the woods with a thousand young

''the substance of the record was quasi-ritualistic, and included one palpably human voice ... the recording phonograph and dictaphone had not worked uniformly well, and had of course been at great disadvantage because of the remote and muffled nature of the over heard ritual; so that the actual speech secured was very fragmentary, ... i will present it here in full as i remember it--and i am fairly confident that i know it correctly by heart, not only from reading the transcript, but from playing the record itself over and over again. it is not a thing which one might readily forget

''[indistinguishable sounds] [a cultivated male human voice] ... is the lord of the woods, even to ... and the gifts of the men of leng ... so from the wells of night to the gulfs of space, and from the gulfs of space to the wells of night. ever the praises of great cthulhu, of tsathoggua, and of him who is not to be named. ever their praises, and abundance to the black goat of the woods. ia! shub-niggurath! the goat with a thousand young! [a buzzing imitation of human speech] ia! shub-niggurath! the black goat of the woods with a thousand young

''such were the words for which i was to listen when i started the phonograph. it was with a trace of genuine dread and reluctance that i pressed the lever and heard the preliminary scratching of the sapphire point, and i was glad that the first faint fragmentary words were in a human voice ... and then i heard the other voice. to this hour i shudder retrospectively when i think of how it struck me, ... it swiftly followed the human voice in ritualistic response, but in my imagination it was a morbid echo winging its way across unimaginable abysses from unimaginable outer hells. it is more than two years now since i last ran off that blasphemous waxen cylinder; but at this moment, and at all other moments, i can still hear that feeble, fiendish buzzing as it reached me for the first time.

''ia! shub-niggurath! the black goat of the woods with a thousand young!''

h.p.lovecraft, the whisperer in darkness.