A Review of 'Medieval Welsh Lyrics' Translated by Joseph P. Clancy

I have no idea who recommended this book to me but thanks to whoever it was! ‘Medieval Welsh Lyrics’ has some of the most startling, vivid, awakening and sometimes astonishing verse I have read. It was very unexpected.

(Translated by Joseph P. Clancy and published in 1965, taking from a range of previous books on the subject.)

THE NECESSARY ABOMINATION OF TRANSLATION

I don’t speak Welsh.

The translation of poetry is a necessary abomination. If a perfect poem is a precise, even total, annealing and cross-synthesis of sound and meaning, of the chosen sonic structure of the poem, combined with the perfect representation of meaning within it, and within that, the most precise, perceptive, original and imaginative observation, relation and creation, then the ‘perfect’ or ‘best’ poem, is the one which is most wounded by being translated.

For a perfect ordering, the dis-assemblement and re-creation in some utterly other substance - its like taking apart one of the high points of Greek or roman sculpture, say ‘Lacoon’, and re-making it in Legos You can do it, and it’s awful, but if people can only see Legos and cannot perceive Marble, then that’s what you have to do. It’s bad to lose a lot and to create frankenpoems, but its worse to lose everything, which is what happens if you don’t translate into whatever the dominant medium is

What we lose is probably inestimable, and we should accept that we are dealing with half-poems, or even zombie poems, compared to the originals - the bards would not be happy. But the alternative for me is nothing, so I accept it.

what comes through is the images, descriptions, similes, concepts, arrangements of ideas and general flow of thought

STARTLING THINGS ABOUT WELSH POETRY

What startles is the immediacy and imaginative power of interwoven with vivid, glowing, immediate and intense observations of nature, and added all to this; clearsighted, almost documentary descriptions of real-life events. Though they are given in an elaborate Welsh scansion in a format driven by ritualistic forms and common tropes, these moments ‘POP’

These things are rare and hard to find in time. People do not write like this for long books of history or if they do, it is lost. So the past is monumental, graven, sombre, strange, not because it was as it was lived (though at times it was indeed), but because that is what survives; as in stone, so in verse and prosidy; the big fat masses carry on while the warp and weave of human life are lost.

what I mean is we can awaken into a scene of Daffyd ap Gwilym, lying in bed in some inn or hostelry, in the year 13-something, getting up at night and, in an attempt to sleep with a women he has seen earlier, sneaking about in the dark, knocking things over, getting lost and waking everyone up, before sneaking back into bed and pretending the whole thing never happened, and it feels like a story related from yesterday. ‘The Battle of Waun Gaeseg’ gives us a first-hand view of the experience of a small scale, disastrous, unglamorous battle, and ‘Sheep-Dealing’ the story of an equally disastrous attempt to sell some sheep, while ‘The Ship’ by Iolo Goch shows us this;

“She would rock, faulty creature,

On her side, quivering cold.

God’s wrath to me, seas’ cheeshouse,

Cramped castle, seafarers’s chest.

She’s a thin-staved false-steering

Foul Noah’s ark of a ship.

Sooty oak, sharp her furrow,

Spy old cow, round-walled, pale-clad,

Cart of coal, not a clean court,

Her sail coarse cloth, wide open,

High-nosed hag, scabby-lipped boards,

Wide-nostrilled, rope-reined saddle,

New moon, broad pan for kneading,

She’s clumsy as an old churn,

Swift tower, bulky shadow,

Stiff screen seven cubits high,

Swift-leaping sea-splashing mare,

Bowl unsteadily bouncing,

Scabby crab-bowelled jailhouse,

Broad mare, seen as far as France.

She’s make a face with seaweed,

Sea-cat, teeth under her breast.

More than a mark her rental,

bent basket amidst green cork.

She has filth, oath of Arthur,

In her cracks like stone wall.”

..and such a ship I think you have not seen before, but it comes to mind now strongly, does it not?

DAFYDD AP GWILYM - YOU SON OF A BITCH

there is a Master Poet and a third of the book is His. He is so talented and dominant that some of the other Very Notable poems in this are just laments for Dafydd ap Gwilym by other bards.

He would be thrilled to realise he had a statue, and sickened to discover there weren’t more

Dafyd writes in an even more complex verse form than most of the other poets (they can’t keep up after he is gone). He exemplifies both the tropes and higher qualities of eras verse, either because he ate the soul and speaks it back, or because through his writing he re-writes what Welsh poetry is meant to be, and meant to be about. ‘AD’ in this subculture means “After Dafydd” and ‘BC’ means “Before that Cunt” (he is awful). Everyone after him is to some extent writing in response to him.

Dafydd is an apollonian talent inflicted on a contemptable piece of shit. You don’t start reading Dafydd ap Gwilym hating Dafydd ap Gwilym – it’s hard to hate a genius, but you get there over time . He is like a bright burning portal into another time, carried about by a guy whose main interest is trying to bang another guys wife - this is 90% of Dafydds time and the real slow disenchantment of his character is that he can’t change and, incredibly, for a man who perceives the world through eyes none else can match, he is largely unaware of the poverty of his own character.

As Dafydd gets older, and he writes himself laments about his stumbling entry into middle age, he is still trying to bang Morfudd; gets angry when his married cheating gf commits the indignity of getting pregnant by her husband, is shocked when she shows signs of aging, laments his own loss of looks, and ends up feeling terrible about his life (good).

His poetry will burn through history like a meteor, and the story that it tells will be of a guy who was an utter tool; a sleazy ratbag who never grew up and wasted his whole life on sketchy inherently dishonest relationships. The deep, deep contrast between his immortal talent and shit personality, which, I know, common enough for poets and painters, leaves me flabbergasted. The dissonance between his talent and his soul, combines with vividness which has adhered his memory to me. Like something sticky on the inside of a cup you can’t get off; its Dafydd ap Gwylym.

As an antidote to Dafydd; a fragment of ‘Lament for Sion Y Glyn’ by Lewis Glyn Cothi, in which he mourns his dead son.

“A sweet apple and a bird

The boy loved, and white pebbles,

A bow of thorntree twig,

And swords, wooden and brittle;

Scared of pipes, scared of scarecrows,

Begging mother for a ball,

Singing to all his chanting,

Singing ‘Oo-o’ for a nut.

He would play sweet, and flatter,

And then turn sulky with me,

Make peace for a wooden chip

Or the dice he was fond of.”

OF WHAT USE CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE?

It is a book of vividness and immediacy in line and concept. For those of use settled on bringing imaginary worlds to life, there is not much difference between resurrecting a past world and emblazoning an imaginary one.

For anyone interested in prose, verse, observation and the combination of ideas, this is a great aleph of combinations, which grows more strange and potent, seems more original, remarkable and distinct, the more out of place it feels in its medieval home. In its humanity it seems more a work of the renaissance, in its concrete immediacy it feels modern and in the wild but telling arrangements of simile it feels almost post-modern.

For those who simply care about the past and would like to think more about what it actually felt like to, for instance, be on board a crappy ship in 14-something, or to be part of a vaunted battle which goes horribly wrong, or to hide out in a grove waiting for a ‘maid’ to turn up for a ‘tryst’, or simply to be lost in fog, or to stumble around in the dark, or, in a poem remarkable for its nature, what its like to be a relatively ordinary townsman in a normal town;

“Mine is the heat of houses,

I’m fond of bread, beer, and meat.

A wooden house in lowlands

Brings me health, like a green tree.

And so I make my dwelling

In the March, I’ve wine and mead.

A kind, attractive city,

Most blest in its citizens,

Curtain-walled is the castle,

Best of cities, far as Rome!

Croes Oswalt, friend to Jesus,

Great keep for the conqueror.”

- Wiliam Herbart

Or if you would live for a moment in the mind of a man deeply displeased with his own beard;

“Old roebuck’s hair, where’s your source?

You are a crop of gorse-shoots.

Sharp and strong is every hair,

Sticking a girl, stiff heather,

Resembling, so harsh they grow,

A thousand thistle feathers.

You are like frozen stubble,

Seamless stiff-tipped arrow quills.

Go away! Prevent dishonour,

Chin’s thatch, like a horses mane.”

‘Bard and Beard by Iolo Goch

Or if you want to get involved (sucked into) the extremely spicy, messy, sketchy, slutty and poetically brilliant life of DAFYDD AP GWILYM, whether it is perving on the local girls;

“No Sunday in Llanbadarn

I was not, as some will swear,

Facing a dainty maiden,

The nape of my neck to God.

And when I’ve long been staring

Over my plume at the pews,

Says one maiden, clear and bright,

To her shrewd, pretty neighbour:

‘That lad, palefaced as a flirt,

Wearing his sisters tresses,

Adulterous of the slanting

Glances of his eye : he’s bad!’”

Obsessing over his own fading looks;

“I’d not dreamed, burdensome bane,

My face not fine and handsome,

Till I lifted, lucid thing,

The glass : and see, its ugly!

The mirror told me at last

That I am not good-looking.

The cheek for one like Enid

Turns sallow, it’s scarcely flushed.

Glassy the cheek from groaning,

But a single sallow bruise.

The long nose might be taken

For a razor : isn’t it sad?

Is it not vile, the glad eyes

Are pits completely blinded?

And the worthless curly hair

Falls from the head in handfuls.”

Or just really absolutely hating one particular owl to the extent that he writes a whole poem cursing it (this Owl specifically);

“She’s a slut, two tuneless cries,

Thick head, persistent crying,

Broad forehead, berry-bellied,

Staring old mouse-hunting hag.

Stubborn, vile, lacking colour,

Dry her voice, her colour tin,

Loud gabble in the south wood,

O that song, roebuck’s copses,

And her face, a meek maiden’s,

And her shape, a ghostly bird.

Every bird, filthy outlaw,

Beats her ; how strange she still lives.”

The Danger-Snake! (and others)

THE DANGER-SNAKE

The Danger-Snake the Danger-Snake,
The terrible cake-striped Danger-Snake.
Its form doth flow and its eyes doth glow,
With a regular pulsing, long and low.
With high-visibility Battenburg stripes,
And eyes that flash like ambulance lights,
Hope it don't see you, hope it ain't there,
Over your head or under your chair,
For if you DO see it, if you see it at all..
There's harm and catastrophe soon to befall!
Crashing and bashing and splintering bones,
Burning and breaking and falling-down homes,
Sneezing and piercing and pins in your eye,
Stumbling and fumbling and glass in the pie!
Be it the herald or be it the cause,
The snake is orthogonal, separate to laws.
Singular, secret, yet vibrant and wild,
The snake is the seed of catastrophes’ child,
For if you DO see it, if you SEE IT AT ALL..
Deaths at the doorstep and doom is on-call.
So hope you don't and say you won't and pray its just a hose,
That curls out in the garden in the shadow of wet clothes,
And not the snake, the Danger-Snake,
The terrible cake-striped danger snake,
For its form doth flow and its eyes doth glow,
With a regular pulsing, long and low.


The high visibility snake signals danger, but also seems to summon or create danger. Striped like an ambulance or a police car, with eyes that flash like ambulance lights, but an ambulance that arrives somehow ahead of time.

GOB MOBLINS

Creatures who are not goblins, but who form gangs which act like goblins, or try to.

They claim to be the 'mob goblins' and will offer 'protection' to extort shopkeepers and homeowners, but in fact they are mere Moblins, a smaller, smoother, pinker and less dangerous form of goblin.

Yes they are like small pink cowardly people with dull brown eyes that weep when they are upset, which is OFTEN because they are nervous and angst-ridden beings!

They lack cunning and invention except for the scheme of feigning goblins, which gives them confidence. They paint themselves green and add finger extenders and pointy false ears and dentures to give them small sharp teeth, and they practice capering from books;

"ah hee hee hoo hoo ha!"

"AH HEE HEE HOO HOO HA!"

"(I say Chives, let us try that again, one more time)"

"(Ahem)... AH. HEE. HEE. HOO. HOO. HA!

"Very good Chesterfield, very good Chives. Very Goblinish indeed."

They speak in 1950s received pronunciation and are anxious about their schemes. They write these down on scraps of paper (the schemes are all veery carefully and exhaustively planned), and when not observed, they pull out the scraps and peer closely at them to make sure they haven't got anything wrong. But the false spiky fingers they wear get in the way, so they have to pull the fingertops off with their teeth. Then they get sweat on the instructions and smear the details.

Oh no, now their green facepaint is sweating off.

And their false pointy teeth cannot hold their long fingers. Both are falling out...

Oh no oh dear, oh dearie-me no.

The Gob Moblins are not that much of a threat to be honest. Their schemes almost always fall apart in desperate fashion, plus you can usually spot them by their shoes, they are excellent cobblers and hate wearing unshined footwear, plus they are bullied by every type of actual goblin, who they look up to as celebrities but also fear, and do not understand at all.

Their greatest threat may be to your emotions, as it can be anguishing to watch them try so hard and fail so pathetically, and then breakdown crying, their tears leaving green smears everywhere.

CHEESE GOBLINS

They are fermented goblin milk, solidified in warm conditions over time. 
Where from? 

The goblin milkers - by the Good Goose-God don't ask how or why they do it or who they are. It is one of the worst things that ever was. The horror of the Cheese Goblins.

If goblin parts get into milk, it ferments; they emerge. The milk curdling and turning greenish-white. 

They are full of holes, but they can be soft too, and riddled with a bluish mould, they can have a sheeny rind which peels off to reveal the milky Cheese Goblin beneath, they can be like mozzarella, or like brie.

They are of no especial quality or skill compared to other goblins, and to be honest, quite a bit less robust. But... think about their cheesy fingers reaching out for you, or cheesy eyes turning in their cheesy heads, transmitting cheesy thoughts to cheesy brains. Curdling and churning and thickening things. Churning themselves up, spreading themselves on crackers and posting each other through the letterbox.

Nothing is enough for the Cheese Goblins. What wild thoughts might they not think, and what cheese dreams might they not dream? For the Cheese Goblins have cheese dreams each night, dreams of the wildest invention, and darkest consequence.

They fear cheese graters, cheese knives, cheese cutters and cheese boards, and seek revenge upon all cheese-eaters.

LONG GOBLINS

They are especially long and wiggly, like ropes or hosepipes, with smirking little round faces like the ends of sticks of rock. Their length is not reassuringly noodly, like a snakes or worms, (both of which they HATE), they are clearly still a person shape, just stretched horribly, with the pointed vertebrae poking out of their flexible backs

Their very longness is their weakness and their strength because that is how they get into places, but there is no way they could pass as a person. Instead they gather together in long places, like drainpipes and have long conversations. They take a long time to decide what to do, which is fortunate for us, but once they do decide they will stick at it for an equally long time.

There is nothing about the long goblins which is not long, their attention spans, their vision, their stories and their names. 

All long.

Their dinner engagements are exhausting. Never ask one to give a speech, even their pauses are long, and their horrible long fingers as they creep out of a pipe. 

What do they wear? Long johns of course, and they are ruled by the Longest Goblin, who is as thick as a python and twice as squeezy.

They prefer long food, like spaghetti, noodles, hot dogs, eels and string-beans. Offering them such items, or cooking them a feast of such, might persuade them to leave.
 

The List So Far

Amber Golems
Bomblenowl
Creature from the Unknown
Conspicuous Squirrels
Copy-Monsters
Crime Bird
Dracula
Dragon
Gelly Cube
Ghost (standard)
Ghost, of a Sinister Pig
Ghost Queen
Goblins, Cheese
Goblins, Corn
Goblins, Egg
Goblins, Gas
Goblins, Ghost
Goblins, Glass
Goblins, Gloom
Goblins, Grain
Goblins, Grass
Goblins, Gourd
Goblins, Long
Goblins, Mole
Goblins, Trash
Gob Moblins
Ingot Beast
King Slime
Loan Troll
Men-of-Bones
Mirror-Gibbons
Moon Mage
Ogre
Pumpkin-Headed Böggelmen
Ratmaster
Rude Orcs
Secret-Eaters
Sinister Pig
Sky Witch
Snail Knight
The Danger-Snake
The Master-Thief
The Worlds Most Evil Dog
Thieflings
Trap Dogs
Xanthic Men

That's 46 in total. I want 50 for the book. I know what one more is; The Monks of Dooom. But what should the remaining three Dangerous Strangers be?

Song of the Ash-Sea Pirates

Many say the Great Ash Sea which spreads westwards from the furthest shore is impassable and empty, barren as a frozen heart, yet consider this song sung by the Pirates of that Sea, raiders of Blackwaters coast who ply the endless ash-ocean in sledge-ships with tattered sails, memoryless and waste-mad;

 

Its farewell to night and farewell to day,
Goodbye to Blackwater, into the Grey!
Its over the edge and into the ash,
Where the ghost-gulls wheel and the wyrm-winds lash.
Out beyond Sintel and Scaedwealds black storm,
Where the wind steals the memory and monsters are born,
It's there we'll go roving, long for to search,
For the rocks and the ruins where the ash-birds perch.
Aye its there we'll go searching, long for to rove,
'Neath burning black coal-trees in petrified groves,
Through Courts of Pale Princes who live without flesh,
It's there we'll go seeking to search for old Esh.
The old land is calling, the old land is there,
Where the sky becomes stone and the ash becomes air.
Yes the old land is looking, the old land is ours,
She holds still the memories of mankinds lost hours.
For this be our treasure, these be the gold,
The truth and the wisdom that man had of old.
So its farewell to night and farewell to day,
Goodbye to Blackwater, into the Grey!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, remember the Mariners Song of the Nightmare Sea? 

Have I done any other songs on here I've forgotten about?

Gawain and the Green Knight Hadback Kickstarter

I'm back off my holidays and it's time to watch me crash and burn in excitingly new ways, and also to watch me awkwardly read poetry on Youtube.

That's what the public wants right? Chivalric Renaissance Poetry? Because that's what you are getting.

WITH A KICKSTARTER

EVERYONE UNIVERSALLY LOVES KICKSTARTER RIGHT??

For, quite a long time a team made up of Daniel Puerta (artist), Mateo Diaz Torres (layout) and I, have been working on an illustrated hardback book of my version of the poem 'Gawain and the Green Knight', which you may remember me blogging a few years ago.

Here is a sample of Daniels art;

If you would like to see more, click the links here, the images or the Green Knight Himself to the left to go to the KICKSTARTER.

If you want a book of chivalric poetry, arguably ruined by being partially re-translated into my own idiom, in HARDBACK, with about 18 illustrations - THEN YOU HAVE TWENTY (ONE?) DAYS TO GRAB ONE SO CLICK THAT KICKSTARTER.

If you have questions, comments etc, ask here, on the Kickstarter or anywhere.

A Review of the Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene is as close to terrible as a verifiable work of genius can be.

Anyone giving it five stars has not read the whole thing, if it were half as long it would be twice as good.

Despite its pretensions to depth, the wealth of its pleasures come from lightness and air, and nothing is more terminal to froth than darkness and excessive length. The darkness being, not the costumed shade of Nights 'Yron Chariot' trundling across the stage of rhyme, dragging a velvet curtain, but the inner darkness of the creator. The meta-dark.

Perhaps the only way that the second half of the Faerie Queene is superior to the first is that it is a deeper, more telling and much more suggestive portrait of its maker. But the things it tells us are not things we want to know.

So, like the text itself, I will speak in two halves, one full of joy, the other 'both signed and sealed with blood, Wherein darke things were writ, hard to be understood.'



BOOK ONE - THE BOWRE OF BLISSE

Uwins, Thomas, born 1782 - died 1857

It’s a great Anime series, or comic book, or Flash Gordon news-reel serial. It's fun. It has good fights.

You would not believe how many great works of literature have terrible, or no, fight scenes. Mallory is a serious offender in this. For a book largely about men fighting other men, the fighting itself is shit. In the Morte men come together 'like two wilde boars', they trace and traverse nigh ten houres' then one gets a spear in the gut, which is pulled out 'and the gore rushed oute thereby', and that's it. And that's it ten or twenty times because I have just described 80% of the fights in the Morte D' Arthur.

Spensers fights are little like the fights of life, but they are great fictional fights. They have structure, identity, vividness, they exhibit unique arms, different tactics and movement between places. Participants act intelligently, or at least, not pointlessly stupidly, and inventively, with their weapons and without.

Monsters, villains and remarkable creatures exhibit 'special moves' and particular actions, exactly like an anime series or computer game. Foes are linked together in complex patterns of relationship and response, presenting problems of comprehension and adaptation to the heroes.

Furor, the embodiment of fury, is taunted to levels of rage-imbued super-strength by the hag 'Occasion', the can only be beaten once she is bound. Arthur fights a giant with three bodies and strikes them through all at-once. Malegar flees on tiger-back and fires arrows, caught and returned by super-fast hags who much likewise be trapped, Malegar himself can't be beaten till he is lifted from contact with the earth. The Souldan in book five rides an uncatchable weapon-strewn chariot but the steeds that pull it can be blinded by light and crashing the chariot impales the Souldan on his own weapons.

These are not just problems, but elements of a sermon and specific allegory, while still managing to be more cinematic and exciting fights than anything else written around the same time, and many written now.

At least for the early books, Spenser acts as a (reasonably) decent show runner - he can move people on and off stage, set up thrilling denouements, arrange unspeakable revelations, raise heroes up and cast them down, only to be caught in a third-act reveal. He can throw in villains, damizells and fools and have us recognise and understand, intuitively, immediately, understand them at once. He gives us archetypes filled up with living breath and burnished with particularity. Eternal yet distinct, abstract but alive, far-flung polarities tied together in verse.

And the Verse is very good.

Even when the Faerie Queene is terrible, in the late books, it’s still possible and likely that you could open  the book at random and get something between good and amazing. Let me try;

"How many flyes in whottest sommers day
Doe sieze upon some beast, whose flesh is bare,
That all the place with swarms to overlay,
And with their little stings right felly fare;
So many theeves about him swarming are,
All which so him assayle on every side,
And sore oppresse, ne any him doth spare;
But he doth with his raging brand divide
Their thickest troups, & round about him scattreth wide."

In a line or a pair he clambers smoothly from the pseudo-archaic to the demotic. He talks high and he talks low, all in one go, and smooth. He enriches his line with clear, flowing half-irregular patterns of alliteration locked within regular rhyme like ripples on a Koi pond bordered by mosaic. He can end lines like drum beats, pounding through a verse like a military step, or enjamb them, looping them like snakes back and forth, all neatly, as if at play. He can flow through diverse sounds within a verse like a painter spinning their easel on fingertip, then drop us into distant thunder with near-Miltonic repetition;

"Lest she with blame her honour should attaint,
That everie word did tremble as she spake,
And everie looke was coy, and woundrous quaint,
And everie limbe that touched her did quake"

And he is doing this continually, relentlessly, while doing every other thing in the text at the same time. He does it for a thousand pages.

Spenser seems to write like an autodictat and a clever commoner rather than someone from The Culture. In his references he flies to the heights of classical allusion and intermixes thoughts and sensations of the commonest kind - seeming to be drawn from life. The child in the crowd reaching out to touch the dragons claws, the huswife raging at an animal sneaking in to lick her milk, the shepherd lying around in the sun and offering the passing knight a drink.

His verse is patched. Not just the references but the words themselves, and not just the words but the structure. His thought is not 'what does is mean, or signify, that I am using this particular reference, euphonic structure or word?' but 'what can I do with this? Can I jam it in here? Can I jam it in there?'

He is with the audience somehow, a showman deliciously pulling back the curtain, enjoying the tension. Some poets swing open the door to a private world, but we feel Spenser there with us as the story unfolds. I know what faces he would make.

His Characters, the human ones at least, at not great. Britomart and Glauce are good. Arthur is amusingly crafty.

His monsters, villains and fools are amazing. Just from memory;

Braggadochio and Trompart – marvellous, insane, boastful loons. Barggadochio, the false knight gains False Florimell, the freaky artificial sex-golem, and sadly loses her.

Archimago - the OG anti-knight, multiply disguised, always-plotting, never-gives-up all time best supervillain. Also the catholic church.

Duessa - the ultimate hot but not. Also, the Catholic church.

THE DRAGON! - Remember that guy? (Also the Catholic church and maybe Satan)

Orgoglio - successfully boned Duessa and had a stable relationship for a while in their child-sacrifice castle. Lets hear it for this guy, and for all those other Gyants that got murdered.

Radigund - number-one RadFem Amazon. Now has her own Youtube channel.

Pyrochles - 'burnt doe I burne' dumb as a post, hyper-confident and ALWAYS ANGRY.

Mammon and his Amazing Cave.

The Spanish Inquisition Sphinx Monster.

Acrasia and her Porn Island.

Phoedra the deranged manically-rowing chatterbox (my favourite).

The Iron-Toothed, poisonous, multi-tongued Blatant Beast.

Sex-Bot False Florimell.

Distain! - In both his forms. Don't actively call him 'Distain', for he distains to be so called, and all who so him call.

The Souldan and his wacky-races hyper-chariot, and don't forget his rage-tiger wife (still out there).

Malegar - the tiger-riding unkillable badass with an army of shadowy chaos mutants and a pair of backup hags.

Furor and his messed-up hag relationship.

Night! and her yron-wheeled chariot.

Woodwose - both good and bad.

Cupid - Demon Prince of Slannesh, and a massive dick.

Despair and his amazing intro, also has a cave.

Turpine! - What a fucking tool.

Many, many pseudo-Irish cannibals, slavers and thieves.

And finally, cosmic-level Kirby-Esque female badass MVTABILITY!

What a list! And that's not all of them. It's the best run on Batman ever.

Amongst the most interesting elements are the interrelationship (literally) of many of the monstrous and villainous characters and the use of processions and courts. These are both RPG-applicable enough that I will probably end up doing posts on them both.

So there you have it, a beautiful, energetic, inventive classic of the English language, packed full of amusement and incident, and a vital seed text for pretty much all of Anglo-derived adventure and genre fiction. What’s not to love?





BOOK TWO - THE  CAVE OF DESPAIR

Joseph Severn

I’m not Christian, a well-read Renaissance courtier, or capable of, or interested in, gaining the level of knowledge required to effectively simulate either, and this hugely limits my ability to appreciate whatever Spenser was trying to do.

Firstly the Faerie Queene is meant to be a sermon, a moral, philosophical and theological text in which everything, (EVERYTHING), has a specific dual spiritual and moral meaning. I’m not Christian and even if I was the closest culturally to me, through my dad, and by temperament, is Catholicism, which obviously presents its own difficulties with this obsessively anti-Catholic work.

So I am only half-reading it really, even through I am playing close attention. Christianity is already a big, powerful, complex story/artefact that exists bedded down into the structure of the believer – like a harp in the head.

I also haven’t read the European Renaissance canon, but I’ve read enough to know that they are all constantly referencing and commenting on each other. It’s a big shared universe and if you haven’t read the background then you miss maybe 20% of what’s going on. You can pick some up from notes and google but its not the same as the information goes in sequentially, instead of responding in parallel.

Christianity is a harp in the head and the assumed canon is another harp in the head so when the imagined Christian, educated and protestant reader absorbs any particular idea in the Faerie Queene they sense and respond to its specific implied multiple meanings simultaneously, in parallel, not sequentially, one after the other, separated by time, and this concentration, layering and intensifying of meaning may be something that, in the right circumstances, makes allegory a good thing.

Because in every other circumstance, allegory is shit. And the fact that this is an allegory is a bad thing about it. And bad for me particularly.

I am also not a huge fan of the Elizabethan colonisation project in Ireland, especially when it comes to enforced famine, ethnic cleansing and cultural annihilation, all of which I think were recommended by Edward Spenser.

So those are my limits in reading and understanding the Faerie Queene, and we should take them into account when considering my criticisms of it.

HOWEVER

If we are to love directly, should we not also hate directly? They are, after all, beats of the same heart. And I responded directly, emotionally, to the bits that I thought were good, and we saw the results of that above.

SO, IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER;

REP-ET-IT-ION.

REPETITION.

REPETITION.

Repetition.

Repepepepepepepepe-etition.

The repeating of things.

"To say again."

Meet Edmund Spensers biggest influence; Edmund Spenser. The man never had a good idea that he wouldn't go back to. Or a bad idea. Everything in the book is in there at least twice and is in there too much except for Archimago and Phoedra who should have their own book. Would you like to go to Disneyland? Yes? About to leave? Well would you like to go back for another week, for free? Well you don't have a choice. And another week. And another. And another. Reading Spenser is like being a prisoner in an automated chocolate factory.

There is no good thing in the Faerie Queene but that there is too much of it. It numbs, bores and degrades.

ANTI-CATHOLIC MADNESS - To be fair this did provide a huge number of really good villains and monsters, but Jesus Christ. It's there in the beginning and it’s not that bad, but as Edmund settles into his new life as despised colonial landowner, in book 5 especially, and in book six, the pure, unadulterated, racial, cultural and religious hate he held for almost all the people in the place he was living seeps into the text like a house filling with sewage. Reading this stuff makes me feel like I am wading through diarrhoreatic shit.

Would you like to go to Disneyland, but it goes on too long and all the rides are about how the Jews should be exterminated? And also you can’t leave?

MISOGYNY! Like everything bad in the book, this is there in the beginning in foetal form, but then seems to gestate through the middle of the text and be born as some kind of Xenomorph monster in the later texts. Did you really need to bring in a RadFem Amazon to literally forcibly cross-dress men just so your most likeable (female) character could kill her? Did you have to have about 30% of all the female characters raped by someone? A woman gets raped by the sun. What the fuck? Oh my Christ it’s a grind.

ARTHEGALL - Arthegall is so fucking terrible. All of the knights are relatively boring but as well as having no personality, he's a horrible butchering, mutilating, murderer. And as well as that, it’s not even him doing the murdering, he just orders his robot to do it.

Having the main character of a Book be someone who is not only dull, but a shit, and not only a shit, but doesn't even do his own shit-work, but orders an automaton to do it... It plunges new depths of badness. It's so fucking bad. It’s bad on every level. I can't believe he got with Britomart. Life = RUINED!!!!

THEY NEVER DO THE FUCKING QUEST!!! - Fucking dithering narcissistic knights and fucking swiss-cheese Cantos where the plot fucks off for most of it. Did I say he could do structure? I lied. He is ffffuuucking AWFUL. He brings on super-hero characters to kill the possibility of dramatic action from the 'main' cast, forgets about them, and then has to bin them off hurriedly in the penultimate cantos to half-heartedly finish the story. Calidore is barely in his. Arthegall is in his, but doesn't do the thing he was sent to do, spends several Canto's dressed as a woman in prison and is generally awful. Britomart is good but her story is stretched over two Canto's with a bunch of beta-ass B-List extras wandering around doing nothing that interesting. Plus the end of her story is her ending up with Arthegall. Guyon spends a Canto reading, and another looking at allegorical architecture.

Its true that the endless shadowing of archetypes, with powerful major characters having shadows or partial doubles, and those people sometimes having doubles, and all of those interacting as separate people, is pretty interesting, theoretically. Multiple layers of reality all interacting. The same is true with the poems-inside-poems where someone stares at a tapestry or a carving or something and we get a handy DVD-extra animated intermission about whatever its about.

But it ffffffffuuucckks narrative drive. I mean I actually wanted to find out what happened with a lot of these quests. You put the name of the guy on the front of each book. But Batman was not in the Batman movie. I want my money back.

THE BORING FUCKING KNIGHTS - Remember that old Redletter media video where they asked people to describe Star Wars prequel characters without saying their name, job, or what they looked like?

Describe Redcrosse like that. Try Guyon. Britomart - she's in love? Arthegall - is a shit. Caledore - narcisstic creep.

I know knights are always boring in Chivalric literature but come the fuck on, the book is about fucking Knights! None of them have a fucking hobby or something? Even Mallory did better and he was writing in fucking prison.

THE NOBILITY WORSHIPPING CLAPTRAP - I know it’s the 16th century but come the fuck on. Get up off your knees you fucking worm and stop nibbling Elizabeths clit. It makes me ashamed to fucking read you. They are not that great. And you were born poor you little class-traitor colonialist social-climbing bastard. The 'raskall many' indeed.

OH GOD THE RIVER MARRIAGES - JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT RIVERS GETTING MARRIED! NO ONE CARES! ITS A SHALLOW FUCKING IDEA!

THE WEIRD SEX STUFF – Sex Golem made from dreams and mist with carefully described nether parts. Another sex golem made from wires and gold who goes around enticing men. Lots and lots of bold women with carefully described breasts. Duessa being the Ultimate Catfish. Lots of women sweating. Lots of women bathing. Hot maidens wrestling naked in the Bowre of Blisse. That rapist giantess. That chick that ended up boning all the satyrs. Actually, I’m pretty much fine with all of this, move it to the + section above.

ALLEGORY IS SHIT - Ok, so, the allegory underpins, sustains and necessitates many of the more creative parts of the book, All of those monsters and villains are allegories of hyper-specific moral, theological or political elements. Same with those complex problem-solving fights I like. And the same with all the spiritual architecture that I enjoyed, Mammons cave, Despairs cave, the Brigants cave, and other non-cave spaces.

BUT ALLEGORY IS STILL TERRIBLE! It does not _possess_, it has no independent life. The great cause of Art is to unify and set afire the mind and heart with an experience that ordinary nature can only rarely, and unpredictably provide. And ALLEGORY DOES NOT DO THIS. It is merely an idea. It is a Wikipedia article about itself. It is a hyperlink, a meme, a dreamworks eyebrow. Allegory is trash, it is trash trash trash. There is nothing done in that form that would not be superior of it were merely a story and allowed to live. Allegory is a Damien Hurst pickle.


LORD GREY WAS GUILTY AS FUUUUUCCCCKKK! – They found the fucking skull Edmund! Everyone knows you killed those prisoners. Is your argument going to be that Grey used some kind of douchebag monkeys-paw verbal phrasing that meant he didn’t technically offer them safety? Well its 400 years later and nobody gives a fuck.

Stop banging on and on and on about how fucking unfair it is. There is nothing terrible that happened to you, in your whole life, that you didn’t somehow deserve.

Reputational damage? The Blatant Beast? YOU DID THAT SHIT. You got that castle and that free estate the same fucking way you got kicked out of it, by the sword. Don’t go running around crying about how unfair the world has been to you when you are that unfairness incarnated in human form.

WHY CAN’T YOU FEEL? – “Yet with all this, Spenser neither makes us laugh nor cry.” True. But why? You can take us to infinite spaces and great reaches of the visual and perceptual imagination, but you can’t go deep. I felt more reading the Morte than I did reading this. Why is that? Is it because of the allegory? Is it because you are a clever, talented flake? The two most powerful emotions I got from this are that you really loved your (second) wife, and we only got that for a moment in Book Six, and that you really hated the Irish.


Well, there you have it. Maybe the worst Great Book ever written, or the best terrible book ever written. There are few occasions where I would recommend damaging a text but if you want to just rip your copy in half and just read the front you will have a much better experience.

If you want to read my read-through in all its badly-spelled, poorly formatted, badly conceived glory, then click below for a PDF of every post;

If you would like to listen to me read the whole thing. Then click these words to go to the Internet Archive where I have the files stored. Sorry its a mess.

All that moveth doth in Change delight - Mutabilitie Cantos 7 and 8

It's been a long trip.

"Doe thou my weaker wit with skill inspire,
Fot for this turne; and in my sable brest
Kindle fresh sparks of that immortal fire,
Which learned minds inflameth with desire
Of heavenly things:"

This is the trial between Jove a Mutability to see what rules reality, change, or heavenly order.

The judge is 'great dame Nature,

"Being far greater and more tall of stature
Then any of the gods or Powers on hie:
Yet certes by her face and physnomy.
Whether she man or woman inly were,
That could not any creature well descry:
For, with a veile that wimpled every where,
Her head and face was hid, that mote to none appeare.

That some doe say was by skill devized,
To hide the terror of her uncouth hew,
From mortall eyes that should be sore agrized;
For that her face did like a Lion shew,
That eye of wight could not undure to view:"

...

"This gread Grandmother of all creatures bred
Great Nature, ever young yet full of eld,
Still mooving, yet unmoved from her sted;
Unseene of any, yet of all beheld;"


Mutability comes forth and begins her argument. The Earth 'only seems unmov'd and permanent';

"Yet she is changed in part, and eek in generall.

For, all that from her springs, and is ybredde,
How-ever fayre it flourish for a time,
Yet see we soone decay; and being dead,
To turne again unto their earthly slime:
Yet, out of their decay and mortall crime,
We daily see new creatures to arize;
And of their Winter spring another Prime,
Unlike in forme, and chag'd by strange disguise:
So turne they still about, and change in restlesse wise."

She goes on, describing change in men;

"Ne doe their bodies only flit and fly:
But eeke their minds (which they immortall call)
Still change and vary thoughts, as new occasions fall."

Talks about the oceans and the air, and fire;

"When any winde doth under heaven blowe;
With which the coulds are also tost and roll'd;
Now like great Hills, &, streight, like sluces, them unfold."

"Thus, all these fower (the which the ground-work bee
Of all the world, and of all living wights)
To thousand sorts of Change we subject see:
Yet are they chang'd (by other wondrous slights)
Into themselves, and lose their native mights;
The Fire to Aire, and th'Ayre to Water sheere,
And Water into Earth: yet Water fights
With Fire, and Aire with Earth approaching neere:
Yet all are in one body, and as one appeare."

As further proof, Mutability orders the seasons called forth, in sequence, as if they were courtiers. And then the individual months 'all riding came'.

A few highlights;

October is drunk, and riding a giant scorpion (they all ride horoscope animals);

"Then came October full of merry glee:
For, yet his noule was totty of the must,
Which he was treading in the wine-fats see,
And of the joyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frollick and so full of lust:"

November is a fatty;

"Next was November, he full grosse and fat,
As fed with alrd, and that right well might seeme;
For, he had been a fatting hogs of late,
That yet his browes with sweat, did reek and steem,
And yet the season was full sharp and breem,
In planting eeke he took no small delight:"

December is chilly and riding a Goat, but happy as he contains Christmas;

"And after him, came next the chill December:
Yet he through merry feasting which he made,
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviours birth his mind so much did glad:
Upon a shaggy-bearded Goat he rode,
...
And in his hand a broad deepe boawle he beares;
Of which, he freely drinks an health to all his peeres."

The winter months seem like pretty cool dudes really. And yes, that is exactly how Edmund spells 'boawle'.

Then after the months come Day and Night, then the Hours, then Life and Death;

"Death with most grim and griesly visage seene,
Yet is he nought but parting of the breath:
Ne ought to see, but like a shade to weene,
Unbodied, unsoul'd, unheard, unseene."

Jove agrees that everything under heaven does change, but can only change through Time, and that Time himself is kept in his course by the Gods;

"To whom, thus Mutability: The things
Which we see not how they are mov'd and swayd,
Ye may attribute to your selves as Kings,
And say they by your secret powre are made:
But what we see not, who shall us perswade?"

Then she names all the Gods in turn and points out that they have births, origins, stories and that they do change in various ways.

"Onely the starrie skie doth still remaine:
Yet do the Starres and Signes therein still move,
And even itself is mov'd, as wizards saine.
But all that moveth, doth mutation love:
Therefore both you and them to me I subject prove."

Everyone waits for Natures final verdict:

"At length, she looking up with chearefull view,
The silence brake, and gave her doome in speeches few.

I welll consider all that ye have sayd,
And find that all things stedfastnes doe hate
And changed be: yet being rightly wayd
They are not changed from their first estate;
But by their change their being de dilate:
And turning to themselves at length againe,
Doe worke their owne perfection so by fate:
Then over them Change doth not rule and raigne:
But they raigne over change, and doe their states maintaine.

Cease therefore daughter further to aspire,
And thee content thus to be rul'd by me:
For thy decay thou seekst by they desire;
But time shall come that all shall changed bee,
And from thenceforth, none no more change shall see."

And that is the end of Canto Seven, and all that remains is the two verses of Canto Eight, Edmund speaking to us in his own voice, which I will give to you in full;

Book Seven

CANTO EIGHT

"When I bethinke me on that speech whyleare,
Of Mutability, and well it way:
Me seemes, that though she all unworthy were
Of the Heav'ns Rule; yet very sooth to say,
In all things else she beares the greatest sway.
Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle,
And love of things so vaine to cast away;
Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle,
Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle.

Then gin I thinke on that which nature sayd,
Of that same time when no more Change shall be,
But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd
Upon the pillours of Eternity,
That is contrary to Mutabilitie:
For, all that moveth, doth in Change delight:
But thence-forth all shall rest eternally
With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:
O that great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.

FINIS"

Book Eight

Podcast

Ceasse to molest the Moone - Mutabilitie Canto 6

Get ready for a brief, and irregular, turn into Sandman/Anime high, HIGH Fantasy as Edmund takes us first, directly to the Moon, for Moon-War One, and then back to Ireland for more blather about his house getting burnt down.

"What man that sees the ever-whirling wheele
Of Change, the which all mortall things doth sway,
But that therby doth find & plainly feele,
How MVABILITY in them doth play
Her cruell sports, to many mens decay?
Which that to all may better yet appeare,
I will rehearse that whylome I heard say,
How she at first her selfe began to reare,
Gainst all the Gods, and th'empire sought from them to beare."

But who is Mutability, and whence came she?

"She was, to weet, a daughter by descent
Of those old Titans, that did whylome strive
With Saturnes sonne for heavens regiment."

Women in Spenser are either super-good or super-evil, and you can guess which one is Mutability. She wants to first, rule the world, and then defeat the gods.

Ruling earth is realtively simple and achieved by verse five;

"For shee the face of earthly things so changed,
That all the which Nature had establisht first
In good estate, and in meet order ranged,
She did pervert, and all their statutes burst:"
..
"Ne shee the lawes of Nature onely brake,
But eke of Justice, and of Policie;
And wring of right, and bad of good did make,
And death for life exchanged foolishlie:
Since which, all living wights have learen'd to die,
And all this world is woxen daily worse.
O pittious worke of MVTABILITIE!
By which, we are subject to that curse,
And death in stead of life have sucked from our Nurse."

Word conquest achieved, she makes straight for heaven. First stop; THE MOON.

"Thence, to the Circle of the Moone she clambe,
Where Cynthia raignes in everlasting glory,"

Passing by the silver gates of the bright shining palace, and their keeper, Time, Change comes upon Cynthia;

"Her sitting on an Ivory throne shee found,
Drawne of two steeds, th'one black, the other white,
Environd with tenne thousand starres around,
That duly her attended day and night;
And by her side, there ran her Page, that hight
Vesper_, whom we the Evening-starre intend:
That with his Torche, still twinkling like teylight,
Her lightened all the way where she should wend,
And joy to weary wandring traveilers did lend."

Mutability instantly becomes envious of the Moons rich swag and glorious 'Crystall pillors';

"Eftsoones she cast by force and tortious might,
Her to displace, and to her selfe to have gained
The kingdome of the Night, and waters by her wained.

Boldly she bid the Godesse downe descend,
And let her selfe into that ivory throne;
For, shee her selfe more worthy thereof wend,
And better able it to guide alone:
Whether to men, whose fall she did bemone,
Or unto Gods, whose state she did maligne,
Or to th'infernall Powers, her need give lone
Of her faire light, and bounty most benigne,
Her selfe of all that rule shee deemed most condigne."

The Moon is having none of this, she bears 'Nights burning lamp,' and 'with sterne countenaunce and disitainfull cheare, Bending her horned browes, did put her back:' and tells her to get out 'Or at her perill bide the wrathfull Thunders wrack.'

Then it gets really, really Anime. Mutability 'rought forth her hand' to pluck Cynthia from her  Ivory Moon-Throne, and up-lifts her golden wand. The 'starres, which round about her blazed' and the Moons bright wagon stand amazed.

On earth the lights go out in the sky and people start to freak, 'Fearing least Chaos_ broken had his chaine,'.

And very quickly, Mercury (The Flash) runs to Joves Palace in 'heavens hight' to tell him whats going on.


............................

CUT TO: JOVES PALACE (INT) - ETERNAL NIGHT APPARENTLY

"The father of the Gods when this he heard,
Was troubled much at their so strange affright
Doubting least Typhon_ were againe uprear'd,
Or other his old foes, that once him sorely fear'd."

So he sends the Flash 'Downe to the Circle of the Moone' to find out whats going on and to stop it. If hellish, cast it down, if other, bring it here.

"The wing-foot God, so fast his plumes did beat,
That soone he came where-as the Titanesse
Was striving with faire Cynthia for her seat:
At whose strange sight, and haughty hardinesse,
He wondred much, and feared her no lesse.
Yet laying feare aside to doe his charge,
At last, he bade her (with bold stedfastnesse)
Ceasse to molest the Moone to walk at large,
Or come before high Jove, her dooings to discharge."

The Flash even breaks out his 'snaky-wreathed Mace, whose awfull power Doth make both Gods and hellish fiends affraid:', but to no success as Mutability answers that she gives not two shits for him or Jove or anything else, she is going to go full-Killmonger on this joint.

Agnes Miller Parker

So the Flash runs back to Jove.

Jove has his own opinions on people trying to overturn divine power;

"Ye may remember since th'Earths cursed seed
Sought to assaile the heavens eternall towers,
And to us all exceeding feare did breed:
..
Of that bad seed is this bold woman bred,
That now with bold presumption doth aspire
To thrust faire Phoebe from her silver bed,
And eke our selves from heavens high Empire,
..
So haveing said, he ceast: and with his brow
(His black eye-brow, whose doomefull dreaded beck
Is wont to wield the world unto his vow,
And even the highest Powers of heaven to check
Made sign at them in their degrees to speake:"

Before they can really get into it, Mutability herself arrives;

"So forth she rose, and through the purest sky
To Joves high Palace straight cast to ascend,
To prosecute her plot: Good on-set boads good end."

Everyone fraks out, even Mutability freaks out because she has just burst into the country club and found the members quite heavily armed. Only rapey old Jove keeps his cool and asks her to lay that rap on him girl.

She has a complex and slightly boring argument about the descent of Titans and how this technically makes her Queen.

Jove is having none of this;

"... With that, he shooke
His Nectar-deawed locks, with which the skyes
And all the world beneath for terror quooke,
And eft his burning levin-brond in hand he tooke."

But then notices that she it hot;

".. when he looked on her lovely face,
In which, faire beames of beauty did appeare,
That could the greatest wrath soone turne to grace
(Such sway doth beauty even in Heaven beare)
He staine his hand:"

".. ceasse thy idle claime thou foolish gerle,
And seeke by grace and goodnesse to obtaine
That place from which by folly Titan_ fell;
There-to thou maist perhaps, if so thou faine
Have Jove thy gratious Lord and Soveraigne."

MVTABILITY is having none of this;

".. thee, o Jove, no equall Judgee I deeme
Of my desert, or of my dewfull Right;
That in thine owne behalfe maist partiall seeme:
But to the highest him, that is behight
Father of Gods and men by equall might;
To weet, the God of Nature, I appeale.
There-at Jove wexed wroth, and in his spright
Did inly grudge, yet did it well conceale;
And bade Dan Phoebus Scribe her Apellation seale."

THATS WHERE HE'S BEEN. HE GOT A JOB AS JOVES SECRETARY.

So the trial between Jove and MVITABILITY to see who is in charge is set, and arranged to take place on Arlo hill, in Ireland.

Which means the rest of this Canto (about 40% of the whole thing) is an exhaustive descritpion of parts of Ireland, and how beautiful it is, and why its full of criminals and metaphorical wolves who burn people out of their homes.

You may feel free to skip the rest of the Canto if you wish, the next one picks up at the tiral, and is the final, ultimate and last Canto of the Faerie Queene.


..........................................................

".. were it not ill fitting for this file,
To sing of hilles & woods, mongst warres and Knights,
I would abate the sternenesse of my stile,
Mongst these sterne sounds to mingle soft delights:"

This is the mythical/allegorical history of a hill (Galymore to us).

So, this was a place so wonderful that Diana would go there to bathe.

"In her sweet streames, Diana used oft
(After her sweatie chace and toilsome play)
To bathe her selfe; and after, on the soft
And downy grasse, her dainty limbes to lay"

(I hope you have't forgotten Edmunds sweat fetish.)

So a creepy Satyr/God fellow, Faunus, wants to spy on Diana washing off the sweat. He manages to corrupt a maid who tells him when Diana will be bathing. He successfully peeps, but;

"There Faunus saw that pleased much his eye,
And made his hart to tickle in his brest,
that for great joy of some-what he did spy,
He could him not containe in silent rest;
But breaking forth in laughter, oud profest
His foolish thought. A foolish Faune indeed,
That couldst not hold thy selfe so hidden blest,
But wouldest needs thine owne conceit areed.
Babblers unworthy been of so divine a meed."

So Diana catches him, and we get this charming verse about her reaction;

"Like as a huswife, that with busie care
Thinks of her Darie to make wondrous gaine,
Finding where-as some wocked beast unware
That breakes into her Dayr'house, there doth draine
Her creaming pannes, and frustrate all her paine;
Hath in some snare or gin set close behind,
Entrapped him, and caught into her traine,
Then thinkes what punishment were best assign'd,
And thousand deathes deviseth in her vengefull mind:"

Diana and her nymphs throw Faunus around a bit, they consider castrating or drowning him. Instead they dress him in a deer-skin and chase him till he drops.

Its not exactly clear, but I think they stone the corrupted maid, Molassa, to death;

"They, by commaund'ment of Diana there
Her whelm'd with stones."

Faunus feels bad enough about this that he agrees to recieve her 'unto his bed' with her lover Fanchin, which, since he is a woody wood god means that they both get turned into rivers? So this is another Spencerian river-marriage story.

Diana is still so angry about the situation that she leaves Ireland forever;

"There-on an heavy haplesse curse did lay,
To weet, that Wolves, where she was wont to space,
Should harbour'd be, and all those Woods deface,
And Thieves should rob and spoile that Coast around.
Since wich, those Woods, and all that goodly Chase,
Doth to this day with Wolves and Thieves aboud:
Which too-too true that lands in-dwellers since have found."

Mutabilitie Canto Six

Podcast

there we leave them in joy - FQ Book 6 Canto 12

"Like as a ship, that through the Ocean wyde
Direct her course unto one certain cost,
Is met of many a counter winde and tyde,
With which her winged speed is let and crost,
And she her selfe in stormie surges tost;
Yet making many a borde, and many a bay,
Still winneth way, ne hath her compasse lost:
Right so it fares with me in this long way,
Whose course is often stayed, yet never is astray."

It seemed pretty damn astray quite a bunch of times Edmund, but here we are indeed.

Ben Jonson reported that when the Hugh O'Neill burnt Spenser out of his property, that one of his young children with Elizabeth Boyle died in the fire before they could escape.

Its strange and fascinating to me how, as the wheel of history turns, the hero of one story inevitably becomes the villain of another, the monster the victim, the braggart a poet, and back again. It is no wonder to me that the Medieval Age was absorbed in the image of the Wheel of Fortune. It is simple concept, but often a true one, especially in an age of strife.

Its impossible for me to not read all of the final parts of this book, the attack on the village, the capture and loss of Pastorell, and the nice happy reunion, and the final trapping of the Blatant Beast, as almost direct allegories of Spensers life.

That may be wrong. And possibly he well-deserved every bad thing that happened to him. But I take no pleasure in it.

"Sir Calidore when thus he now had raught
Faire Pastorella from those Brigants powre,
Unto the Castle of Belgard her brought,
Whereof was Lord the good Sir Bellamoure;
Who whylome was in his youthes freshest flowre
As lustie knight, as ever wielded speare,
And had endured many a dreadfull stoure
In bloudy battell for a Ladie deare,
The fayrest Ladie then of all that living were.

Her name was Claribelle"

From the notes;

Belgard - French: 'beautiful love'
Claribelle - French: 'bright beauty'

Claribelles father was a wealth lord who wanted to marry her off to Picteland. She fell in love with Belgard and married him in secret. The dad was pissed enough to throw them both into a dungeon;

"Yet did so streightly them a sunder keepe,
That neither could to company of th'other creepe.

Nathless Sir Bellamour, whether through grace
Or secret guifts so with his keepers wrought,
That to his love sometimes he came in place,
Whereof her wombe unwist to wight was fraught,
And in dew time a mayden child forth brought."

This baby is given to a Maid to be taken away and adopted. The Maid goes off somewhere and hides behind some bushes unto a Shepheard (pooe Meliboe) who picks her up and takes her away.

But not before noting that the baby has;

"Upon the litle breast like christall bright,
She mote percieve a litle purple mold,
That like a rose her silken leaves did faire unfold."

And eventually the bad dad dies and Bellamour and Claribelle end up in the castle;

"Thenceforth they joy'd in happinesse together,
And lived long in peace and love entyre,
Without disquiet or dislike of ether,
Till time that Calidore brought Pastorella thether."

Of course they get along amazingly with the somehow-familiar Pastorell, until Calidore remembers that this is the last Canto and he only has about 30 verses left to catch the Blatant Beast.

One day, Pastorellas maid, while dressing her;

"Chaunst to espy upon her yvory chest
The rosie marke, which she remembered well
That litle Infant had, which forth she kest,
The daughter of her Lady Claribell,"
..

"So full of joy, streight forth she ran in hast
Unto her mistresse,"
....

The sober mother seeing such her mood,
Yet knowing not, what meant that sodane thro,
Askt her, how mote her words be understood,
And what the matter was, that mov'd her so.
My liefe (sayd she) ye know, that long ygo,
Whilest ye in durance dwelt, ye to me gave
A little mayde, the which ye shylded tho;
The same againe if now ye list to have,
The same is yonder Lady, whom high God did save."

...

"The matrone stayd no lenger to enquire,
But forth in hast ran to the straunger Mayd;
Whom catching greedily for great desire,
Rent up her brest, and bosome open layd,
In which that rose she plainely saw displayd.
That her embracing twixt her armes twaine,
She long so held, and softly weeping sayd;
And livest thou my daughter now againe?
And art thou yet alive, whom dead I long did faine?

Who ever is the mother of one chylde,
Which having thought long dead, she fyndes alive,
Let her by proofe of that, which she hath fylde
In her owne breast, this mothers joy descrive:
For other none such passion can contrive
In prefect forme, as this good Lady felt,
When she so faire a daughter saw survive,
As Pastorella was, that night she swelt
For passing joy, which did all into pitty melt."

And I think that is where we can leave that.


......................................................

Now to the Beast.

The Beast is having a great old time, it has broken into a monestary;

"Through which the Mockes he chaced here & there,
And them purdu'd into their dortours sad,
And searched all their cells and secrets neare;
In which what filth and ordure did appeare,
Were yrksome to report;"

Protestant England really fucking hates monks.

The Beast sees Calidore coming and, as usual, runs for it. BUT;

"Him in a narrow place he overtooke,
And fierce assailing forst him turne againe:
Sternely he turned againe, when he him strooke
With his sarp steele, and ran at him amaine
With open mouth, that seemed to containe
A full good pecke within the utmost brim,
All set with yron teeth in raunges twaine,
That terrified his foes, and armed him,
Appearing like the mouth of Orcus griesly grim.

I think the Blatant Beast is the first known usage of 'Blatant'.
So it may please you to think that when you use that word you are referring to this many-tonged beast.

And therein were a thousand tongs empight,
Of sundry kindes, and sundry quality,
Some were of dogs, that barked day and night,
And some of cats, that wrawling still did cry:
And some of Beares, that groynd continually,
And some of Tygres, that did seeme to gren,
And snar at all, that ever passed by:
But most of them were tongues of mortall men,
Which spake reprochfully, not caring where nor when.

And them amongst were mingled here and there,
The tongues of Serpents with three forked stings,
That spat out poyson and gore bloudy gere
At all, that came within his ravenings,
And spake licentious words, and hatefull things
Of good and bad alike, of low and hie;
Ne Kasars spared he a whit, nor Kings,
But either blotted them with infamie,
Or bit them with his banefull teeth of injury."

Calidore, 'no whit afrayd' Recounters with 'impetuous might'.

The Beast spits poison from his bloody jaws and rears up 'As if he would have rent him with his cruell clawes.'

Agnes Miller

Calidore throws his shield forwards and 'Putting his puissaunce forth' pushes so hard that he forces the Beast to fall back and presses the shield into it.

"Full cruelly the Beast did rage and rore,
To be downe held, and maystred so with might,"

Calidore still presses on;

This Canto is almost the story of how Man first defeated the Internet

"Tho when the Beast saw, he mote nought availe,
By force, he gan his hundred tongues apply,
And sharpely at him to revile and raile,
With bitter termes of shamefull infamy;
Oft interlacing many a forged lie,
Whose like he never once did speake, nor heare,
Nor ever through thing so unworthily:
Yet did he nought for all that him forbeare,
But strained him so streightly, that he chokt him neare."

Eventually Calidore breaks its will, muzzels it and chains it 'with surest yron';

"And like a fearefull dog him followed through the land."

And so ends the quest of Sir Calidore.

Book Six Canto Twelve

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Lone Wolf and Coridon - FQ Book 6 Canto 11

Considering how unutterably terrible most penultimate Canto's are, this isn't that bad. Pretty good even.

Calidore still does fuck all to pursue the Blatant Beast, but that's because he has a lot of action-movie crap to get involved with.

This stuff does actually happen in this Canto.

"The joyes of love,if they whould ever last,
Without affliction of disquietnesse,
That worldly chaunces doe amongst them cast,
Would be on earth too great a blessednesse,
Liker to heaven, then mortall wretchednesse.
Therefore the winged God, to let men weet,
That here on earth is no sure happinesse,
A thousand sowres hath tempred with one sweet,
To make it seeme more deare and dainty, as is meet."

Pastorell is in a baaad situation, 'Wrapt in wretched cares and hearts unrest', abducted and held in a cave complex by 'Brigants'. Luckily ("luckily") for her, the Boss Briagant is into her 'And inly burnt with flames most raging whot,';

"And sought her love, by all the means he mote;
With looks, with words, with gifts he oft her wowed:
And mixed threats among, and much unto her vowed."

Pastorella is not into this guy but eventually;

"She thought it best, for shadow to pretend
Some shew of favour, by him gracing small,
That she thereby mote either freely wend,
Or at more ease continue there his thrall:
A little well is lent, that gaineth more withall."

This goes on for a while, with Pastorella pretending (or half-pretending, she is pretty messed up) sickness, until a new element enters. Something we haven't seen before. Slave traders;

"During which space that she thus sicke did lie,
It chaunst a sort of merchants, which were wound
To skin those coastes, for bondmen there to buy,
And by such trafficke after gaines to hunt,
Arrived in this Isle though bare and blunt,
T'inquire for slaves; where being readie met
By some of these same theeves at the instant brunt,
Were brought unto their Captaine, who was set
By his faire patients side with sorrowful regret."

This is curious and interesting on a number of levels. First, I think this is around the nascent beginnings of the Anglo-African slave trade, with the Royal African Company (Sir John Hawkins was just kicking off the proto slave-trade at the time of the Faerie Queene) and also, at the same time, being preyed upon by Barbary Corsairs who will just turn up on the European coast and yank whole villages (seems this was just about to start).

And on a fictional level, because, now there are slavers in Faerie? Who are they trading, and to where? Does the Faerie Queene know about this? Is she in charge of it? Are there pseudo-Muslim 'Panyim' or 'Saracen' slave traders preying on the Faerie Queenes fairies while her guys do the same to them?

Anyway, these slavers look at the captives from Pastorellas village, but someone mentions Pastorella herself. The Captain is not happy about this but brings her out;

"The sight of whom, though now decayd and mard,
And eke but hardly seene by candle-light,
Yet like a Diamond of rich regard,
In doubtfull shadow of the darkesome night,
With starrie beames about her shining bright,
These matchants fixed eyes did so amaze,
That what through wonder, & what through delight,
A while on her they greedily did gaze,
And did her greatly like, and did her greatly praize."

"But then the Captaine fraught with more displeasure,
Bad them be still, his love should not be sold:
The rest take if they would, he her to him would hold."

Even amongst Brigants, Faerie Queene logic holds up. Everything is about romance. Women are the lock on, and justification for, violence.

"Thus as they words amongst them multiply,
They fall to strokes, the frute of too much talke,
And the mad steele about doth fiercely fly,"

"Like as a sort of hungry dogs yemt
About some carcase by the common way,
Doe fall together, stryving each to get
The greatest portion of the greedie pray;
All on confused heapes themselves assay,
And snatch and byte, and red, and tug, and teare;
That who them sees, would wonder at their fray,
And who sees not, would be affrayd to heare.
Such was the conflict of those cruell Brigants there."

Melioboe and all of the other villagers are killed 'Least they should joyne against the weaker side,' Coridon, the alternate beta-male suitor for Pastorella, manages to escape in the dark and Pastorella herself is held in the arms of the Brigant Captain as he dies and 'fell down with him in drerie';

"There lay she covered with confused preasse
Of carcases, which dying on her fell."

When the fighting is done,the Brigants look around;

"And lighting candles new, gan search anone,
How many of their friends were slaine, how many fone.

Their Captaine there they cruelly found kild,
And in his armes the dreary dying mayd,
Like a sweet Angell twixt two clouds uphild:
Her lovely light was dimmed and decayd,
With cloud of death upon her eyes displayd;
Yet did the cloud make even that dimmed light
Seeme much more lovely in that darknesse layd,
And twixt the twinckling of her eye-lids bright,
To sparkle out litle beames, like starres in foggie night."

"So leave we her in wretched thraldome bound,
And turne we backe to Calidore, where we him found."

Almost certainly the most useless Knight in the whole of the story so far. Ignores Serene when the Blatant Beast spews her up, doesn't then pursue the Blatant Beast but hangs out in a village trying to nice-guy some chick, and when the brigants come hes off perving on metatextual nymphs. Even Arhthegall was at least an effective genocide machine.

Well he gets back to find everything fucked up and does all the standard behaviours; 'wexed wood', chauft' 'griev'd' 'fretted' 'And fared like a furious wyld Beare, Whose whelpes are stolne away, she being otherwhere.'

He searches the woods and plaines but can find neither the shepherds nor their flocks, until eventually;

"He chaunst one comming towards him to spy,
That seem'd to be some sorie simple clowne,
With ragged weedes, and lockes upstaring hye,"

Its Coridon who blathers out the whole terrible story about Pastorell probably being dead and everyone else almost certainly being dead. There's quite a few verses of emoting and despair before Calidore bribes/threatens/praises Coridon into showing him the way there, and they approach the Brigants den dressed both as Shepherds.

They find the villiages flocks on a hillside (I thought this place was on an island?) and the Brigants asleep alongside them;

"Whom Coridon him counseld to invade
Now all unwares, and take the spoyle away;
But he, that in his mind had closely made
A further purpose, would not so them slay,
But gently waking them, gave them the time of day."

Calidore and Coridon pretend to be runaway shepherds looking for new work and chat to the Brigants, learning the news about Pastorell. Eventually they have learnt enough and while the Brigants are asleep, Calidore acquires a sword 'of meanest sort' and raids the cave like a computer-game hero.

By which I mean he tries to be stealthy to begin with, fucks that up, then just starts slaughtering people, then eventually just uses his superior hp to tank the bad guys and wades through them.

"When to the Cave they came, they found it fast:
But Calidore with huge resistlesse might
The dores assayled, and the locks upbrast.
With noyse whereof the theefe awaking light,
Unto the entrance ran: where the bold knight
Encountring him with small resistance slew:"

Stealth mode = DEACTIVATED

He finds Pastrorell;

"Her gentle hart, that no long season past
Had never joyance felt, not chearefull thought,
Began some smacke of comfort new to tast,
Like lyfull heat to nummed senses brought,
And life to feele, that long for death had sought:"

The Brigants come 'flocking in great store';

"But Calidore_ in th'entry close did stand,
And entertayning them with courage stout,
Still slew the foremost, that came first to hand,
So long till all the entry was with bodies mand."

Eventually he is effectively surrounded by a fortress of bodies so no others can get close. Then waits till daylight, grabs a better sword and, presumably, kicks his way through the body-pile to the outside where he finds all the other remaining Brigants;

"Where all the rest for him did readie stay,
And fierce assayling him, with all their might
Gan all upon him lay: there gan a dreadfull fight."

"How many flyes in whottest sommers day
Do sieze upon some beast, whose flesh is bare,
That all the place with swarmes do overlay,
And with their litle stings right felly fare;
So many theeves about him swarming are,
All which do him assayle on every side,
And sore appresse, ne any him doth spare:
But he doth with his raging brond divide
Their thickest troups, & round about him scattreth wide."

The bad guys die. Calidore takes their treasure and gives Coridon all the remaining flocks;

"Then backe returning to his dearest deare,
He her gan to recomfort, all he might,
With gladfull speaches, and with lovely cheare,
And forth her bringing to the joyous light,
Whereof she long had lackt the wishfull sight,
Seviz'd all goodly meanes, from her to drive
The sad remembrance of her wretched plight.
So her uneath at last he did revive,
That long had lyen ddead, and made againe alive."

Book Six Canto Eleven

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