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Cecil of Cornwall. Cecil of Cornwall was created by David H. Keller (Harry Brunton, Taine, Wing Loo) and appeared in fifteen stories from 1929 to 1930, beginning with “The Battle of the Toads” (Weird Tales, Oct. 1929).

Cecil of Cornwall is a wandering adventurer who, after an event-filled career, desires to “become a somebody among the landed gentry of the British Isles,” and “learning that there was no great man of outstanding merit in that part of the world known as Cornwall,” travels there to claim rulership over it as Overlord. Cecil has an advantage over similar claimants, however. Cecil is a Freemason, and after freeing a Masonic genie showed the genie the Sign which Cecil was taught to use by “other Brethren in the desert of Araby.” The genie, who is a rather pleasant sort, all things considered, grants Cecil wishes, which Cecil uses to seize power in Cornwall. One of the wishes also grants Cecil the ability to “conquer all giants, robbers, knaves, salamanders, ogres, serpents, dragons and all evil things, male and female, on, beneath, and above the earth, wherever and whenever I come into conflict with them.” But once in power in Cornwall Cecil becomes embroiled in the scheme of an evil Abbé (or perhaps a demon man-frog) to kill the enemy of the Brethren and CONQUER THE WORLD! and other worlds as well. Cecil is a boastful and genial warrior, but he has done enough to justify his good opinion of himself. In his own words, Cecil has “performed many brave acts of derring-do in my short life, such as subduing, single-handed, the Yellow Ant of Fargone, eight feet tall and very deadly in its poison, and facing, undaunted, the Mystic Mere Woman of the Western Sea.”

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