Review M R James O Whistle AND ILL Come to YOU My LAD

BOOK REVIEW – M. R. JAMES – O WHISTLE AND I’LL COME TO YOU MY LAD 1904 various editions.

A classic, creepy traditional ghost story, often adopted for TV and Radio. James got the title from a Robert Burns poem, about a lover advised to pretend there is no relationship going on by his beloved who assures him she will come to him when he signals her with the whistling.

In the James story, the whistle is a whistle that can unleash a malevolent ghostly apparition. The story begins when a university professor, Parkins, sets of for a golfing holiday in a sleepy seaside village near Felixtowe. A university friend suggests he investigates the nearby ruins of an old church believed to have belonged to The Knights Templers, as the colleague hopes to run an archaeological study there one day.

At the seaside, the Professor books a single room, but finds that it has an extra bed, due to the hotel having no other place to store it.  He sees this as being of no consequence at first.

Exploring the mostly sand buried church ruins, the Professor finds and old fashioned whistle, bearing strange markings (resembling swastikas) and a cryptic question as to who might come if the whistle is blown. 

The professor does blow it, and finds things going horribly wrong from then on. He finds a mysterious figure in white watching him from the beach. Maids report that the second bed has been slept in of a night. A young boy reports seeing someone watching him from the windows of the Professor’s room.

On his last night, the Professor is attacked by the white figure, a shroud of twisted bed sheets, and almost thrown out of the hotel window, though he is rescued by a retired Colonel, who sees the apparition before it vanishes. The Professor sceptical of ghosts until the incidents, burns the whistle and goes home, frightened by virtually everything around him. He is a typical M. R. James hero, rational and sceptical, but given to messing with artefacts (the whistle) and failing to understand the forces they are capable of unleashing.

A 1968 TV version produced by Jonathon Miller and starring Michael Horden as Professor Parkins is regarded as a genuine classic. A 2010 TV version with John Hurt in the leading role changes so many elements of the story as to retain only the title. For one thing, there is no whistle, no mysterious churchyard, etc. The ghost here is the wife Hurt abandons in good faith to a nursing home due to her Alzheimer’s. The story ends up forced and confused, contrived with few genuine scary elements, unlike the text itself

The original text online – http://gaslight.mtroyal.ab.ca/owhistle.htm

The Robbie Burns poem that inspired the title – http://www.online-literature.com/frost/2509/

Arthur Chappell