Oddment and Tweak: Adventures in Reading

While digging around in folk songs for school work, I found a reference to a variation to our song of the month (The Mermaid) by Tolkien. It took a bit of Googling to find it, but the delight was manifold.

The song is an old English variation of the Mermaid story sung to the Mermaid tune.

It is in a book lost to time or at least to a lay scholar. There are maybe fourteen copies left of Songs for the Philologist according to the wiki and others were destroyed in a fire. There was no more explanation given.

The song was reprinted in the The Road to Middle Earth by TA Shippey. I have never heard of this one, but it looks like a gem, sourcing Tolkien’s Mirkwood in Eastern Europe and examining the placiness of Tolkien. Oh frabjous day.

So now to teach my children the Old English variation of the song they gobbled up. It is for the preservation of culture and history.

9 - 16 Jan: Charles Williams, Curdie, and Puck of Pooks Hill

School books aside, mostly, it was a week for Inklings which is how I plan to spend the year.

Many Dimensions by Charles Williams

I had expectations going in to Charles Williams novels and so far he is compelling and florid. The funny part is this predates That Hideous Strength by fourteen years, but the main scientific mind and his mercenary henchman are pure Weston and Divine. It is almost like Lewis read this and said, “Islam wouldn’t be the responding party, the spheres would and Arthur.” Then he wrote that story.

I’m also getting a slight note of MacDonald’s Phantastes with the shadow just touching Chloe.

The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis by Jason Baxter

I picked up the book to check Lewis’s influences against my shelves after listening to the audiobook last year. I love footnotes; This has footnotes. I began rereading to see what else I missed.

This is the book where I found his letter on learning to read Latin, starting in Acts with stories you know well. The rest will be a pleasant ramble with many a goose trail. Baxter writes clear prose which I value in an academic. This means when he says something, he is done, so his books are also short.

Unruly Places by Alistair Bonnet

I love weird YouTube videos about strange places and events. I’m not a true crime person, but the Tunguska event and the place where mail dies delight me.

Now that I’m an ascetic from the early twentyoughts with only text capabilities, the solution is basically weird coffee table books or Father Capon.

This covers the gambit from paper towns and CIA black sights to fake cities and moving islands. It is glorious and full of implicatory statements.

“…if you go high enough, all claims to national sovereignty cease, since the traditional

"up to heaven and down to hell" approach would mean that, as the earth rotates, great cones of sovereignty would arc their way across the galaxies.” P. 143

If true, big.

The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald

Entering the realm of audiobooks we have the newest family favorite. My husband and I discovered MacDonald this last year. The original audio for this was uneven, so my husband re-recorded with  a local publishing house. Basically my two year old thinks daddy is dropping everything and reading her Curdie at nap time.

Some of my favorite lines are right in the first chapters, “ He who is diligent will soon be cheerful.” and “the road to the next duty is the only straight one.”

Puck of Pook’s Hill by Rudyard Kipling

For a short time last week I though George MacDonald was his grandfather which would explain why this book is so wonderful. As it is, this book just has to be wonderful because it is. Kipling’s grandfather was a George MacDonald, but not the George MacDonald.

Each chapter begins with poetry and the first began with Puck’s Song,  a versification of everything we have learned since last year in history. The chapter ended with Oak and Ash and Thorn, another tree list to add to my collection with Spencers, winding in naturally with MacDonald’s tree maidens in Phantastes.

What a treat.

The narrator is good as well which is an extra boon now that we have forty five minutes of coming and going anytime we go.

The story is charming on its own, but sits just right with the medievalists I can’t put down.

“Son Hugh, it needed no sign from a heathen God to show me that you will never be a monk. Take your sword, and keep your sword, and go with your sword, and be as gentle as you are strong and courteous. We will hang up the Smith’s tools before the Altar,” he said, “because, whatever the Smith of the Gods may have been in the old days, we know that he worked honestly for his living and made gifts to Mother Church.”

In Kipling even the old god’s can repent.

Further Up and Further In

Poems for Dragonslayers: Finished

For much of history the best stories were poems. Poetry displayed skill, clarity of mind, and insight. Some even used it to show the distinction between classes and worlds. There are entire books of it in the Bible, largely ignored for its poetic value because we are reading in translation.

And so we have castigated it as a trite and angsty form, leaving it to die alongside our own shriveled hearts.

So we need to start at the beginning.

These are poems to train children to love poetry.

Stick to your task till it sticks to you;

Beginners are many, but finishers few.

Honor and power, place and praise,

Come, in time, to the one who stays.

Stick to your task till it sticks to you;

Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it too;

Life’s victories come, after awhile,

out of the bend, the sweat, and the smile.

• Author Unestablished

I came across this one in a mom forum online and as much as it is moralizing, it is also catchy.

It is the sort of poem that does stick when learned.

I edited it, so the words fit the meter, but there were a couple variations any way.

If you wrote it or know who did, let me know, I won't apologize for swapping the last two lines, but I will give you credit at the top. .