king arthur

The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart, is the first in her “Arthurian Saga”. Quite honestly, I devoured this book, which focuses on Merlin’s childhood, up until King Arthur is conceived. For people who enjoy Arthurian legend, classics, and history, this “trilogy” is perfect. Interestingly enough, the first three books are considered “The Magical Merlin Trilogy”, but a few years later, Stewart continued this series with the publication of the fourth book, The Wicked Day, which switches to the perspective of King Arthur’s son, Mordred.

In her adaptation, Stewart depicts Merlin’s childhood as

In the spring of 1998, as part of my studies for my master’s degree in English, I signed up for a course called “Middle English Alliterative Verse.” When I saw the syllabus, it shocked me: We were to translate thousands of lines of medieval English into the modern.

Geoffrey Chaucer was one thing; he lived in London, and his language is closer to our own. Unlike modern English, Middle English was highly dialectal, and thus the poems from medieval writers just a hundred miles away could read like this: “Sithen the sege and the assaut watz sesed at Troye” … Excuse me?

That’s the first line