcery tales, any number of heroic fantasy comics, all seem to begin in a tavern in an inn. It is one of the traditional tropes of heroic fantasy, right? I have to wonder where this traditional starting point originated. Did Robert E. Howard begin it, as with so many of S&S’s standard ideas? Did he steal it from Lord Dunsany? Or is it all Tolkien’s fault? That is my quest, which I humbly embark upon, having just left the inn of The Prancing Pony….
ROBERT E. HOWARD AND WEIRD TALES
My stratagem is simple: find the first examples and blame them. I scour the pulp tales of Robert E. Howard and find his first s&s character, King Kull too stately to hang out in taverns. Bran Mak Morn is too busy brooding about the Romans. Solomon Kane, that Puritan of England, a God-fearing man does show up in the Cleft Skull Tavern in “Rattle of Bones”(Weird Tales, June 1929) but is Kane really Sword & Sorcery? So then it must be Conan the Cimmerian…
“The Tower of the Elephant” (Weird Tales, March 1933) begins in a tavern in the Maul of Zamora. Conan, asking about the tower, gets in a fight with a Kothian guard, who he kills after the lights are knocked out. Here is the progenitor I sought. This could be the first of all tavern scenes. (More stories start in dark alleys but hey, here’s our first bar!)
This is how Howard described that place:
Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport…Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and wide-thrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamour of drinkingjacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face.
Certain important features stand out: lawlessness, plenty of drinking, gambling, loose women, rough men, and rowdy entertainment. The typical Pulp tavern may have all of these or only select pieces but the feel is the same whether it is a speakeasy in a Noir Mystery or a saloon in a cheesy Western. The salty sailor tale has its own version in the dockside dive or the African adventure where someone at the club tells a tale of dark shadows in the jungle.
FRITZ LEIBER AND UNKNOWN
But we are focused on sword & sorcery, right? All these pulp genres have their bars but the adventurers gathering for daring-do in a drinking establishment feels a little different. The next author after Robert E. Howard was Fritz Leiber, who tried to sell his series to Weird Tales but ended up in John W. Campbell’s Unknown. Fafhrd & Grey Mouser’s first adventure begins after the tavern but “The Bleak Shore” (Unknown, November 1940) begins there. As does “Adept’s Gambit”(Night’s Black Agents, 1947) but a bar on Earth, not Newhon. And “Under the Thumb of the Gods” (Fantastic, April 1975) starts in The Silver Eel, an establishment that is mentioned at the beginning of “Ill-Met in Lankhmar” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1970) but doesn’t start there. To be fair, more Newhon stories start on boats than in taverns.
THE CHILDREN OF CONAN
This sets the pattern for many barbarian tales to come, such as Henry Kuttner’s Elak of Atlantis stories. Kuttner came after Clifford Ball but he is the real prince to the realm of Howard. All of the Elaks begin in a tavern. All of them! “Thunder in the Dawn” (Weird Tales, May 1938) introduces us to all the players while they drink. Elak, the king who doesn’t want to be king. Lycon his sidekick, Dalan the weird druid priest who comes to warn him, Velia, the love interest. Even Elf, the baddie in the tale makes an appearance.
“Spawn of Dagon” (Weird Tales, July 1938) begins just after a fight in a tavern, while “Beyond the Phoenix” (Weird Tales, October 1938) starts in a tavern in Sarhadden. Even “Dragon Moon” (Weird Tales, January 1941) the big finale, starts in a seaside tavern. Is there any mystery why Lycon is usually drunk as a skunk during these adventures?
To make things even more confusing, “The Quest of the Starstone” by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner (Weird Tales, November 1937) brings together two of Moore’s best characters, Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry. That story for Smith, begins in a space bar. (Like so many in that series.) Again we can see this tavern thing isn’t restricted to sword & sorcery. Smith’s space bar comes from both detective fiction and the Western. (It will become Mos Eisley in Star Wars.) I think we can agree, Henry Kuttner may not have invented tavern openings, but he certainly was the guy promoting them after 1940.
PAPERBACK SIXTIES
But it isn’t just in the old pulps like Weird Tales. Michael Moorcock’s Elric tips a drinking cup in “While the Gods Laugh” (Science Fantasy, October/November 1961) and again in “The Stealer of Souls” (Science Fantasy, February 1962). Lin Carter’s Wizard of Lemuria (1965) has Thongor kill his boss, Jeled Malkh, in a tavern in Thurdis. Everything begins with a tankard of sarn wine thrown at the hulking Lemurian. Thongor’s adventures filled seven books. Brak gets in on the tavern action in “The Girl in the Gem” (Fantastic, January 1965) by John Jakes.
The Lancer ’60s have finally arrived and any old barbarian could get in a fight in a tavern. The Players of Hell/(1968) and its sequel, Wizard of Storms (1970) the two Zantain novels by Dave Van Arnam begin in taverns. “The Tavern in the Labyrinth” (1969), a Kothar story, as you might expect from that title, does start in a drinking establishment, as does Kyrik and the Lost Queen (1976) by Gardner F. Fox.
While all these barbarians are hanging out in bars, some of s&s’s greatest characters like Dilvish the Damned never do. All his stories begin with him riding into trouble, just like the horseman of the Western. I suspect this is because Black, his demon-filled metal horse, isn’t allowed indoors.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
While Robert E. Howard was wasting away in the small press collections of the 1950s, the Scholar of Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien was publishing The Lord of the Rings in hard cover in 1954-55. Here again we have taverns making a comeback. The first book The Fellowship of the Ring features both The Green Dragon Inn, (one mile southeast from the bridge over the Water that led to Bag End, The Green Dragon is located in Bywater on the Bywater Road.) where hobbits sit and drink and gossip.
Later on in Bree, The Prancing Pon/ becomes the focus of the adventure. We meet Barliman Butterbur, the host and owner of the establishment. The customers are a rougher lot than at the Green Dragon. Good thing Strider is waiting there even if Gandalf isn’t. Can we say this book starts with a bar scene? No, it’s a birthday party, so there are people gathered and drinking. But I would suggest that Tolkien’s books are so loved that the English pub got a real shot-in-the-arm after The Lord of the Rings. Who wouldn’t want to sit in a pub and drink like a hobbit? The smoking of pipeweed was also popular.
Now to be truly accurate, Tolkien’s influence wasn’t really felt until 1966 when Donald A. Wollheim published the unauthorized edition, forcing John Ronald Reuel to finally get the books into paperback. The results were like magic, giving Lancer good reason to reprint the Conan stories in purple-edged paperback as well. In this way, both Tolkien and Howard created the sword & sorcery/heroic fantasy boom of the late 1960s.
ANDRE NORTON and AD&D
And that boom resulted in Gary Gygax and his pals creating the role-playing game, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons in particular. By 1978, the game was so popular ol’ Gary showed Andre Norton, Princess of Space Opera (since Leigh Brackett is Queen, Andre has to be Princess) how to play. She turned this experience into the first RPG-related novel Quag Keep (1979) And guess what? As the kids from our reality are figuring out their new personas in the fantasy world– they meet in a tavern! The custom is now embedded in fantasy gameplay forever.
Well, it seems my quest is at an end. I shall retire to the cool depths of yon tavern and drink a few pints of Green Dragon ale (the local IPA). Hey, wait! How many sword & sorcery tales end in a bar? Mayhaps, the search goes ever on like with dread Questing Beast calling…
©September 2023, G. W. Thomas
G. W. Thomas is the editor of the popular sword & sorcery anthologies: Swords of Fire. His website, Dark Worlds Quarterly is at www.gwthomas.org