Two books for you today. Firstly, The Wee Free Men.
Terry Pratchett wrote a series of novels set on the Discworld, in a part that was similar to the south of England. The heroine, Tiffany Aching, is nine years old in The Wee Free Men, and grows up in the course of the series, becoming a witch and training with the two witches from the other Discworld novels, Grsnny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg. She lives on a farm with sheep and her grandmother was a highly respected shepherd, also probably a witch, though one who never trained in the profession.
Tiffany is a highly intelligent child who has read the dictionary from cover to cover, and knows a lot of long words. She first meets the Wee Free Men - the Nac Mac Feegles - while down by the river, where they warn her about the coming of the monster Jenny Greenteeth - “the green heid!”
She uses her little brother Wentworth as bait and hits the monster with a frying pan, which later comes in useful against the Queen of the Fairies.
The Feegles are six inches high, fierce warriors with Scottish accents who love strong drink and fighting, in no special order, either or both will do. They first appeared in Carpe Jugulum, in which their leader(and mother)the kelda, helped Lancre King Verence escape from the spell of the vampires who have invaded the kingdom. They were thrown out of Fairyland for getting drunk in the afternoon. They believe that they are dead and in heaven because of the amazing opportunities for boozing and fighting. When they do die, it’s assumed they have gone back to the first world.
Terry Pratchett used folklore extensively in his books. There are many folklore references in this one. Jenny Greenteeth is a creature of British folklore, probably designed to scare children to keep them
out of danger. But also the Fairies are not the sweet little things who hang around in flowers. They are dangerous and scary. These are the real fairies of folklore. And their Queen kidnaps Tiffany’s little brother.
Time to get out the frying pan.
The Feegles might be Pratchett’s, but are also a part of the folklore of Britain. It is said that if you leave sixpence and an unshod horse, your sixpence will be gone next day and so will the horse. This is a joke, of course, based on the saying about Wayland Smith. There is another one about leaving milk out for them, upon which they will break into your house and empty the drinks cabinet. This is a send up of the folk tales in which you leave out milk for the fairies, which help out on the farm. Er, no - the Feegles won’t do that. Not for a saucer of milk, anyway.
The series is available everywhere, in print and ebook and audiobook, read by Stephen Briggs(complete) or Tony Robinson(abridged)
W is also for Whom The Gods Would Destroy by Richard Powell. It’s my favourite Trojan War novel. The hero, Helios, is a Trojan boy captured by the Greeks on the first day of the war, and brought up with Neoptolemus, son of Achilles.
During that time his mentor and father-figure is Odysseus, who is shown as the only one of the Greek leaders with a brain. The author has a lot of fun describing the leaders in terms of their pompousness and foolishness. They are very much like they were in the Iliad. Nestor of Pylos, the oldest of them, was described in mythology as wise, but in this novel he just will not shut up and everyone has to sit and listen to him waffle on.
At one point in the novel, the boys find Helen bathing and are very excited because they think this will end the war. No such luck; the leaders don’t want her back! At least not this way. And she knows it all too well.
It’s really an interpretation of the myth rather than rewriting it. There are original characters, true, including Deira, a granddaughter of Theseus. But it’s a version of the myth I can recognise.
The print book is only available second hand, I wax in my teens when it was published, but you can find it on Kindle.
Happy reading!
In the novel The Song of Achilles, Ulysses is quite diplomatically resentful about Achilles' title as the Greatest of All the Greeks because of his physical prowess, rather than that title being conferred on the clever and strategic Ulysses. He notes that perhaps HE will one day be known as the Greatest of All the Greeks. I believe Achilles laughs at this. Yet which one of them both won and survived the war?
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