Prydain

I finally got around to reading Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain series: The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, and The High King.  Like most children books, these are light reads but they are delightful, and curiously, it’s a series that does get better with each successive novel.

If you’ve seen Disney’s The Black Cauldron (very loosely based on the first two books) you’ll get a sense of the type of adventure tales they are.  There’s a core cast in each story: the befuddled hero Taran, the noble king Gwydion, the irrepressible Eilonwy, the braggart Fflewddur Fflam, the rascal Gurgi, and the curmudgeon Doli, each of whom often travel with each other to complete some great and terrible mission related to the wicked king, Arawn.

Something unique about this series is what a terrible fighter Taran is from beginning to end.  If he is in single combat, sword to sword, Taran will lose.  You would think that with all of his adventuring, he would have asked somebody for lessons, but you know, this is one of the charms of the books.  With one exception in the last novel, Taran’s part is small in achieving greatness.  The glory for any accomplishment rightfully belongs to somebody else.  You realize that his role was in keeping all the people with talent around him and help them to be able to use their skills in service of the greater good.

My favorite installment is Taran Wanderer, which breaks the mold entirely.  Taran goes on a quest to find who his parents are, and through his wanderings, he gets involved in the lives of kings and peasants, not only helping them solve their crises but also learning their crafts and what it can teach him about life, from smiths to weavers to potters.  And the solution to the adventure in King Smoit’s realm I thought was very clever (you’ll have to read it to know what I mean.)

Despite my love for Taran Wanderer, though, The High King is the one that won the Newberry Award, and it deserves it, if only for this beautiful passage on wisdom:

“There are those…who must first learn loss, despair, and grief.  Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and the longest…take heart nonetheless.  Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom.  As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.”

That is music for the for the soul.