Approximately two hours before dawn
Ranwick Sorgente follows a small stream uphill. Stream passes under "hopefully its last road culvert." Climbing layered rocks with small cedar trees.
Ranwick Sorgente, "a primordial man" whose surname means "spring" in Italian, has spent fifty years seeking water-springs—"about ten thousand of them." Arriving at a new spring in hill country, he encounters Crescentia Houseghost, the spring's pegeid (Lafferty's coinage for spring-nymphs of "heroic dimensions"), and her husband Cliveden, a geologist studying the artificial nature of the world.
Over thirty-six hours, the story unfolds a radical cosmology: what we call "natural" is actually artificial—structured, patterned, "unspoiled" from primordial chaos. The truly natural state is tohu wa-bohu, the "formless and void" of Genesis 1:2, which Lafferty renders in the Vulgate Latin as "insane and inane." Springs without their iron throats would be deadly quagmires. Crescentia without her implanted "psycho-monitor" drowns children.
"Springs are incomplete. I can complete some of them a little bit. That is what love is, to me."— Ranwick Sorgente
The story inverts the natural/artificial binary. Creation is not corruption of an original purity but rescue from original horror. The world is a "rhapsody"—a sewn-together composition—maintained by ongoing intervention. "The Hymn became Flesh and dwelt amongst us," Graystone's notes read, transposing John 1:14 into geology.
The narrative operates on four temporal layers simultaneously: the narrative present (approximately thirty-six hours across two days); recent backstory (Nigel Graystone's drowning about a year ago, Crescentia's week-long release); Ranwick's history (fifty years of spring-seeking, ten thousand love affairs); and cosmological time (primordial chaos → Mesozoic stabilization → ongoing maintenance).
The narrative moves through time in three directions simultaneously: forward through the plot (thirty-six hours of narrative present); backward through revelation (each conversation uncovers deeper history); and downward through strata (surface → underground; present → Mesozoic → primordial chaos).
The throat as locus of control. Both springs and their pegeids are controlled through their throats—iron pipes for the water, an electronic "psycho-monitor" for Crescentia. The throat is where speech emerges, where creative/chaotic potential is regulated at its source. In Genesis, God creates by speaking; to control the throat is to regulate creative potential at its source.
Love as completion. Ranwick's love for springs participates in the cosmic project of structuring the incomplete. But the springs have already been completed by others—"You've been had." His love is always for the already-bitted, the already-throttled. This echoes Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics: potency completed by act, matter completed by form.
Drowning as return to chaos. Crescentia's drownings are ritual sacrifice—she "believes that the springs want them." She is an unchanneled quagmire in human form, reverting to the pre-structured state where water kills rather than sustains.
| Surface Layer | Deep Layer |
|---|---|
| Crescentia's madness | Primordial chaos |
| Psycho-monitor in throat | Iron pipe in spring throat |
| Drowning children | Quagmires drowning men |
| "Funny house" (asylum) | Unspoiled chaos ("insane and inane") |
| Cliveden's jealousy | The world's jealous structure |
| Graystone's drowning | Pattern of death by water |
| Ranwick bitting/bridling Crescentia | World-maintainers bitting/bridling chaos |
The story's action spans approximately thirty-six hours across two days.
| Event | Temporal Reference | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Nigel Graystone's visit | Before approximately one year ago | Wrote "Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic" notes during stay |
| Graystone's drowning | "About a year ago" | Cliveden reports he "drowned"—by Crescentia? By quagmire? Unspecified |
| Crescentia's institutionalizations | Ongoing pattern | "It becomes harder and harder to get her out each time" |
| Crescentia's latest release | Approximately one week before Day One | "I have had her home only a week this time" |
| Other "accidental visitors" | Unspecified | "I seem to collect visitors who fit in with my subject of study" |
| Crescentia's previous drownings | Unspecified | Children (known to authorities); men (unknown to authorities) |
The "Week" Frame. Crescentia has been home "only a week." Within that week: other visitors (implied), Crescentia's children hunts (implied), men drowned (implied, undiscovered), Ranwick's two-day visit. The week functions as a compressed cycle of the longer pattern: release → love affair → violence → institutionalization.
"Ranwick Sorgente"—Sorgente is Italian for "spring" or "source." He is called "a primordial man" in the opening line. His name marks him as kindred to—perhaps identical with—his objects of love. He does not merely seek springs; he is one.
| Event | Temporal Reference | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Beginning of spring-seeking | Approximately fifty years before present | "Fifty years I've been having these affairs with them" |
| Regret | Implied earlier period | "I only regret that I didn't seek them out sooner" |
| Conversation with seaman | "Last month" | "A rock is just like a wave, only very much slower" |
| Street preacher's sermon | Unspecified | Flood as "returning of water to its chaotic state" |
| Accumulation of springs | Ongoing | "About ten thousand of them, I believe" |
The number "ten thousand" is approximate and symbolic. Three moments: early (to Crescentia), "About ten thousand of them, I believe"; evening (in the lodge), "he now loved her like the ten thousand and first spring"; and the final line, "The latest love, the ten thousandth love, is always the strongest one." The arithmetic is deliberately imprecise. "Ten thousand" functions as a figure for plenitude (cf. "the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills," Psalm 50:10). The final pegeid is simultaneously the ten-thousandth and the ten-thousand-and-first—each "latest love" is "always" the culmination.
| Period | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Before time | Primordial chaos: Inanis et vacus (Genesis 1:2, Vulgate) | Cliveden |
| Before time | "The simple did not come first. The murderous confusion and complexity came first" | Cliveden |
| Before time | "Spoiled and stripped . . . the original case" | Cliveden |
| Before time | "The underlying emptiness is too spoiled to be comprehended by any of the senses" | Cliveden |
| Event | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Middle Mesozoic | "A second stabilization or unspoiling" | Graystone notes |
| Middle Mesozoic | "Disguised as a series of massive vulcanisms" | Graystone notes |
| Middle Mesozoic | "A contrived, intrusive, artificial concretion of most strategic economy" | Graystone notes |
| Middle Mesozoic | "The time of the latest resurrection of our present world body" | Graystone notes |
| Result | "We still live on that deposit of stability and patterning" | Graystone notes |
Cliveden's metallurgical survey implies distinct epochs of world-maintenance by different (or evolving) agencies:
| Stratum | Material | Implication |
|---|---|---|
| Oldest | "Tubes and channels of chalcedony and agate rock" | Pre-metallic maintenance |
| Very old | "Iron-stones which are queer alloys of metals and stones that cannot be natural" | Transitional technology |
| Old | "The earlier bronzes" | Bronze-age maintenance (predating human bronze by vast spans) |
| 250,000 years or more | "Good bronze that had to be a quarter of a million years old at least" | Ranwick's personal observation |
| Recent | "Quite recent iron and steel and chromed metals" | Modern or near-modern maintenance |
| Last thirty years | "Modern commercial pipe" in spring throats | Ongoing, possibly human-scale maintenance |
The maintenance of world-structure is continuous and multi-layered. Different materials suggest different eras of intervention—but by whom? Cliveden asks: "We ask who did all this; we ask who was here before us, and who may be here yet."
| Period | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Antiquity | Megalithic constructions: Peru, Mexico, Anatolia, India, Angkor, Malta | Cliveden |
| Antiquity | Stones "so soft and malleable, almost liquid, when fitted"—poured like concrete | Cliveden |
| Last five thousand years | "Strategic mountain repair" | Ranwick |
| Last five days | "Strategic water repair" | Ranwick |
| Last thirty years | Modern iron pipe in springs | Ranwick's discovery |
| Event | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| The Flood | "A returning of water to its chaotic state" | Street preacher |
| The Flood | "Not more water than always . . . but the ordered water breaking its bonds" | Street preacher |
| The Flood | "The fountains of the deep burst forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened" | Street preacher (cf. Genesis 7:11) |
| Warning | "Should such an unstructuring happen again today, then such a flood would also happen again today" | Street preacher |
Sorgente: Italian for "spring, source, fountainhead." From Latin surgere, "to rise." Ranwick: Possibly from Old English elements: rand (rim, shield-edge) + wīc (dwelling, farm). Or a constructed name suggesting "boundary-place."
"A primordial man" who has spent fifty years seeking water-springs—"about ten thousand of them." His surname identifies him with his objects of love. He is not merely old but elemental, perhaps as old as the springs themselves. His name suggests he may be a personification or spirit of springs generally, the male counterpart to the female pegeids.
He loves springs for their incompleteness: "Springs are incomplete. I can complete some of them a little bit. That is what love is, to me." In the dream sequence, he bits and bridles the chaotic Crescentia—"a sorrowful thing to have to do." He participates in the cosmic work of structuring chaos even as he mourns the necessity.
Crescentia: Latin crescentia = "growing things," present participle of crescere (to grow, increase). Related to "crescent" (the growing moon). A medieval saint's name (St. Crescentia of Kaufbeuren). Houseghost: A ghost bound to a house. The compound suggests a spirit that haunts domestic space—the lodge. Are Crescentia and Cliveden ghosts? Spirits? The name leaves their ontological status uncertain.
Pegeid of the spring, wife of Cliveden, drowner of children and men. She is "too tall and too angular, too bony, too large of hand and foot, too long of thigh and of arched neck. Her eyes were just a little bit awry; one of them was slightly crossed. Her mouth was always crooked with its smile." She is "barefooted and boisterous," a "water colt," a "long-legged bay colt of heroic size." Her affection is "lavish" and "slurpy"; she carries Ranwick on her back, laps his face "as if she were a mother cat."
A spring-spirit named "Growth" or "Increase"—apt for the spirit of a gushing fountain. But also ominous: Crescentia's growth is uncontrolled, her exuberance dangerous. Without her throat-monitor, she grows chaotic.
In her throat: "A small control there. It was apparently electronic. It had wires. It ticked. It had Crescentia under its control." This "psycho-monitor" is "a sort of electronic conscience. Crescentia has no other sort of conscience." "She drowns children. She doesn't really mean anything by it. She believes that the springs want them." She is the quagmire in human form—the unstructured water that kills rather than sustains.
Cliveden: From Old English clif (cliff, slope) + denu (valley). A place-name meaning "valley among cliffs." Also the name of a famous English estate (Cliveden House, Buckinghamshire). A geological name for a geologist—the man who studies rocks is named for a cliff-valley. His surname "Houseghost" binds him to the lodge. He is a spirit of the place, studying the spirits of the rocks.
Geologist, metallurgist, husband of Crescentia. He works for the Bureau of Minerals and studies the artificial structure of the world—the bronzes and iron-stones and chalcedony channels that skewer the hills together. He "seems to collect visitors who fit in with my subject of study." Previous visitors have left folders of notes; Ranwick is assigned one. The pattern suggests Cliveden is either a researcher or a predator—perhaps both.
He knows what Crescentia is: "My wife, as you may have noticed, is insane. But she is harmless. That is to say, in all minor matters she is harmless." He conceals her murders of men: "They find out about the children, but they don't find out about the men she drowns." His confession to Ranwick is ambiguous: "I am very jealous, Ranwick. I wish she'd done it. I wouldn't have prevented it, and I didn't prevent others." Does he feed her victims? Or merely fail to stop her?
Nigel: From Latin Nigellus, diminutive of niger (black). "Little black one." Graystone: Gray + stone. A mineralogical surname. The author of "Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic" is named for stone—gray stone, between black and white, like the sedimentary layers he describes.
A previous visitor, now dead. He "drowned about a year ago"—almost certainly killed by Crescentia, though the story does not say so explicitly. His death by drowning fits the pattern: those who learn too much about the artificial world may be reclaimed by its chaotic substrate.
He left behind "Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic," notes describing the world as artificial construction: "[Ours] is a sewn-together world, and the word for 'sewn-together' is 'rhapsody.' . . . The Hymn became Flesh and dwelt amongst us." His notes are "very detailed. One could almost, by following the directional hints given in these notes, build and detail a world of one's own." They are scripture disguised as geology.
The spirit of the final spring. She remains hidden in the deep water throughout Day Two, communicating only through "stirring in the deep water." She is "cautious of the mad giantess" and will not emerge while Crescentia is present.
After Crescentia is taken away, Ranwick pulls the iron pipe from the spring's throat—"modern commercial pipe. It isn't thirty years old"—and the pegeid finally rises. "The latest love, the ten thousandth love, is always the strongest one."
From Latin primordialis ("first of all"), the term evokes archetypes of the cosmic or original man: Adam Kadmon in Kabbalah (the first spiritual human from whom reality unfolds), Purusha in the Vedas (the cosmic giant whose sacrifice creates the world). Ranwick is thus positioned as elemental, quasi-mythic—a modern Adam seeking nature's first wonders. The adjective also connects to "primordial chaos" and "primordial soup," the earliest states of existence. A primordial man should seek primordial things; Ranwick seeks untouched springs.
Sorgente: Italian for "spring, source, fountainhead" (from Latin surgere, "to rise"). His surname marks him as kindred to his objects of love—the man is literally named for what he seeks.
Ranwick: Possibly Old English rand (rim, shield-edge) + wīc (dwelling, often near water); or suggestive of "running water" (ran + wick). The Norse sea-goddess Rán, who captures drowned men in her net, shares the syllable. Either way, "Ranwick Sorgente" reads almost as "Water Source"—a name encoding essence, as in myth and fairy tale where names reveal nature.
Crescentia: Latin crescentia = "growing things" (from crescere, to grow). Related to "crescent" (the waxing moon)—lunar imagery for a water spirit tied to natural cycles. St. Crescentia of Kaufbeuren (c. 1682–1744) was a Bavarian mystic; an earlier St. Crescentia was a fourth-century martyr—a saintly echo for a spring spirit. The meaning suits a gushing fountain: growth, increase, exuberance. But Crescentia's growth is uncontrolled; without her monitor, she crescendos into chaos.
Houseghost: A spirit bound to a house. In folklore, house spirits (Roman lares, British brownies, Slavic domovoi) guard domestic spaces. The name leaves Crescentia's ontological status uncertain—human, ghost, or elemental?—and marks her as resident spirit of the lodge and its springs. "Houseghost" also winks at the haunted reputation of grand estates; Crescentia and Cliveden "haunt" the Bureau's lodge like benign ghosts (until they aren't benign).
Cliveden: From Old English clif (cliff) + denu (valley): "valley among cliffs." Also the name of Cliveden House, a famous English estate in Buckinghamshire associated with intrigue and ghost stories. The Cliveden Set was a notorious interwar social circle accused of Nazi appeasement. More notoriously, Cliveden was the site of the 1963 Profumo Affair—a sex scandal involving a cabinet minister that brought down a government. The name thus carries connotations of secret liaisons, appropriate for a story titled "Love Affair." A geological name for a geologist: the man who studies rocks is named for a cliff-valley.
Combined with "Houseghost," he becomes a spectral steward of a grand, hidden place, half gentry-scientist dabbling in alchemy, half genius loci (spirit of place). His role as a jealous husband who permits murders echoes Gothic literature's master of the haunted house.
Nigel: From Latin Nigellus, diminutive of niger (black). Graystone: Gray + stone. The author of "Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic" is named for sedimentary rock—gray, between black and white, like the layers he describes. His death by drowning fits the pattern: those who learn too much about the artificial world may be reclaimed by its chaotic substrate. (Crescentia probably killed him; Cliveden admits as much.)
From Greek πηγή (pēgē, "spring, fountain") + the nymph-suffix -id (as in Nereid, Oread, Naiad). Though Lafferty presents it as his coinage, Pegaeae does appear in some classical sources as a term for spring nymphs—Lafferty likely knew this and anglicized it. Naiads (from νάω, "to flow") were general freshwater nymphs, but Lafferty distinguishes pegeids as specifically spring-spirits, larger and more primal—"of heroic dimensions." The term situates Crescentia in Greek nymph lore while marking her as something grander: not woman-sized but giant.
The Vulgate translation of Genesis 1:2: Terra autem erat inanis et vacua ("And the earth was formless and void"). The Hebrew is tohu wa-bohu (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ)—primordial chaos before creation.
Lafferty's use. Cliveden applies this to "perfectly natural" places that remain unpatterned. The joke—"God's original Latin"—is characteristic irony (Latin is Jerome's translation, not the original), but the theological point is serious: the primordial state is not Edenic but chaotic, "insane and inane," lethal. Creation is rescue from original horror, not corruption of original purity.
Theological tradition. This inverts Romantic nature-worship while aligning with orthodox cosmology: the world requires continuous divine maintenance. Compare Augustine on evil as privation, Thomistic creatio continua, and cosmogonies where order emerges from chaos (Babylonian Tiamat, Greek Chaos preceding Gaia).
Genesis 7:11, nearly verbatim. The street preacher's interpretation: the Flood was not additional water but "the ordered water breaking its bonds"—a return to chaotic state. This reframes the Flood as structural failure rather than punitive inundation. The "fountains of the deep" become the world's plumbing system rupturing.
Implication. If the Flood was water's unstructuring, then spring-throats are post-diluvian repair. The preacher's concern with physics (no new water created—conservation of mass) finds a solution in myth's own terms: water was always there, just unleashed. Crescentia's drownings are micro-floods; her rampage threatens societal chaos.
John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (Et Verbum caro factum est). Graystone substitutes "Hymn" for "Word" (Logos), connecting to "rhapsody" (sewn-together songs): the world's structuring principle is musical, not merely spoken.
Theological implication. The Incarnation is mapped onto geology. The pattern that rescues matter from chaos is a logos—a hymn—that "became flesh" in the world's material structures. This echoes the Pythagorean "music of the spheres" and Kepler's search for harmonic ratios in planetary motion, as well as creation myths where the world is sung into being (cf. Tolkien's "Ainulindalë"). Not pantheism but sacramentalism: divine creative speech made material.
Moses strikes the rock at Horeb (Exodus 17:6) and Meribah (Numbers 20:11); water flows. Lafferty names "Aaron's Rod," conflating Moses' wonder-working staff with Aaron's—which also turned serpent (Exodus 7:9–12) and budded with almonds (Numbers 17:8).
Hagiographic parallels. The miracle of striking water from rock echoes through saints' legends: St. Isidore the Farmer struck the ground with his ox-goad and a spring appeared; St. Patrick brought forth springs by the sign of the cross; St. Bernadette discovered the spring at Lourdes through a vision. Each spring reenacts the Horeb miracle—"no less stunning when repeated ten thousand times."
Why "Aaron's"? Aaron was Moses' spokesman: "he shall be . . . to thee instead of a mouth" (Exodus 4:16). Aaron is the mouthpiece, the throat. A spring named for Aaron's rod connects to the story's throat-theme: the pipe speaks for silent depths, as Aaron spoke for Moses.
The number evokes figures of completeness: "the cattle on a thousand hills" (Psalm 50:10), "the chiefest among ten thousand" (Song of Solomon 5:10). In Greek, myrios means both ten thousand and "innumerable"; in Taoism, "the ten thousand things" means all phenomena. Lafferty uses the number as a figure for totality, not a precise count—all the springs there are.
Nereids (Νηρηΐδες): the fifty sea-nymph daughters of Nereus. The most famous is Thetis, mother of Achilles—a reminder that nymphs can bear heroes. Oreads (Ὀρειάδες): mountain nymphs, companions of Artemis. Naiads (Ναϊάδες): freshwater nymphs of springs, rivers, lakes—not mentioned by Lafferty, perhaps because "pegeid" replaces them. The classical framework positions Crescentia as a supernatural feminine entity, but supersized and more elemental than her Greek cousins.
Succubus: Medieval demon in female form that seduces men in dreams (Latin succubare, "to lie under"). Nightmare: Originally not a bad dream but a night-demon—Old English mære, a hag or incubus that sits on sleepers' chests. The "mare" is not a horse but a demon; sleep paralysis was attributed to the mare's crushing weight.
Lafferty's fusion. The succubus is a nightmare in the original sense (demon) and in the equine sense (Crescentia as "colt," "filly"). The dream-Crescentia has uncountable legs, eyes, mouths—chaos in equine-demonic form, perhaps evoking Odin's eight-legged steed Sleipnir. Ranwick "bits and bridles" her, echoing Celtic folklore: if you throw a bridle over a kelpie, you can control it. The taming of the succubus-mare is exorcism and horse-breaking fused.
Throughout the story, Crescentia is described in equine terms: extremely leggy, mane of rough yellow hair, running like a filly colt, licking like a mother mare. This alludes to water-horses in Celtic folklore:
Kelpie: Scottish shape-shifting creature appearing as a horse to lure humans (often children) onto its back, then galloping into water to drown them. Each-uisge: Similar but more dangerous Scottish water-horse. Bäckahäst: Scandinavian brook-horse with the same drowning behavior.
Crescentia's playful yet dangerous physicality—offering rides, nearly drowning people—invokes this tradition. "Water colt" is not a standard term, but it paints her as unbridled, spirited, tied to running water. The water-horse lures and kills; so does she.
The water-horse imagery also evokes Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek myth. Hesiod notes that Pegasos derives from pēgē ("spring")—Pegasus was born at a spring and created the fountain Hippocrene by striking Mount Helicon with his hoof. By calling Crescentia a "water colt," Lafferty hints at Pegasus-like qualities: a creature of springs, though raw and unrefined where Pegasus was divine.
When Ranwick "bits and bridles" the nightmare-Crescentia, he echoes Bellerophon taming Pegasus. In myth, Athena gave Bellerophon a golden bridle to subdue the wild winged horse, enabling him to ride it against the Chimera. Ranwick plays a similar role: using bit and bridle to master the unruly spring-spirit. Crescentia later teases, "You didn't need to put a bit in my mouth to ride me . . . Ride me with rowel spurs if you want"—a very Pegasus-like challenge. The archetype of taming a divine horse maps onto the story's theme of imposing order on chaos.
"Goldilocks and the Three Bears"—Baby Bear finds evidence of intrusion.
The twist. Humanity is Goldilocks. We arrive in a world already furnished and only gradually notice the furniture is scaled for giants. The "giants" are whoever built the chalcedony channels, bronze reinforcements, iron pipes. Many cultures have legends of giants or Titans forming the landscape (Norse Ymir, biblical Nephilim, Greek Cyclopes); Ireland's Giant's Causeway and similar formations worldwide were attributed to giant builders. We are interlopers in a house built by and for others.
Crescentia is called "the mad giantess"; even other pegeids hide from her. This frames her in the folkloric tradition of dangerous water-women amplified to giant scale:
Jenny Greenteeth and Peg Powler: English water-hags who pull children into ponds. Grindylow: Yorkshire water goblin. La Llorona: Hispanic Weeping Woman who drowned her children and now steals others. Rusalka: Slavic water-ghost who drags people down. Näkki/Nixie: Finnish and Germanic water spirits that play beautiful music to lure children to drown. Grendel's mother: Beowulf's mere-dwelling giantess, monstrous in size and strength. All these share child-stealing or drowning behavior.
Crescentia combines the siren (drowns men out of jealous love) and the water-hag (drowns children out of inhuman impulse). That authorities capture her with a court order and asylum commitment is Lafferty's modernization: exorcism by psychiatry.
Many cultures have cautionary tales of water spirits demanding children—kelpies, rusalki, Jenny Greenteeth—to explain drowning accidents and keep children from dangerous water. Some traditions include actual sacrifice: Iron Age bog bodies (Tollund Man) may have been offerings to water gods. In Jewish lore, Lilith steals infants.
Crescentia's belief that "the springs want them" echoes these ancient patterns. The townsfolk's response—"a rotten big fuss," presumably police—is the modern version of villagers driving off a witch. The court order against a nymph is Lafferty's anachronistic joke: society managing ancient evils through legal injunctions.
Strumpet: archaic term for a prostitute or morally loose woman. Ranwick uses it to personify springs—he adores them but is bitter that none are "virginal." He asks "Who was with you here before me?" and the spring only smiles crookedly. Every spring has been channeled, piped, claimed by prior visitors.
The taboo against asking a spring's name meaning ("as a pegeid, you know that it's forbidden") echoes fairy-tale rules: knowing a spirit's true name gives power; one shouldn't pry into a lady's past. Ranwick's cynical realization that no spring is pure both torments and motivates him.
An archaic insult: a jade is a worn-out or ill-tempered horse, and by extension a disreputable woman. Shakespeare and Restoration comedies use it for both meanings. "Hard-mouthed" is equestrian jargon for a horse that resists the bit. Having literally bitted Crescentia in his dream, Ranwick calls her a difficult horse—and perhaps morally "loose." The literary archaism places their banter in the tradition of ribald, rustic language from Chaucer to Twain.
Southern American folk name for dragonflies. Folk beliefs: they attend snakes, warn them of danger; they sew up snakes' wounds; they sew shut the mouths of lying children. The "snake-doctor" hovers over a spring whose throat has been "sewn" with iron pipe—the folk image of sewing connects to "rhapsody" (sewn-together songs). The dragonfly is a tiny emblem of the story's cosmology.
Bioluminescence from fungi on decaying wood—a real phenomenon with a folk name. The pale greenish glow appears in forests at night. In folklore, such natural luminescence was often called "fairy fire" and associated with will-o'-the-wisps—mysterious lights that led travelers astray. The pegeid with "fox-fire in her eyes" has the light of decay in her gaze: beautiful but uncanny, associated with rot and otherworldly luring.
Rainwater collected in hollow stumps, used in folk medicine for warts and freckles. The term appears in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer (Chapter VI), where Tom and Huck debate spunk-water's efficacy for removing warts. "Spunky" means spirited, feisty—Crescentia's energy is like water from a rotting stump: potent despite (or because of) its marginal source. "Stump-Water Spring" also appears in Ranwick's catalogue.
The catalog—Old Carp Springs, Bright-Wine Spring, Broken-Dog Spring, Left-Hand Spring, Chicken Thief Spring, Run Rabbit Spring, Ornery Cow Spring—echoes the real tradition of naming springs fancifully, each name hinting at a story. This is American frontier whimsy meeting European holy-well tradition, where every sacred spring has its legend. Lafferty invents an American mythos of springs mirroring real folklore's richness.
A miracle well responding to faith—echoing countless holy wells worldwide said to appear or flow by divine action. The motif appears in biblical narratives (Horeb, Meribah) and saints' legends. Ranwick distinguishes it from "Three Miracle Spring," implying degrees of wonder even within the mythos.
The new spring Ranwick encounters at the story's end has "a halo of light" and tranquil depth that subdues even Crescentia. This imagery draws on traditions of healing waters and holy wells—springs associated with curative powers or spiritual calm. The "reminiscent mist" implies baptismal or restorative quality, evoking the Fountain of Youth (sought by Ponce de León) and enchanted pools of romance literature. Crescentia invites Ranwick to go "very deep down . . . and stay a very long time"—temptress or guide to rebirth, the spring offers either oblivion or transformation.
Graystone's notes claim the middle Mesozoic (252–66 million years ago) saw "a contrived, intrusive, artificial concretion"—deliberate structuring disguised as volcanism. The title combines the domestic ("rock gardens"—a backyard hobby) with the cosmic ("Mesozoic"—the Age of Reptiles). If the world is an artificial construction, it is a garden; if it dates to the Mesozoic, it is ancient beyond human measure but recent in planetary terms. Graystone's notes are "scripture disguised as geology."
Ranwick finds bronze "a quarter of a million years old" in geological strata—far predating human bronze-making (~5,000 years ago). This references so-called Out-of-Place Artifacts (OOPArts): fringe claims of manufactured objects (nails, hammers, spark plugs) found in ancient rock, cited by mystery-mongers as evidence of lost civilizations or ancient aliens. The London Hammer, the Coso Artifact, and various "embedded nails" are famous examples.
The "feral ferrite deposit of re-formed ore in an interiorly tabulate shape" is technical jargon for an iron pipe. When Ranwick pulls "a short and corroded length of four-inch iron pipe" from a spring's throat—"modern commercial pipe. It isn't thirty years old"—he discovers the world is literally plumbed, maintained across eons by unknown agencies.
In archaeology, "Cyclopean masonry" refers to walls of massive irregular stones fitted without mortar—found at Mycenae, Tiryns, and other Bronze Age sites. The Greeks attributed them to the Cyclopes, one-eyed giants.
Cliveden extends the term to megalithic sites worldwide: "Peru, Mexico, Anatolia, India, Ankor [sic], Malta" (Sacsayhuamán, Teotihuacan, Göbekli Tepe, Hampi, Angkor Wat, the Maltese temples). The stones, he claims, were "soft and malleable, almost liquid, when fitted"—poured rather than placed. Human megalithic building participates in the larger project of world-structuring.
A seaman's folk wisdom elaborated by Cliveden. Solids and liquids differ only in timescale—a rock is a frozen wave, a wave is a moving rock. This echoes Heraclitus ("all is flux") and uniformitarian geology. "Ten minutes of waves is equivalent to a million years of rocks." The Wet Process Transparency Recorder "beats any dry process microfilming." The implication: if everything is waves at different speeds, then structuring water also structures stone.
Greek ῥαψῳδία (rhapsōidia), from ῥάπτω (rhaptō, "to sew, stitch") + ᾠδή (ōidē, "song"). A rhapsode stitched together memorized verses of epic poetry. The world is a rhapsody—a patchwork composition, not a naturally grown whole. Creation is not a moment but ongoing stitching.
The "sewn-together" imagery evokes Frankenstein's monster—a body assembled from parts and animated by a spark. Here the spark is musical: "The Hymn became Flesh." The world as divine patchwork, a cosmic quilt animated by song. The story itself is rhapsodic: leaping between philosophy, myth, and plot like Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies leap between folk themes.
Ferrite: iron or iron-based compounds. Ranwick's technical phrasing describes iron pipes using geological language. "Feral" (wild, untamed) applied to iron is oxymoronic—the iron is precisely what tames the water—suggesting his ambivalence about the whole system of control.
The folders interpolate found texts into the narrative—Graystone's "Rock Gardens," Ranwick's devastating sentence. This creates layered textuality: the story contains documents containing cosmologies. Compare Borges's fictional encyclopedias, Lovecraft's forbidden books. The folder is a domesticated grimoire—dangerous knowledge kept in a Bureau lodge.
Springs: "Every spring has a contrived throat; yes, a shockingly artificial and contrived throat." Iron pipes channel the water's flow.
Crescentia: "A small control there . . . apparently electronic. It had wires. It ticked."
Both springs and their pegeids are controlled through their throats—where speech emerges, breath passes, swallowing occurs. In Genesis, God creates by speaking; the throat is the organ of creative speech. To control the throat is to regulate creative/chaotic potential at its source. Aaron as Moses' "mouth" reinforces this: the pipe speaks for silent depths as Aaron spoke for Moses.
Horse-taming equipment: the bit is metal inserted in the horse's mouth; the bridle holds it. Ranwick uses this language for springs (already bitted by prior visitors) and for Crescentia (whom he bits and bridles in his dream). The imagery fuses horse-breaking, chaos-structuring, sexual possession ("You've been had"), and loss of wildness. Celtic folklore holds that bridling a kelpie gives control over the water-horse; Ranwick bridles the succubus-mare.
Ranwick wants unbitted springs but knows they would be quagmires. He bits Crescentia but finds it "sorrowful." The story mourns the necessity of control even while affirming it.
The electronic device in Crescentia's throat—"a sort of electronic conscience. Crescentia has no other sort of conscience"—casts her as controlled like the robot women of science fiction (Maria in Metropolis, The Stepford Wives). Cliveden: "Loving a beautiful spring . . . would be a little bit like loving a beautiful woman, who turns out to be a robot."
In classical terms, she recalls Talos, the bronze automaton who guarded Crete—a mythic precedent for the constructed being. In folklore terms, the psycho-monitor is a magic collar forcing a demon to behave. The ticking suggests a clock or bomb; the wires suggest a governor on machinery. Crescentia is enslaved, like Ariel in The Tempest. Even the spirit of a spring has been half-conquered by modernity—a literally plugged nymph.
The revelation that springs have literal plumbing inverts the Aaron's rod miracle: what appeared divine is revealed as engineering. As Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law holds, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"—and here the magic of springs is indistinguishable from plumbing.
Crescentia drowns: Children (discovered), men (concealed), probably Graystone.
Springs as quagmires: "Once it was the case that many springs, being unchanneled and like quagmires, would drown men."
The Flood: Water's "return to chaotic state."
Crescentia's drownings are not random violence but ritual sacrifice—she "believes that the springs want them." She is an unchanneled quagmire in human form, reverting to the pre-structured state where water kills rather than sustains.
Love as completion echoes Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics: potency completed by act, matter completed by form. Ranwick participates in the cosmic project of structuring the chaotic. But the springs have already been completed by others ("You've been had"). His love is always for the already-bitted, the already-throttled—a tragic dimension.
A proverbial-sounding aphorism: no matter how many times one falls in love, each instance feels supreme. The number evokes Taoist "ten thousand things," Greek myrios, Song of Solomon 5:10 ("chiefest among ten thousand"). The line captures Ranwick's eternally renewable wonder: despite artifice, insanity, and danger, his capacity for love remains undiminished.
It's also subtly fickle—Crescentia is institutionalized, and he's already gazing at the new pegeid. The eternal quester moves on, each new spring the culmination, each previous love a stepping stone. This may recall Don Juan-type tales (each new romance is the peak) or the Romantic naturalist (each new vista the most inspiring).
The story asks who these carp are and does not answer. Hermits who became fish-like? Guardians in fish form? The springs themselves in animal guise? Many cultures believe springs have protective spirits appearing as fish or serpents. Holy wells in Ireland and Wales sometimes had sacred fish. The unanswered question reinforces the theme: the world is full of presences we cannot identify.
There is no major saint named Angelo; Angelo is Italian for "angel." A local saint? A person named Angelo? Lafferty's invention? The paradox: a "very small spring" named an "Ocean"—scalar paradox, like "Rock Gardens of the Mesozoic." The spring contains an ocean; the garden contains an era.
The U.S. Bureau of Mines existed from 1910 to 1996. "Bureau of Minerals" is slightly different—a fictional variant or Lafferty's alteration. The official-sounding name gives Cliveden's lodge institutional legitimacy: he is not a crank but a government researcher, which makes his cosmological claims more unsettling.
Named springs from Ranwick's fifty years of seeking, plus those discovered during the story.
Frenchman Spring, Miser's Gold Spring, White-Tail Spring, Joe Creek Spring, Sore Foot Spring, Pot Luck Spring, Wilson's Ditch Spring, Whistling Kettle Spring, Chicken Thief Spring, Run Rabbit Spring, Ornery Cow Spring, Bidding Tongue Spring.