Head” and “Dragon’s Tail” heading them as in Ward’s scribblings. But the spelling differed quite widely from that of the modern versions, as if old Curwen had had a different way of recording sound, or as if later study had evolved more powerful and perfected variants of the invocations in question. The doctor tried to reconcile the chiseled version with the one which still ran persistently in his head, and found it hard to do. Where the script he had memorized began “ Y’ai ’Ng’ngah, Yog-Sothoth ,” this epigraph started out as “ Aye, cngengah, Yogge-Sothotha ”; which to his mind would seriously interfere with the syllabification of the second word.
Ground as the later text was into his consciousness, the discrepancy disturbed him; and he found himself chanting the first of the formulae aloud in an effort to square the sound he conceived with the letters he found carved. Weird and menacing in that abyss of antique blasphemy rang his voice! its accents keyed to a droning singsong either through the spell of the past and the unknown, or through the hellish example of that dull, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose and fell rhythmically in the distance through the stench and darkness.