Theo Pendragon Proctor

[watervole]

Theo Pendragon Proctor

The Pendragon (which I like) is a nod to 'Pending'. A friend misheard it as 'Pendragon' and my son's middle name is Arthur, so it's rather a nice fit.

Can anyone recommend a good modern collection of the Arthurian stories?  I'd like to get Oswin that for Xmas. (She's 10, but reads at a higher level)

Comments

[watervole]

I tried that one, but I didn't really like it...

[igenlode]

It's not really very Arthurian -- the later volumes get more 'orthodox' but are less popular. The beginning, with Arthur as 'the Wart' being shapeshifted by Merlin, has practically nothing to do with the traditional legend at all...

[watervole]

That's it. I wanted something that felt like Arthur. Arthur and Robin Hood are our main folklore figures. I want to give her something that represents both them, as they have mostly been seen through a large chunk of our history.

[igenlode]

Well, I also enjoyed Carola Oman's "Robin Hood"... (though I hadn't realised it was written back in the 1930s, which may have accounted for my instinctive familiarity with the style -- it was a brand-new paperback with a modern cover in my day!)
But that one really is out of print now, alas.

It's a slightly unusual retelling in that it starts, not with the outlaw's origin story, but with the tale of Robin Hood and the Poor Knight told from the knight's point of view, thus introducing us to the whole scenario from the perspective of an outsider who has never even heard of Robin Hood before. And many of the familiar tales, such as the fight between Robin Hood and Friar Tuck across the stream, are recounted 'around the campfire' as being events that occurred before the start of the book; Maid Marian doesn't appear until near the end (possibly because she was a late addition to the legendarium and is hard to fit in as being present for most of the stories!)

But looking back on the book with adult eyes, I can see both how it was adapted to fit children, and how cleverly it was done; we learn in the first pages, for example, in the customary understated way of historical novels of the era, that a 'lorimer' is a man who mends horses' harness. The writing is both lyrical and cosily fairy-tale by turns:

Four miles south of Pomfret town, the old Roman road crossed the River Went for the second time, and began to climb into dumb, dark country. The gale that had driven the rain away was blowing great clouds, the colour of a week-old bruise, across wide skies as yellow as a lighted horn-lantern. They sailed high above the knight's bowed head, like noble ships at sea, and the wind began to pipe in his ears sharp as a boatswain's whistle.
It was an outlaw's wind, and outlaw's weather. The Went, in flood, swirled into bubbles around the strong central arch of its low stone bridge, and fled eastwards, reflecting flashing strands of violet and gold as bright as those in a herald's coat. There were no villages on this stretch of road, and few travellers to-day. A couple of miles past he had caught sight of a hamlet on a little hill, and a jangling group of farming folk, with empty panniers, had passed him at a sharp trot and turned away towards it. He had noticed that they had done their marketing early, that they rode silently with set faces, that there were a dozen of them, and that they kept together.
Now, although the road ran dead straight as far as eye could see, he could not detect a single human form upon it. Far away, against the eastern skyline, on a mound above the river, rose a group of wildly tossing firs between whose branches he thought he could make out the square outline of a stone keep. But the undrained moorland that lay between it and the highway was impassable. He plucked his hood of darned knitted stuff closer across his brows, and urged his tired horse up and on. Half a mile later, when he came to a cross-roads, he drew rein, and while the wind wrapped the long tail of his hood around his throat or blew it out, straight as a pennon on a top-mast, he rose in his stirrups to take a better view.

Of the four younger sisters, two were to have been sent to a cross, sickly aunt, where they would have lived the lives of caged birds. The other two were to have entered a nunnery with their mother. Now that they were told that they might keep their animals--of which they had a great many--and stay at home, and that their dear brother would be returning, they could not stop jumping up and down for joy.
They played 'hoodman blind' with Little John, and although he was so large he was wonderfully clever at not being caught by the blind man. He leapt from table to dresser like an ape, and once, when he was almost caught, swung himself up onto the beams of the ceiling and turned somersaults. When he was made to be blind himself, he caught three of the daughters in the first swoop of his great arms. They almost wept when he rode out of the castle gates the next morning. But he had told them that this day year their father was going again to Robin Hood's secret trysting tree to pay back the four hundred pounds. And their father was going to tell them all he knew about Robin Hood to-night. So they cheered up and began wishing it could be this day year as soon as their father had told his tale.
He told it to them up in the solar chamber and by firelight again. The six daughters of Sir Richard at the Lee looked rather like little rabbits, as they sat scattered about the floor on cushions, all pop-eyed and bursting with questions. They soon began to wish that their mother and not their father could have been captured by outlaws, for she could make a good story out of almost nothing. She was quite as much interested as her daughters, and made Sir Richard go back to the beginning twice, and tell the tale properly.

(As an adult, I'm also interested to observe that Carola Oman gives the knight's horse the name 'White Surrey'; a private reference for her own benefit, like my nod to a couple of my favourite authors in giving d'Artois the personal name of Gervais de Sessignes?)