Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA From: OC.TREI@CU20B.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: The Black Cauldron Message-ID: <2294@topaz.ARPA> Date: Sun, 16-Jun-85 01:36:19 EDT Article-I.D.: topaz.2294 Posted: Sun Jun 16 01:36:19 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 16-Jun-85 09:23:54 EDT Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 105 From: Peter G. Trei >> ...The Black Cauldron....but the title sounds promising. > > Sounds promising? Don't you recognize it? You mean you've > never read Lloyd Alexander?[...] > > The Book of Three > The Black Cauldron > The Castle of Llyr > Taran Wanderer > The High King > der Mouse > {ihnp4,decvax,...}!utcsri!mcgill-vision!mouse I dont claim to have specific knowledge of where Disney's writers are getting their plot, but to automatically assume that The Black Cauldron derives from Lloyd Alexanders' work is a little like saying that an earlier Disney opus 'The Sword in the Stone' is based on the film 'Camelot'. Cauldrons appear in several places in ancient Celtic legend. The cauldron most likely to be involved in the movie is the one featured in the story 'Branwen Daughter of Llyr', the oldest surviving manuscript being in The White Book of Rhydderch, which dates to 1300-1325 AD. The story is thought to date back to about 1050, and may well be a 'modernization' of something far older. The cauldron had the property that if you threw a dead soldier into it, the next morning he would have revived (save that he could not speak and give away the secrets of the underworld). If you have the slightest interest in reading the original, I highly reccomend that you track down a copy the 'The Mabinogion' by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones. This scholarly translation of The Four Ancient Books of Wales first appeared in 1948, but continues in print. My copy is a '74 Dent paperback, but there is also Dutton US paperback (ISBN 0 460 01097 2). The language is a little strange, sort of a King James English, but it carries the alien feel of the original stories very well. Another translation of the stories appears in 'Celtic Myth and Legend' by Charles Squire (Newcastle, ISBN 0 87877 030 5), a trade paperback facsimile of 'The mythology of the British Isles', 1905. Squire tried to pull the ravelled threads of legend together into one coherent mythos, and what the tales gain in self consistancy they lose in power. However, it does tell (with a Victorian gloss) the tales, including some not in The Mabinogion. Whenever I read a modern fantasy 'based on' an actual myth of which I have read the original (or a faithful translation) I find things that put my teeth on edge. It isnt the departures (sometimes major) from the orginal plot line that bothers me so much as finding late 20th century ethics and mores being espoused by Dark Age men and women. It annoys me to find the ancient tales used as a vehicle for contemporary ideas. The original is so much stranger and wonderful. Here is a short abstract from 'The Voyage of Mael duin'. MD and his companions are on a voyage of exploration, and are running out food: "Now when those apples failed, and their hunger and thirst were great, and when their mouths and their noses were full of the stench of the sea, they sight an island which was not large, and therein (stood) a fort surrounded by a white, high rampart as if it were built of burnt lime, or as if it were all one rock of chalk. Great was its height from the sea; it all but reached the clouds. The fort was open wide. Round the rampart were great, snow-white houses. When they entered the largest of these they saw no one there, save a small cat which was in the midst of the house, playing on the four stone pillars that were there. It was leaping from one pillar to the other. It looked a little at the men, and did not stop itself from its play. After that they saw three rows on the wall of the house round about, from one doorpost to the other. A row there, first, of brooches of gold and of silver, with their pins in the wall, and a row of neck-torques of gold and of silver: like hoops of a vat was each of them. The third row (was) of great swords, with hilts of gold and of silver. The rooms were full of white quilts and shining garments. A roasted ox, moreover, and a flitch in the midst of the house, and great vessels with good intoxicating liquor. "Hath this been left for *us*?" saith Mael duin to the cat. It looked at him suddenly and began to play again. Then Mael duin recognized that it was for them that the dinner had been left. So they dined and drank and slept. They put the leavings of thee liquor into the pots, and stored up the leavings of the food. Now when they proposed to go, Mael duin's third fosterbrother said: "Shall I take with me a necklace of these necklaces?" "Nay," saith Mael duin, "not without a guard is the house". Howbeit he took it as far as the middle of the enclosure. The cat followed them, and leapt through him (the fosterbrother) like a fiery arrow, and burnt him so that he became ashes, and (then) went back till it was on its pillar. Then Mael duin soothed the cat with his words, and set the necklace in its place, and cleansed the ashes from the floor of the enclosure, and cast them on the shore of the sea. Then they went on board their boat, praising and magnifying the Lord." This, and many other original tales evoke for me the 'sense of wonder' which I find missing in such modern glosses as 'The Mists of Avalon.' Peter Trei oc.trei@cu20b.arpa -------