And autumn is his bridle

[sovay]

"So all through that winter he came to me. And he came at night. I was never alone in my chamber, but he came through doors and windows and walls, and lay with me. I never saw him again, but heard his voice and felt his body. Then, in the summer, when I was heavy with child, he left me . . . They will tell you how my father beat me and shut me up, and how when the child was born he would not give him a name fit for a Christian prince, but, because he was born in September, named him for the sky-god, the wanderer, who has no house but the woven air. But I called him Merlin always, because on the day of his birth a wild falcon flew in through the window and perched above the bed, and looked at me with my lover's eyes."
—Mary Stewart, The Crystal Cave (1970)

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

"I know only this: that, when I was in our private apartments with my sister nuns, some one used to come to me in the form of a most handsome young man. He would often hold me tightly in his arms and kiss me. When he had been some little time with me he would disappear, so that I could no longer see him. Many times, too, when I was sitting alone, he would talk to me, without becoming visible; and when he came to see me in this way he would often make love with me, as a man would do, and in that way he made me pregnant. You must decide in your wisdom, my Lord, who was the father of this lad, for apart from what I have told, I have never had relations with a man."

Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. Lewis Thorpe

[palecast.livejournal.com]

I loved this book. Discovered it in my teens, consumed it, and it engendered a lifelong passion for all things Arthurian. Then all my family read it too. It is still my favourite book in this vast field.

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

Did you get my e-mail?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's what I was going to say!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

palecast beat me to the punch!

That's an amazing excerpt, though.

[genarti]

I love that book so very, very much.

My attention wanders in the later books, when it gets into the Arthurian love-triangle stuff -- my patience for love triangles of betrayal and doomed passion tends to be limited, which is why my fascination with Arthurian tales waxes and wanes -- but, oh, I have loved The Crystal Cave for years upon years.

[ewein2412]

when I announced, at 14 and after reading "Over Sea Under Stone," that I was a king arthur fanatic, my grandfather went to the library and checked out The Crystal Cave. He left it lying on my desk. It is one of those outstanding visual memories of my childhood, this battered library first edition of The Crystal Cave waiting for me on my desk with no fanfare or explanation. It is the first "Arthurian literature" that I ever read.

you can kind of see where it led me.

And I can STILL recite the epigraph poem from memory!

[sovay]

My attention wanders in the later books, when it gets into the Arthurian love-triangle stuff -- my patience for love triangles of betrayal and doomed passion tends to be limited, which is why my fascination with Arthurian tales waxes and wanes -- but, oh, I have loved The Crystal Cave for years upon years.

I love the sword of Macsen Wledig in The Hollow Hills and Niniane in The Last Enchantment; the rest stiffens the closer it gets to familiar Arthuriana. But yes to loving The Crystal Cave.

[sovay]

Discovered it in my teens, consumed it, and it engendered a lifelong passion for all things Arthurian.

My mother had ancient hardcover editions of all four books; I think I must have been thirteen or fourteen when I read them for the first time. They imprinted.

It is still my favourite book in this vast field.

It is one of my two favorites. (Certainly, hands down my favorite Merlin.) The other is eegatland's The Winter Prince (1993).

[sovay]

That's an amazing excerpt, though.

It became one of my very early associations with the month of September, which is why I post it now.

[sovay]

It is one of those outstanding visual memories of my childhood, this battered library first edition of The Crystal Cave waiting for me on my desk with no fanfare or explanation. It is the first "Arthurian literature" that I ever read.

You had an awesome grandfather.

It is the first "Arthurian literature" that I ever read.

If my first wasn't Over Sea, Under Stone, then it was Peter Dickinson's Merlin Dreams, which I encountered in elementary school, or Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which I read when I was twelve and staying for a week with my aunt in San Francisco. (I don't think I read Parke Godwin's Firelord or Jane Yolen's Merlin's Booke until high school.) But The Crystal Cave was the one that really stuck.

you can kind of see where it led me.

And I personally am very glad it did!

And I can STILL recite the epigraph poem from memory!

Okay. You are also awesome.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Thanks, now I'll start thinking of all the magical possibilities this September.

(I haven't read this book in over 20 years. One day, I'm going to get back to all my reading.)

Hope you're well. I haven't been able to get on LJ much lately due to my work schedule. Just peeking in now and then!

[sovay]

Just peeking in now and then!

Glad to see you!

[seishonagon.livejournal.com]

This is easily one of the books that has been most influential on me, my taste in fiction, my taste in stories, and the way I think about myth and history.

It was the first volume in what would grow to a 300+ volume collection of Arthurian books.

[sovay]

This is easily one of the books that has been most influential on me, my taste in fiction, my taste in stories, and the way I think about myth and history.

What are the others?

[seishonagon.livejournal.com]

Edith Hamilton's Mythology. Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. Various works by Tolkien. T.H. White's The Once And Future King, though that was mostly because I really didn't care for most of the book; the same goes for Bradley's Mists of Avalon. The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara. Moon Shot, by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton (which also remains the book that has caused me to cry the most at one time). Hugo's Les Miserables. St.-Exupery's Le Petit Prince. Vergil's Aeneid, both the Latin and Dryden's translation of it, which I still read bits of sometimes when I need something numinous in my life. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. And Harlan Ellison's short story "The Deathbird." Inherit The Wind and Farenheit 451, which I read one after the other in sixth grade. And in the not-a-book category, Ken Burns' Civil War documentary film, which remains one of the best examples I have seen of a telling of history with a real eye for the people who lived through it - it was this, really, which made me first understand what I love about the study of history: the fact that it happened to real people.
To name a few. Most of them were books I loved, the major exceptions being Once and Future King and Mists of Avalon, which I fortunately encountered after already becoming totally obsessed with Arthurian literature.

[ewein2412]

You had an awesome grandfather.

I did, I did.

[sharonafyre.livejournal.com]

I loved these books too, as a teen. Your excerpt makes me want to reread, but I've found the magic of many favorite books from that time less available to me when I reread as an adult, which is just sad.

[sovay]

but I've found the magic of many favorite books from that time less available to me when I reread as an adult, which is just sad.

I haven't found this one to fade.

[sharonafyre.livejournal.com]

Ooh! I'm reading E Wein's Coalition of Lions! Thanks for the GREAT RECOMMENDATION!!!!!