Group read: A Glastonbury Romance

I decided we need a picture. This is the first time I've posted one!
Glastonbury Abbey

Got it! And if you like this photo go to the OldUKPhotos website: here



I don't even know how to present aGR or talk about Powys's writing style, voice and vision. No one really does. Somewhere I have a link from last spring when I finished up Wolf Solent and when/if I can find it I will post it. Welcome you intrepid readers! Lace up your boots and off we go. So far there are four of us interested: LizzieD (Peggy), GennyT (Genny), Arubabookwoman (Deborah) and me Sibyx (Lucy). All are welcome! A further welcome to bunkie68 (Lisa).

I'm not very far because I got distracted by an sf book and a million houseguests, but I'll be on track by the end of the week. I can't imagine I'll read more than 50 pages a week and even that might be overambitious.

I have a Penguin (eg small print!) edition too, which slows down the reading.

I have a poor record with regard to group reads, and don't yet have a copy to read, so that's a bit of a handicap to start with. But I'll try to get hold of one asap and see if can catch up and keep up.

Uh oh. I was operating on the assumption that Lucy and I have the same edition, but mine is from Overlook Press. The chapters are pretty huge, but I think we'll be able to manage. I took down my copy of Wolf Solent today and see that I read it in '85. I remember almost nothing, and what I remembered was wrong......Lenty Pond, not Ginty Pond, or do I still have it wrong? Oh well.
I did find this interesting bit of criticism by Margaret Drabble, a real favorite of mine: The Guardian. I'm about half through the first chapter, so I'm truly in no hurry although I'd love to finish by ---- oh, say ---- June, maybe ----

Book ordered today from Abebooks - Picador edition, which will match 2 of my others. I'll let you know when it's arrived and I've started.

Yep -- June sounds reasonable, 6 months. It's just that sort of book, can't be hurried.

I have the Overlook edition too. I read about 20 pages last night, and I'm having good feelings about the book.

(I want to say about the Overlook edition that it begins on page 21, ends on page 1120, and chapter 2 begins on page 67. That should be enough to orient us....) And while I couldn't remember anything about Wolf Solent, Powys's voice is unmistakable. I'd recognize him anywhere, I think. Very earthy mystical or mystically earthy.

Even though mine is a Penguin it has the same pagination -- starts also on 21. How great is that! I hope to read tonight.

Undoubtedly there are other links that will be useful, but this is the one I've been muddling around looking at -- A reader's companion to GR -
To answer those finicky questions such as who the heck is Euphemia Drew? here

(look under Drew, Elizabeth btw)

What's interesting about that is that I was just thinking about Thomas Hardy and the little figure trudging along the road at the beginning of The Return of the Native.

So Norwich isn't anywhere near Glastonbury...... (I'm not too slow) -- feel very curious.

Loved the local color top of 28 "Tis as nat'ral to me to turn and run from a blood relation as it is to some folks to hug 'em to heart." That seemed to ring a bit in my ears like George Eliot.... although Hardy is also masterful at local color.

I'm up to page 47 in my Penguin (they are all standing around William's gravesite and W's ghost has just wafted into things).....

What a randy fellow Cow-Pow, as one of my irreverent chums calls him, is.

And I just noticed the title of the chapter "The Will" (I'm a bit slow on the uptake) homage to all those 19th century blockbuster writers, eh?

My copy is apparently in the post, so I hope to receive it soon. That link in post 8 looks useful for the obscurer references, I must remember that, thanks Lucy.

I've never done a group read before, and this one sounded interesting. My copy should be on the way to me soon, and I'll do my best to jump right in!

Lisa

Welcome Lisa, get ready for a long ride.

I nosed around and found this: mouse over it as directed and you can hear someone say it. here
Poe-iss is what it sounded like to me. Like it rilly matters, but....

Welcome to the wildness, Lisa!
Thanks for the links, Lucy! I figure if I'm going to read him, I ought to know how to pronounce him.
I have to say that if I hadn't read a little of Cow-Pow earlier, I would probably have stopped with the first paragraph and the connection of the "divine-diabolic soul of the First Cause of all life" with our particular human soul. John seems a very unlikely candidate for such communication, but keep reading!!! (Or start reading!) Now I'm off to look at Lucy's link.

I've finished Chapter One, "The Will"

Nephew Phillip's thoughts about his dead uncle: "Old epicure! I can see him now, putting cream into his porridge and looking out so voluptuously across his garden! Living for his sensations! That's what he did all his days. Putting cream into his porridge, reading his poetry, and living for his sensations. What a life for a grown man! The life of a frog in a lily pond."

I meant to quote less of that, but I couldn't help myself, it's too wonderful.

Quip worthy of Monty Python: "It's my French mischief coming out, Dave Spear," our protag. John says to her cousin's lefty husband.

John is clearly a mischief magnet, and his determination to go to Glastonbury guaranties that 'things' will start to happen. It's an interesting way to get the reader engaged, just curiousity about what this odd person will do next, pure and simple. Curiosity too about what sort of egg he is, good or bad .... I mean clearly he is both, but likely he tips one way or the other in a crisis. Does he have heart? That's what I'm asking as I read along.

John is not only a mischief magnet, but as if that were not enough, he also has the attention (?) of the First Cause. I've finished the second chapter, and I have no handle on him. Read on, my friend, read on!

Ch 2 The River

the word ‘wafture’ - he touches a sprig of mint ‘and at once a wafture of aromatic sweetness reached his brain.'

Powys intertwines everything, so the old tree where they make love is aware of them.

They simultaneously pray, at noon, for their love to remain strong and true forever. Powys is interestingly definite about the fact that one must only pray at dawn and dusk, the twilights, and that generally, it is best to pray to lesser gods - since most of them have hardly any evil in them at all unlike the sun which, being ‘The First Cause’ is overwhelmingly powerful and has a good side and evil side, and you can just as easily invite the evil one. Which, of course, they do, by praying at noon in their ignorance..... so that is not good, not good at all.

I never know whether to laugh or shake my head, but I love it anyway: “The language of trees is even more remote from human intelligence than the language of beasts or of birds. What to these lovers, for instance, would be the singular syllables ‘wuther-quotle-glug’ have signified?’

The tree says this because this is the 4th or 5th time people have stood under it and expressed the sentiment, “It is extraordinary that we should ever have met.”

Ch 3 Stonehenge

I kept thinking of Hardy where people walk and walk and walk -- John is walking from Norfolk to Somerset -- 10 days of hard walking in the cold spring air with a terrible blister on his foot. It’s so immediate, so what Powys does better than anybody, linking thought and mood and sensation. His pain, the sky, the North wind, hold a dialogue as it were.

On Salisbury Plain “What the sky made him think of were fleeing hosts of wounded men with broken spears and torn banners and trails of blood and neighing horses.....wild tossed fragments of forgotten flights, catastrophic overthrows, huge migrations of defeated peoples..... the road seemed full of human memories.”

Here’s an example of the way he connects everything, as he walks along miserably, “Three things, the image of the bed at Maidenhead with one of its brass knobs missing, the image of the Great Stones as he had long ago seen them in pictures, and them image of the newt sinking down into the dew-pond, dominated his mind.”

He gets a lift to the Stones, somewhat miraculously, talking with this man Owen Evans he says, “They look to me just what they are, neither more or less. They look simply like stones, enormous stones, lifted up to be worshipped.”

and that they had become ‘by the mute creative action of four thousand years, authentic Divine Beings.” And so on they go to Glastonbury where Evans, of course, is also headed.

My copy arrived, and I read the first two pages a couple of days ago. Need to catch up before I read those detailed comments above. I hope to read for an hour or so at the tail end of the readathon I'm currently taking part in - but I've also got some work to do...

I got my copy yesterday. I'll try to jump in and start reading!

I think the reason why I can't load a picture is that our internet here at the house is too feeble -- so next time I'm somewhere with strong wifi I will try again. I can't seem to get my mitts on a good map of Glastonbury -- a topo map would be the best, but no luck so far, and everything takes too long to load so I've lost patience with the project.

How's everybody doing...?? I'm very curious. So far I'm finding it simpler and more straightforward than Wolf Solent and also, in some ways, than Porius -- which had its own challenges being set in approx mid-400 or so (a generation after the Romans have left Britain for good). I need to check on that. I'll come back and fix that date if it's totally off.

I'm loving your comments, and loving the book. I'm still in The River chapter, and have lots of underlinings, but haven't gotten my act together to start posting. It's my first Cow-Pow, and I'm not finding it particularly difficult.

At Lucy's suggestion, I'm just copying this brief update from my main thread:

I found the first couple of pages of aGR a bit of a shock, as I'd forgotten quite how strange CP's writing is (all those cosmic forces swirling around on page 1 - as quoted by Peggy in message 13), but I soon got into it more. I'm up to him dallying with his cousin before the funeral...

Thanks Genny!

Believe it or not I have the spousal unit reading Porius -- he keeps shaking his head, the beginning does go on a bit, but I keep telling him to just flow with it, let go and take the ride. You should see us both sitting there with these huge books!!!!

I won't even tell you where I am, but I am counting on some of you catching up..... I'm concentrating on some of my other reading and just reading enough Cow-Pow to keep it alive in my mind.

I've started reading. I'm just on the first chapter, at the part where they're waiting for the reading of the will.

The style reminds me of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast novels - very, very wordy. I quit reading the Gormenghast novels because it drove me nuts that Peake used twenty words where three would suffice. LOL This book hasn't driven me nuts yet, though, so I shall press on.

#23 Wordy he certainly is! But I love that - and was not put off Peake either for that reason (though I only ever read Titus Groan - must read the other two one day). My impression with Peake is that he uses his wordiness to great effect to construct the oppressive, claustrophobic, Gothic overly-detailed castle-world of Gormenghast. Cowper Powys' wordiness is conjuring so far a more wide-open world, where earth and water, sun and wind (not to mention the mysterious First Cause) make their presence felt.

I've just finished Chapter 1. I agree about John - not sure what to make of him yet, except that he is 'foxy' (I think that adjective was used at least three times of him so far). I loved the description of W's spirit/soul awakening to disinterested curiosity as the earth was shovelled onto his grave and decaying body; and the way CP described the ghostly exchange between recently dead W and his long dead wife, with that long list of similes (pp 65-66):

The words were almost as faint as the sub-human breathings of the plants in the conservatory. They were like the creakings of chairs after people have left a room for hours. ... They were like the groan of a dead branch in an unfrequented shrubbery at the edge of a forsaken garden. They were like the whistle of the wind in a ruined clock-tower...

And several more things 'they were like' after this. Wordy, yes, but I love the cumulative power of the repetition and the detailed images of emptiness and dereliction.

On with Chapter 2 later today, I hope. I'm longing to see what happens when the action shifts to Glastonbury.

Genny, I am exactly with you on my progress through Gormenghast. I don't think I'll get to the next two this year, but I hope to read them before I die - and my Peake biography too!
I'm about to start "Hic Jacet" and I'm wondering why he is so insistent that his main characters are perverse, bad, not good, etc. I'll admit that John's performance at Stonehenge is a bit unhinged (although I can see myself actually trying something similar if it were still the 70's and I were still 20-something and I had the place to myself on a winter's night), but so far John doesn't seem any worse than any other mildly selfish man. Is this just a CP affectation or is something actually going on?

Maybe he was 'bad' and 'wild' for the times???? So far, and I'm only a couple of chapters ahead, I still see no evidence of John being a bad 'un.

But then, there is a long way to go!

I've finished Chapter Two 'The River' now.

Re Lucy's comment above:

I never know whether to laugh or shake my head, but I love it anyway: “The language of trees is even more remote from human intelligence than the language of beasts or of birds. What to these lovers, for instance, would be the singular syllables ‘wuther-quotle-glug’ have signified?’

The tree says this because this is the 4th or 5th time people have stood under it and expressed the sentiment, “It is extraordinary that we should ever have met.”

This bizarre passage is oddly reminiscent of (though of course pre-dating) the kind of thing Douglas Adams does in Hitchhiker - those co-incidences and odd little conversations between objects more or less animate...

The prayer at noon time certainly was ominous - though I don't think I understood CP to be identifying the sun with the First Cause. I thought he was saying that prayers at midday or midnight are dangerous because they might be intercepted by sun or moon respectively, or because they were more likely to be heard by the First Cause in Its evil aspect as was the case with John and Mary's prayer - ie the First Cause is something beyond Sun or Moon. But either way, this is an interesting exposition of CP's dualistic/gnostic ideas.

Douglas Adams, wow, that's a great bit of connecting. Do you think JC-P is consciously being humorous though??? I get the feeling.... he is and he isn't whereas Adams loved flat-out creating paradoxes and leg-pulling.

Well, you are right indeed Genny -- even though First Cause and sun are mentioned in the first two paragraphs of the book, even, (where once again it is noon) there is First Cause and then the sun 'too' which would indicate they are separate, have different effects. And you're right too about midday and midnight -- both sun and moon being too potent and unpredictable. Good close reading!

I'm not sure whether CP is being funny intentionally, though it's hard to imagine anyone keeping an entirely straight face when writing 'wuther-quotle-glug' and attributing it to a tree...

I'm glad I wasn't just getting muddled re sun and First Cause etc. The odd thing here is how counter-intuitive his ideas are. Conventionally the twilight times are the tricky ones, the in-between times. I would not have been surprised to find him suggesting that the outcomes of prayers at dawn and dusk were a bit uncertain, but he reverses this convention.

I'm totally with you -- I think his humor is a secondary effect, I'm sure that he enjoyed being funny and expected people to laugh here and there, serous with a side of funny, Adams the opposite? And of course it is 'wuther-quotle-glug' moments that keep me riveted.

Interestingly I fell right in with the dawn/dusk idea without a thought -- don't you think more primitive cultures regard the sun and moon as 'dangerous' as well as essential? Dawn and dusk are times of transition and opportunity, a 'balanced' 'between' time -- perhaps Christian culture overlays an early positive attitude with negative connotations?? Dusk as 'evil' and 'dangerous'?? I'm barely well read enough to speculate even this far but that is my intuitive sense and I have read a lot of stuff about shamans, Eliade and so forth. I'm very interested in the power of metaphor, the line between actually believing in and personifying forces and summoning them creatively......

Good stuff, ladies. I also feel that CP is so far out there that he wouldn't write "wurther-quotle-glug" as funny. All part of his charm!
Some quotations about John's perverseness. (I'm not going back to find the ones in the first chapter. But is this what you're reading as bad and wild for the times, Lucy? I'm not convinced, but I don't know what I do think.
(p. 88) ";...for he was not only profoundly corrupt but extremely egoistic --- never asking himself whether this was what suited her, nor for one second forgetting himself in any rush of tempestuous tenderness."
of Mary, same page: "Something in her kindred nature, some willow-rooted, fen-country perversity, seemed to need just this protracted cerebral courtship to stir the essential coldness of her blood and nerves."
p. 108 on Mr. Evans: "If they {the images in Mr. Evans' mind} could have been revealed to any average human mind - a mind less vicious and depraved than John's - ...."
(I wonder if I care enough to try to find out what primitive societies thought about noon.)

Perhaps "mad dogs and Englishmen?" All the 'siesta' cultures have a healthy respect for the power of the noonday sun, no? On much of the globe it is simply good sense to stay out of the sun at mid-day.

Exactly, but I think so, 'vicious and depraved' for 1930 vs now? I don't know that people are worse -- just that it's so all out in the open now - it would be awfully hard to shock me! I wonder sometimes if JCP is using those words to create a mood, but he is using them a bit carelessly - vicious and depraved in my book means someone capable of murder and rape and really bad things. I don't think John is anything like that.

Just checking in to say that I finished the Whitelake Cottage chapter - and have nothing else to say about it.

I want to move on, so before I do, here are a few things I liked, none of which give away much of anything about what is going on:

From 'Stonehenge' - John says "I simply cannot understand what people mean when they talk of life having a purpose. Life to me is simply the experience of living thing; and most things I meet seem to me to be living things."

From 'Hic Jacet': On the Mystery of Glastonbury (the Holy Grail) ''this many-named Mystery had been handed down to subsequent generations by three pyschic channels; by the channel of inspired poetry, and by the channel of individual experience."

If I say much of anything about Whitelake it will be a spoiler -- it's an odd chapter introducing more than a few new characters. Nell Zoyland seems a recognizable JCP femme fatale. Her husband's solution to 'the problem' presented is a bit of an eye-opener! At the end of the chapter Philip Crow turns up unexpectedly and the mood of chapter shifts completely into a brisker more practical plot-moving vein.

I've only just started "The Look of a Saint" -- finally a portrait of the Geard family at home.

I've read "The Look of a Saint" and "Carbonek" which refers to a castle that is part of the Grail myth: here

Some quotes I found delightful or striking or whatever:
from Whitelake Cottage: "They soon formed a loquacious group around the car, uttering those spontaneous and lively genialities which among human beings imply instinctive relief at being able to get rid of one another."

From 'Saint' -- btw I'm not clear on who the saint is? Be that as it may, Sam Dekker is hauled in off the street to have tea with the Geards and Robinsons and it is apparent that Crummie (what a name!) is crazy about him and he is indifferent, of course, as she can't compare to Nell. Anyhow here's the quote: "At the name Dekker there occured that curious moral stiffening, that gathering together of relaxed social awareness that happens in England when an upper-middle class person enters the company of a group of lower-middle class persons." This is one of those homage moments - in the fifty years between Eliot and Powys the biggest change would be talking openly about it.

Red Robinson, a devoted Communard, has a mother who is as old school as can be: "There's no telling what a man wil do, who's been poor, when he grows rich. Common folk like that ain't no notion how to spend money. It takes the real gentry to spend money as it ought to be spended."

This chapter has a noteworthily smooth transition from one pov to another -- from the eyes and mind of Red Robinson to the Welshman Evans -- by way of having Red attending his political gathering in the same building where Evans lives, Evans in the room below the meeting.... where, in fact, he can hear them plotting and scheming to take over the town (with one heck of a stupid idea!).

I'll be back, have to sign off for a bit and attend to life.

Wonderful photo! Thanks, Lucy! I'll get back into our book tomorrow, I hope and check out the other pictures too.

It's been a week since anyone reported in..... however, I am still reading aGR and I think some things are beginning to emerge that will link the folks in the novel's here and now, with the story of the grail. Mainly though, I think all the principal players have been presented, the plot (such as it is) put in place (downfall of Phillip, uprise of Geard). I still find echoes of Middlemarch everywhere, JCP can't resist recording what two old crones are saying as they walk by someone's house -- John Crow can almost be seen as a sort of Ladislaw, the unwanted relative hanging about making trouble.... or maybe the characters (big man, troublemaker, idealist etc) are inevitable in any tale about a small town.

In Carbonek the old man tells stories meant to evoke the times at Glastonbury of unaccountable ancientness -- JCP doesn't dwell on it, but somehow you know he is likely to be the last to tell stories this way.

Towards the end of Carbonek is a riff about lonely independent women -- Cordelia Geard is walking alone up the Chalice Hill -- quite moving: "How these lonely spots must be impregnated with these women's rebellious imagination!" A secondary 'love' story (I hesitate to call it that) between Owen Evans and Cordelia is shaping most strangely.

There is a good bit of movement in Wookey Hole (an intriguing sort of name) and the archetypal aspect of Phillip becomes explicit. More emerges about the planned event, including the Passion Play. The description of the present mayor Wollop is priceless. The juxtaposition of large and small (Mary buying a tablecloth) vs Mary's first realization of how naive she is about John.....Phillip's disgust over the dead fly in his soapdish, vs his ..... well, I won't give it away!

I'm into the next chapter The Unpardonable Sin. I plan to read this chapter and the next, Consummation, by the weekend. I sense everyone falling by the wayside (understandably) so I am going to push on. If I read too slowly I lose interest and momentum.

I'm here and I'm reading. In fact, "Carbonek" has pulled me in and has me reading eagerly again. (I'm in "Wookey Hole," Lucy, so you don't need to wait for me. I'll hope to be moving on too. Genny? Deborah? Everybody?)
My early feminist reading (The Feminine Mystique, I guess) kicked in on Lucy's riff about the lonely, independent woman. Woman is OTHER. He talks about the seductiveness of darkness..."When it is a woman who is in its grasp it seems to arouse something in the feminine nature corresponding to itself, so that the recessive mystery of darkness in the woman - that underground tide of the old ancestral chaos that ebbs and flows at the bottom of her being - rushes forth to meet this primal sister, this twin daughter of the Aboriginal Abyss, whose incestuous embrace is all about her!" Really??? Oh good grief!
What I want to know, Lu, is what "Neetchky" is. I'm missing it completely.

Do push on and read at your own pace, Lucy. I've read up to the end of Whitelake Cottage a few days back, haven't had a chance to read any more since, so I'm skimming over your posts and coming back to them when I've read the chapters you refer to.

I have lots of overdue work and an even more overdue tax return to do over the next couple of days, so may not get much reading done, but will plod on at my own pace when I get the chance.

Well done on posting the photo by the way. I'll add one of the Tor one of these days - for me that's the iconic image of Glastonbury, especially the view from a distance with the mist settled over the levels and the Tor rising above it. I'm waiting to see how much this and other physical aspects of the Glastonbury environs (which are so entangled in legends) are woven into the story.

Oh excellent! So happy to see some posts!

He does go on rather about the moon and womens' cycles - but I have to admit I've had some moony moments, either as very newly showing or full that have been .... well.... not quite aborginal, but a feeling of connectedness to everyone who has ever gazed upon it. You can't look at the sun the way you can moon over the moon..... why I guess our moonlit ski the other night could qualify.

Oh yes, in just a few chapters there will be some Tor descriptions you will love.

Good luck w/ yr taxes, I just spent the day working on filing 2010 stuff and getting 2011 up and running, I'm only half way, or less, as i did the easier stuff today.

Peggy -- JCP is being very bad, making fun -- Neitzsche......

Oh well done, both Genny and Lucy! I am absolutely not going to do taxes (DH's job for the past 20 years anyway) unless I just have to. I get so angry at the language that I throw things.
"Neitzsche!" No! Really??? O.K. In the context I see it. Ha Ha. We without philosophical minds always need a boost. I'm still in Wookey Hole, and I think I'm calling it a night.

(And Lucy, I just looked, and I think we are talking about two different passages maybe. There's no moon at all in the section about the dark. It's dusk and then it starts to rain.)

I'm back again to say that I've done what I'm going to do in aGR today. I'll be starting "Geard of Glastonbury" tomorrow. I need a break as they are all so intense!

Can you guide me to approximately where that passage is? It's when Cordelia is out on Chalice Hill, but I can't seem to find it today.

You are catching up! I am about to start Consummation, but I've been about to start it for a day or two.....

Oh. That would be a help, wouldn't it? 212-216.

Hmm. Quite right, no moon, just the dark.... It's a shame, because the stuff about the dark that just precedes this purple bit, about the shock of darkness, is really good, and then he goes off the deep end. I was out snowshoeing a bit late yesterday and it started to get dark in the woods and I knew I was no more than 200 yards from the house, but I was in this little dip and I felt this sort of panic anyway, just briefly, that it would get too dark very suddenly, and that I might be mistaken about where I was, completely irrational. It lasted about half a minute until I climbed up this little rise and could, of course, see where the woods open up to the meadow .....

Ah. I just found the paean to the moon (pp. 278 ff) that you were thinking of. I'm now thinking how rarely I am out in the dark alone even in the back yard. It's powerful stuff and I used to love to be out a bit when I was a teen growing up in the country.

I've managed to meet this week's goal of finishing the chapter entitled Consummation. I marked several passages but now I think I won't put any here, suffice it to say that while here and there this chapter went over the deep end, JCP in form, many passages of it I found very moving, Sam's feelings about the sacredness of his love for Nell, his walk while he waits for her to finish preparing, Nell's preparations of the tea and herself, just gorgeous writing, very tender and much of it not inaccurate, I suspect. The typical JCP thing is to get something just right and then go a few steps too far, but he doesn't really do that here.

The parallels to Guinevere and Lancelot become quite explicit in this chapter, a holy love. A worthy question really, can there be a love so complete that is is 'outside' the normal boundaries? I like how he makes it clear that no one but the two people experiencing it can know.

As for my reading goal for next week, I think I want to read 100 pages if I can, that would be three more chapters -- that would be "A Dolorous Blow", "King Arthur's Sword" and "Maundy Thursday". I shall finish two chapters certainly.....

I'm still here and loving the comments. I'm about to start Carbonek. I read aGR downstairs, and my computer is upstairs, so I haven't been commenting, since I keep meaning to get the book and the computer together on the same floor. I've lots of stand-out passages marked. I think I'm going to focus on this book more exclusively now, and hope to make some "real" comments soon. I just wanted to let you know I haven't dropped out. :)

So glad to hear from you, Deb! And I look forward to reading your favorite passages and about your reactions in general. No aGR for me today, so nothing more to say!

I came across two books my husband bought a million years ago when he was IN Glastonbury traveling around with his parents in his late teens...... but I think they will be very useful for giving me background, on is called Glastonbury Tales by (weirdly) John A. Greed and the other is called The Glastonbury Legends by R.F. Treharne (he's serious and careful, a debunker). Greed is into ley lines etcetera but I haven't opened it yet.

Just checking in to say that I'm in "Maundy Thursday" and will try to read the rest of that chapter tonight. Lucy, answer another question for me with MILD SPOILER
*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************(Am I supposed to have picked up before on the idea that John's main concern is to debunk the whole Glastonbury mystique by wrecking Geard's pageant? I missed it entirely. So are we to think of him as Mordred?*********************************************************************************************************************************************************** Thanks!
John A Greed is a great name! I've been waiting for ley lines to tell you the truth.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER BEWARE!!!!!!!!I had figured out that he was Mordred (dark, evil impulses, and yet an entertaining charming person when he feels like it) but hadn't thought through that he was planning to sabotage the thing, though I did have a head-scratching moment now that I think of it when he was asking Evans to participate. Because of reading the Legends book I sat down to try to figure out who might be who....... playing out the archetype. But I don't know that it follows 'religiously' so to speak. END SPOILER

All right! Getting on with it, I found just a short bit from my friend John Geard (Merlin? O.K. Enough. That's crazy.) that resonates with me, so I'll quote it. "He turned his consciousness inward and sent it rattling down like a bucket ... down and down and down ... into the black, smooth, slippery well of his deeper soul." (p.420)

I finished Maundy yesterday - Oh how I love picturing that feast in Matthew Dekker's house! What is of most interest to me is how Dekker, by being the reverend, sidesteps social niceties -- he has his choir to dinner and the ones who are snobby stay home, and everyone else comes. At the same time, I was surprised to realize that his house, the rectory or whatever, must be quite large -- the museum room, for example, has to be big enough to have this huge table and all these people - and upstairs in a 'guest' room there is a huge old heirloom bed that William of Orange slept in and Louis 14th chair, for heaven's sake..... it expanded my view of the Dekkers and how and where they fit into this landscape. Matthew, it seems to me, is a force for good and a powerful one perhaps, a man who is not bound by anything but his own judgement.

I loved that moment too .... the rattling bucket. I think I've got one of those. It rattles, don't know how deep it goes.

In the previous chapter, John Crow's vision at the Pomparles Bridge. I'm normally so squeamish, but JCP is masterful at describing gross things with total attention to detail but so much sympathy and compassion that it is not only bearable but feels right to read, I'm thinking of that dead cat. Also so interesting how he weaves and elides the death of the innocent cat with Christ taking on all the sins of everyone, and various thoughts that make John a complicated bad person..... but of course JCP insists no one, not the gods or any of the spirits, or anyone is wholly bad, wholly good.

I was struck too by how much his thoughts on the spirit world parallel shamanism, and native american spiritual life, as well as some others that host pantheons .... I'm widely (not deeply) read in both..... Onward! I'll hope to read the next two chapters next week. Mark's Court and the Silver Bowl (the round table and the Grail???)

I'm back to add that the two books I'm reading side-by-side with aGR are well worth it -- one of them has a several maps, of the layout of the cathedral grounds, and the immediate area around Glastonbury, including a wonderful map of how it looked when it flooded before the sea walls were built along the Bristol Channel. There really were these two 'lake villages' that the people built out in the marshes, building up the land, shoring them up with huge logs --- an incredible engineering feat -- that saved them for awhile but eventually the Belgae came along and did the usual ravage and pillage thing -- the sad thing is that these people had some amazing crafts and skills and apparently were a good deal more peacefully inclined than others around them. This was all around 100 B.C. -- just a couple hundred years later the Romans made it into that neck of the woods and changed everything again. The main thing is that the road and bridge where Arthur tossed his sword into the Brue must have been built up more like a causeway with a bridge over a deeper waterway -- which btw I know from reading Beowulf and other things in that line, that after a battle Celts were wont to toss their swords and lots of other stuff too in the nearest river as a thanks for making it out alive. So Arthur chucking his sword like that fits in with a folkway of the time, which means someone, Arthur or not, probably did chuck a sword in the Brue at one time or another.

Anyway, if anyone has a question about anything, I might be able to help. One book, the Treharne is, I think, entirely reliable the Greed attempts to be reliable but he reveals himself as a somewhat rabid evangelical protestant at the end which spoils things a little for me, but he really really tries......

Thanks for the offer! And thanks for the note about the Celts throwing their battle gear into a river. I had no idea. I've been haunting Google Images to look at the surroundings. I also know that I need to get into Google maps. I was hoping that Mark's Moor Court was an extant building, but I don't see anything like it so far. "Mark's Court" is a long chapter, and I'm pretty much settled into 20 pages a day when I have a decent day, so I'll be there with you for a good bit.

BTW It wasn't IN Beowulf just reading stuff about that time period..... what they know anyway. That is a piece of flotsam that stuck in my mind and I am pretty sure is true, but you never know!!!

I found the chapter on Mark's Court so gripping I couldn't stop reading -- Bloody Johnny is a great great character, really growing on me! I love all the Zoylands also...... I'm going to keep an eye out for some old building or other because it is remarkable how little, geographically, is fictional -- there is little doubt in my mind that the Court is based on a real building. I'll do some poking around, see what I can find. There isn't anything on my maps unfortunately! But it is described as being up on a little rise of some kind, above the tidal flood plain.

OK this is weird I wrote a whole post about reading Mark's Court today and now it has disappeared...... oh well... in short I couldn't stop reading. I am growing very fond of Bloody Johnny -- and the Zoyland's are very entertaining.

Here is a picture of an intriguing building Buttleigh Court -- that you can go see here I would imagine the Court is like a mini-castle..... this place might even be what JCP was picturing, but who knows?

I'm still looking for Mark Moor Court, with no success but here is a photo and some info about Wookey Hole -- I esp like the meaning.

here

And here is the river Brue:

here

Lucy, thank you for the images! I especially was happy to see the subterranean lake in Wookey Hole and can now imagine our Johnny asleep there for a whole day.
In a little snooping I found a pdf "dictionary" of aGR which will save me, I think from looking up things like Marianne's moated grange and the cranes of Ibycus one at a time. Here's what W.J. Keith (whoever he may be) says about Mark Moor Court:
Mark’s Court, Mark Moor Court (418 405) — Mark
Moor is about seven miles northwest of Glastonbury; Mark’s
Court, however, is fictional. Geard’s visit seems intended to
recall the visit of Peredur to Turning Castle (Caer Sidi) in
the Welsh Peredur Son of Evrawc as told in Rhys (Studies
302-3).
The link is here.

I seem to remember using Keith while reading Porius and then I forgot all about it......

I'm back to add that some weird numbers turned up in your post 62 that I thought might be useful links but just go to random books, seemingly. Don't know what that's about.

I have no idea what it's about either. The main one works.... I certainly didn't do it on purpose; in fact, I pasted the info from the pdf. And I found that Keith is on the English faculty at a university in Canada, and now I can't recall which.
Well. Since I'm here, I'll say that I'm far into "Silver Bowl" Sam has had a revelation. The gathering at Mrs. Legge's for tea on Easter Monday is just plain peculiar!

And so, I've finished "The Silver Bowl," and it's not my favorite chapter so far. I also amend post 65 to say that it's not tea that they're drinking. I was somewhat amused by this little passage, a bit of advice for females from JCP: "The most absorbing and distracting, the most delicately satisfying, of all lovers for a girl, are neither the thick-witted novelty-hunters, nor the sour puritans. They are the vicious monogamists!" He goes on to praise the "checkmating of Thanatos by Eros" in such a marriage as the Geard's. But isn't that "vicious" delicious?

I think one could write a dissertation on JCP's use of the word vicious. -- I don't think it quite means what it usually does! It's closer to 'ferocious intensity' or something like that?

While scoping about for a photo of a roman villa found in the area I came across this -- it feels like it could have been the model for Mark Moor Court: here

Meanwhile, I'm reading along...... not as far as Peggy - just finishing up 'The Silver Bowl' which is a bit of straggly chapter it seems to me.

I've read a lot since I last posted! May Day, Omens and Oracles and The Pageant -- so much that I hardly know what to say..... JCP's masterful control in the last -- at an event in which hundreds of people are milling about, of whom we have met at least a hundred or so, all of whom we catch a glimpse of, or hear some part of their reactions to, the pageant: it's so true to life (I'm thinking of your malapropping neighbor, Peggy) -- the responses, the chaos -- how all kinds of things can be going on all at once, but they sort of flow onward inexorably. Mayor Geard is a strange and wonderful man -- essentially a Merlin figure -- someone whose power arises from some profoundly 'grounded' place.

Favorite moment: Grandmother Cole's comments about the Rooster who announces the arrival of Dawn at the pageant: "Thik red-combed bird be come to put all chicken-hearted men to shame. Me old man used allus to say to I when 'a did hear thik noisy bird - 'Ye wiming-folk be all broody hens. It takes a man-bird to call up the bleeding sun!' But I did tell he 'twere all a vaunt and a vanity, for though cock might crow ever so, the sun only rose when it chose to rise of its wone self.'

Love it! It occurs to me that the sun is very like a woman. I have no idea how much is going on in the pageant. I'm sure that the suffering of Evans on the cross is pivotal. Maybe if I wanted to write a dissertation, that would be a good topic. I don't, so I'll merely say that "Idolatry" is a wonderful chapter, and I'm off to read a little.

The only thing I can think of is that Geard 'summons' Evans' experience -- Mad Bet 'sees' it, sees the evil, corrupted thing lifted out of him, as he had hoped it would be. Whatever it is that he is fixated on, I have a feeling it is pretty bad, unlike John Crow whose 'badness' (so far anyhow) is a sort of flirtation and play -- dangerous, perhaps, but not very. Phillip Crow is more 'evil' than he is. Anyhow, Geard faints, because he is overwhelmed.

The two essential parts of the pageant are both spiritual -- involving the Grail, eg the Blood, of Bloody Johnny.

Even though Treharne debunks all the myths and legends pretty thoroughly, the one thing that he says is accepted as likely true, the core or kernel around which all the rest swirls is that Glastonbury is the site of the first 'church' in Europe. Somehow or other, no one really questions that fact - And that is all someone like Geard needs - he knows that the rest of it doesn't really matter -- the main thing is to amplify and renew it....

Oh boy I'm just ramblin'.

This week's goal for sure is to get to p 700, which is, rather neatly, the end of a chapter in my book. (The next ch. is The Miracle.

Here I am again. I'm in a good patch right now - loved "Wind and Rain" and am loving "The Miracle." Honestly, it would almost be worth reading the whole 700+ pages so far to arrive at this passage! John is standing guard while Bloody Johnny takes Tittie Petherton to the fountain to drive out her cancer once and for all. John imagines the lice running off her and having a conversation in which the human louse "...spoke the lice language with its beautiful vowel sounds to perfection." Where does that come from? And why does it please me so intensely?
I'm also enjoying a conversation with Red Robinson and a new character, Mr. Merry's nephew, the young lawyer Paul Trent (who is a philosophical anarchist!). Red says, "We wanted to see you, Mr. Trent, please...on a very important High Deer of Mr. Spear's, an High Deer which kime to 'im in Bristol." I tire rather quickly of Red's Cockney, but I'm attached to those High Deers.
Ah well. Light treats for light minds.

You are an inspiration to me, I don't know what's happened to my momentum...... I am going to put aGR front and center tomorrow!

I read, for me, quite a bit more this afternoon. I wish I knew more - and I really mean "any" - Celtic mythology. I'm not going after now it as you have, Lucy, but it would be quite helpful in "Nature Seems Dead." As it is, this is one of the less appealing chapters, but that doesn't mean that it's a chore by any means. Psychic drama is in play overhead on the night of December 10 (and why is this a significant date? I'll try to find that out at least) as men dream to destroy the grail and women dream to protect it. The few people who are awake are swept up in the drama.
"Vicious" pops up again. When you get to it, Lucy, what do you make of young Elphin's love for Sam, "...too passionate to be vicious, but ... also far too intense to be innocent..."?

As far as I know the 10th has no huge significance in celtic mythology, but what do I know....

I keep meaning to say that the name 'Cantle' is directly borrowed from Hardy -- from The Return of the Native - there are various Cantles in that, including one who isn't quite all there, much like Elphin. An 'homage' I suppose.

I've finished "Idolatry" -- I heaved a such a sigh of relief when Miss Drew let Mary go.

Hi Peggy & Lucy.

>74 LizzieD:. Peggy, I don't mean to butt in, but my son has an interest in Celtic mythology, maybe because of his interest in Tolkein, although I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth. Anywho, there's a book on my shelf that he left behind when he moved out, something I bought for him some time ago: The Creatures of Celtic Myth by Bob Curran.

This is a subject I know zero about, but the book is interesting to me. It's broken up into chapters: Giants, Demons, Fairies, Merfolk, Monsters, Halflings, Solitary Fairies and Sprites, Witches, Wizards, and Wise Women, and Ancient Heroes. It's not a very long book, and the illustrations are really wonderful. I see that it was published in 2000.

Hi, Becky! I don't consider that a butt. I consider it a fine offer of help which I'll stick in the back of my little acquisitive mind. So far though, creatures are not in evidence - except the lice and a couple of references to the Questing Beast, and "the girt chub of Lydford Mill" (that's a fish) .
And wasn't it a great relief when Miss Drew loved Mary enough to let her go!? I loved that chapter!
I haven't read any more today although I hope to finish "Nature Seems Dead." I couldn't find anything about December 10 in a quick search either. Oh well. I did enter aGR in the TIOLI first category, a book with a city named on page 17. Since our edition of aGR doesn't begin until p.21, I looked on p. 38 and found Paris. So, Lucy, if you want to double me, we'll have a point there. I will have read this by the end of March.

I'm enjoying "The Christening." I wouldn't forgive a sentence like this from anybody but JCP, but from him it simply flows into the rest and on to some great psychic sea...... "...Zoyland had thrown down his own muddy boots, one of which lay on its side, contented and at ease, in that little pool of moonlight, while the other, left in the outer darkness, stared sadly at the ceiling." Other things I like include Mat Dekker's holding Nell's hand and JCP's ideas about sexual gratitude. I'm not through the chapter yet, so I'm sure that there'll be more.

The convo of the lice was just...... sublime. Where does he get the lice-sense to do that???? Ditto boots.

I'm nearing the end of The Miracle.

This description from Tin " Mr Stickles was a short man, even a dwarfish one, with long muscular arms and a face like a mad baby."

I keep meaning to look up what chalybeate means, so I'm off to do just that!

That's actually one I know, having ridden through Chalybeate Springs, N.C. on the way to Raleigh all my life. On the other hand, I'm off to find out what --- well, I didn't mark it and can't find it. A K-something that I suspect I'd need Becky's book for. I also want the derivation of "wittol" although the meaning is pretty clear from context.
You know that I enjoy the night passages, and there's a good one in "The Christening." It's a "neutral" night, so Percy and Will are much more susceptible to the power of darkness. And then there are the plot complications! So tonight I'm starting "The Saxon Arch," and happy that it's a relatively short chapter. We're going to do this, Lucy!

'Wittol' sounds very anglo-saxon. Let me know what you find! (I do know the meaning, just not the provenance.)

I went and looked it up -- most strange! A thoroughly contrived word.

Sounds like you women need the O.E.D. There's an online version that is wonderful but expensive (at least in my world it is). You can get it for a monthly rate of $29.95 with no commitment for anything longer than a month. Every now and then I subscribe for a month or two.

The link is here.

This sort of thing is one of the things I miss about teaching, since I used to have access to all sorts of things from my home computer. I can sign up as an alum at my university and get these things for free, but I have to go into the school library to access them. Bah.

Getting the compact OED free made joining the Book of the Month Club for a year in the 70's completely worth the expense! I didn't get much help though - a substitution of wete for cuck, as in "cuckold." My only source for I-E roots doesn't list wete, and I haven't pursued it if it's Anglo-Saxon. Keith (from 62 above) does say that it's another favorite JCP word. I'm ready to let it go. And I basically reread "The Christening" and can't find the other word that I remembered as characterizing the people there. Lucy, if you see what you think I mean, I'll appreciate your pointing it out to me. If it did start with a K, it's not in Keith, so I suspect I was wrong.

ETA: I don't miss anything from teaching..... On the school network, for instance, I couldn't access anything about Moby-Dick or Emily Dickinson. Really.

The source I found (on line) cited its first use from 1500's -- some 'wit' had the idea of substituting the word 'wit' for 'cuck' -- don't know whether or why who dropped or added the 'd' of the word we use. "Wit" in the sense of 'knowing' or 'in the know' or whatever.

OED also notes an adaptation of wit-all for a know-nothing.

In other words, just the sort of word our dear JCP adores. Layered.....

As for me I'm into 'Nature Seems Dead' -- I have a feeling Philip isn't going to get what he wants...... but neither is anybody else. Ynys Witrin will prevail..... somehow. The clue being -- not one of the women have the least desire to see it destroyed. In JCP world, that settles it.

What a sudden shift in mood happens at the end of Nature Seems Dead -- and Mad Bet and the revolting Codfin Toller what a pair! Interesting also to find 'Red's limits -- also interesting how JCP distinguishes between types of violence -- those who are impersonal, personal, driven by ideals..... or just warped.

I'm a bit worried about Mary. Mad Bet does seem rather potent.

I wish I could put your mind at ease, Lucy, but into "The Grail," and JCP has put Mad Bet & Co. on hold for the time being.

I have achieved p.800 - so I'm in Conspiracy. It seems incredible, from this standpoint, that these fellows thought they could take over the town in this way, so naive!

--- and yet, and yet ---- I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't think I'll be spoiling much to say that the next hundred page section is concerned with Zoylands and Dekkers. Sam has gone to work for the community factory and is about to have another epiphany, I do believe!

I'm into the Grail -- and they have, seemingly, taken over the town.

I went to look at pix of present day Glastonbury, wondering if the story is 'about' the period anything 'real' -- and I can't really tell -- I mean if this was the time when Glastonbury began to be 'self-conscious' and exploitative of their 'holy' attractions. I'm sure it was always an undercurrent, but I think sometime between the 30's and 50' the whole pageant thing got going and it became a more serious attraction.

What I think JCP 'believes' is that there are places that, for whatever reason, do seem to be touched by something 'unworldly' -- something meta, and that people feel it and thus that place becomes, over time, imbued not only with the original attractant whatever it was, but with all the faith of all the people over the centuries -- that that lingers and adds to the aura and potential of the place.

Certainly JCP makes clear his scorn of the notions of St. Augustine - with Sam's interpretation of Christ's purpose.

I'm into the Grail, Sam, the idiot, planning to leave the house. I can't really understand what Nell sees in him!!!! JCP makes me believe in it, I just don't see it.

I'm very happy that you're into the Grail!!! Sam: how to take a weak chin and make it an attraction!
I totally get the lure of some places (no matter what the culture where there have been successive ones, some places are considered holy or eerie or powerful), but all the other stuff about the First Cause and the World Fish and the Grail and so on and on and on tends to make me laugh more than anything else. That's why I wonder how serious he was about all of it. When Bloody Johnny says, "I tell you, any lie as long as a multitude of souls believes it and presses that belief to the cracking point, creates new life, while the slavery of what is called truth drags us down to death and to the dead! Lies, magic, illusion - these are names we give to the ripples on the water of our experience when the Spirit of Life blows upon it," I wonder if that's not JCP speaking.... (p. 891) .....not that I understand a word of it, mind you.
Yep. Nobody will ever accuse JCP of being an orthodox Christian.
(And just so you'll know, I have about another 15 pages of "The Grail" to read and should finish that tonight.)

A brief backtrack into The Christening -- the whole 'sexual gratitude' thing -- "Sexual gratitude is an emotion much less frequent in modern days than in medieaval times, owing to the fact that industrialism has cheapened the sex thrill by lowering the walls surrounding it. .....It is naturally this absence of sexual gratitude that accounts for the cold-blooded and savage hatred that so many separated couples feel for each other today..... " and so on. He makes these emphatic pronouncements every once in a while and I let most of them pass unremarked..... It's an interesting idea but entirely addle-pated as far as I'm concerned. From a 'feminist' standpoint it seems more likely that women, gaining the right, gradually, to get out of abusive marriages revealed a layer of nastiness hitherto suppressed. I don't buy that idea at all, along with a host of others. I do appreciate that he is trying to understand things and make some kind of sense out of them.

Yes, well, as for Sam's vision. I have a theory that the occasional 'vision' or 'satori' is a not unusual experience but that you 'see' and 'interpret' what you experience (as it is non-verbal) according to what is in you, both what your own 'desire' is and what you are capable of making out of what is a very complex and intense (and also simple) experience. So a devout Christian would have a Christian -oriented vision, a Buddhist would experience 'the blessed Void' (or whatever) a Native American quester would have an encounter with a power animal or something like that...... So I am in agreement with you. Sam has had the vision he is capable of, weak chin and all, and it is at once profound and hilarious - I mean, Christ as a Tench. And it is also a pointed comment that if there is a 'god', he is in everything, including a big old not terribly attractive fish. Or a bug on the wall, or a broken shard of pottery. There is nothing too humble to be a part of the Great Whole.

I'm at around 960 and plan to push on right now. -- Sam has saved the little dog and is talking to Angela about Percy who has run off to Russia. (Percy has been one of my favorite characters, btw)

Oh, I meant to make that comment about sexual gratitude! Thanks for reminding me. And now we are about at the same place. YAY!!! On the other hand, BOO for me because I didn't finish "The Grail" last night.

Ha! I've finished The Grail chapter, but I will happily wait for you since I have bucketloads of other reading to do!

One assumption JCP (as do the vast majority of manfolk) make is that their view of women -- I'm thinking of the whole pirouette of nonsense that he goes off on about Crummie's ankles, and women's lips -- is exclusive to men, it isn't all how women regard themselves or each other. It is virtually the only subject which he goes on about that I can't go along with most of the time, although he does have some insightful moments-- and more noticeable than with many writers because most of the time he is so astoundingly sensitive.

And I ask you, is there another writer on earth who could write such a tender scene about an old man with piles getting an enema!!!!!

What follows, at length might be my favorite moment in the whole book -- Sam in his euphoria trying to describe his revelation of the Grail to Mr Jones of the Antiquarian shop.

Having already interrupted Sam once or twice.... "Mr Jones looked up the street and down the street. Then he remarked, "I've still got that grand edition of Saint Augustine. I suppose you don't feel inclined to-"

But Sam interrupted him. "Do you know what my fellow-workers call me these days, Mr. Jones?"

"A darned ninny!" was what leapt up in Number Two's mind {Jones's nickname, his best friend, Mr Twig of the enema is Number One}; but he responded soothingly, as if addressing a candidate for the county asylum: "I've a-heered, Sir, that down in Paradise they name 'ee Holy Sam."

Sam nodded his head, and then began working the muscles of his chin so violently that the old man longed, as he afterwards explained..."To catch hold of that monkey-face and quiet 'un."

"I want to tell everyone in the town," cried Sam, "what has happened. For the most important thing has happened that could happen; and I have seen it.

The tone in which he said this, and the gleaming light in his eyes alarmed Mr. Jones but it occurred to him that it was just in states of mind of this kind that young gentlemen were liable to buy expensive theological books.

"It's the best Saint Augustine on the market," he said.

"I saw Eternity this morning," remarked Sam. Whether in the long history of Glastonbury, anyone had uttered these simple words before, no one knows, but if anyone had done so, the chances are that the remark was received in the same manner then as now.

"It's a Baskerville edition," insisted Mr. Jones."

BLISS!

Two more chapters! Ole!

I concentrated on trying to finish up second 'background' book I've been reading along with aGR. The first one really was, as far as is possible, scholarly, but this second one deals with all the legends, ancient, credible, to fanciful to downright absurd (space aliens). It's more enthusiastic, wide-eyed look, but it was fun to read and the author makes a noble attempt not to believe everything he hears..... but it is clear he loves the romance of it all, and deeply believes there is something about Glastonbury. Probably the bit that interested me the most was his explication of the sensible reason for ley lines -- that in old times, you would climb a hill, sight the next hill in the direction you wanted to go, and then make a bee line for it -- on the way, over literally millenia, people piled stone, or cleared the route, so that a pathway did become established. Where these ley lines crossed, often a village sprang up, or at the very least, a marker, and a meeting place of tremendous antiquity evolved. That is so much more compelling to me than the idea that there are dragon energy lines etc. that the ley-lines follow..... I'm not saying the energy isn't there, I do, in fact, think there is something to geomancy, but I'm sciency enough in personality, to be uncomfortable with the more woo-woo aspects of it.

What matters is how my knowledge and insights into JCP's use of the legends in aGR has been increased -- If I wanted to make a serious study of the book, I expect I would find that he uses the ley lines frequently, that people walk along them and that big things (like the three men (Crow, Dekker, Evans) sitting on the Tor (the central power point) which resulted in Evans playing Christ in the festival) - and Cordelia's trip up Chalice Hill releasing something pent up in her, changing her. A little help too with Sam Dekker and his fishy vision -- the fish is definitely mixed up in the legends as a symbol of Christ -- specifically associated with Wearyall Hill and the river Brue.

He discusses an ancient yearly ritual sacrifice of the 'king' that many believe took place in the cave at Wookey Hole, in front of a black stalagmite known as the Witch of Wookey Hole -- certainly JCP links the power of Geard to something that exists there that pre-dates xtianity.

Probably the most important insight is gained from Greed's clarity that the original 'wattle church' that is at the center of the Abbey mysteries, was an 'older' version of Christianity that was, in his words "Some maintain that the Christianity which Augustine brought was less pure than that which Glastonbury already had - and that Augustine pressed upon the Celts a religion crowded with the mandates and traditions of men, instead of letting them continue in the purer doctrines they received long before.' And which, by the by, intermingled with older traditions, thus the cup of Ceridwyn and the chalice -- Anyway, Sam's attempt at purity through negation seems to echo this theme. His vision, being older, releases him from the 'newer' beliefs.

There's quite a bit about the annual flooding - a clearer explanation of it than I've encountered -- three kinds: fresh water (from heavy rains), 'thick' water when soil also washes in - these floods were/are beneficial to the fields, and finally salt water, the bad floods, which wreak havoc - which happen when a spectacularly high tide coincides with heavy rain and there is nowhere for the water to go.

There's lots more, but this is enough. If I think of anything else important I'll put it in.

Oh -- and as far as names go -- there was an Abbot Beare -- echoes of lawyer Beere.
I suspect the flood in the last chapter will be of this sort

Thank you for all of that, Lucy. I was there with some of it, but the explanation for ley lines is sensible and interesting. I would also want to make something of Geard's falling asleep early on in Wookey Hole and coming out again empowered. Never mind pre-Christian, that's Jesus in the tomb too. Off and away. I have to say that I'm not looking forward to "The Iron Bar." I was sort of hoping that he'd forgotten Codfin and Mad Bet. silly me

I just noticed what a choppy and chaotic post 96 is! Maybe I'll fix it, maybe I won't bother. My parentheses are particular flamboyant.

I do agree that Geard's experience in WH also has xtian echoes -- in a way that's one of JCP's points, how much the stories overlap and echo and reify eachother. -- Are all about the same thing.

In the Champlain book there is a bit about how the Montagnais regard people as having different amounts of inherent 'power' or odanda (not sure how it is spelled since I am listening) and that Champlain had a LOT of it. Geard is the same sort.

This chapter is going to be tough -- and literally EVERYTHING that happens is ordained by the various 'legends' that swirl around Glastonbury and get all mixed up together, even to the WAY what happens, happens. Suddenly it is quite clear, the role each person plays in the drama, not everyone, but most of them, most of the principles. Even the hare that gets under John's foot is part of it.

O.K. You're clearly way ahead of me. As I say, I can't get beyond the sex-nerve.

I'm not that far ahead, but I cheated (somewhere around the sex-nerve) and looked a little, so that I would slow down and pay attention, which I can do when the 'whatsgonnahappen' itch is scratched. I don't cheat with mysteries, but I do with 'literature' because the whole point is savor.

I suspect this is actually brilliant about how violence seizes hold of a person.... It sounds right somehow as a description how an obsession can become addictive, leading the person to the final excess..... and is exceedingly creepy. I'll read to around 1025-30 at bedtime I hope.

I'm a few pages from the end of The Iron Bar but I had to stop to look up Esplumeoir which I've been meaning to look up for ages. In brief, an Esplumeoir is a cage or dark room where falcons were kept during the time of their moulting....... but it is a metaphor here for transformation. (For me it hints at resurrection, like the phoenix, a notoriously flamboyant moulter). Here is an essay on the subject of its meaning in aGR. Don't worry it's not as long as the little side bar would make you think, it is one of many essays on different literary topics. Maybe ten-fifteen pages. He argues that those seeking a monographic (singular-voiced ultimate view of universe) as opposed to a polyphonic (summed up - 'a plurality of consciousness with equal rights and each with its own world') universe.

The urge of so many characters (all men by the by) to BE transformed is, by this essayist's notion, what holds the novel together -- Geard, Sam, Evans in particular. Crow's 'viciousness' is his earthly materialist cynicism that never falters. He is an utterly 'grounded' person, 'bloody-minded' in many ways one would say. Not a romantic or a dreamer. I think that is all it means.

Have to confess, Peggy, that I have that 'I'm in the home stretch and nuttin' is going to stop me,' feeling coming over me -- I started The Flood.

You go, girl! I'll get there!
Meanwhile, I looked up the wrong word (so I suspect it's time for me to call it a night). Here's what Keith says about Esplumeoir:
“Esplumeoir” (169-70, 1048, 1077, 1105 179, 1001, 1029,
1056) — JCP’s spelling of either “Esplumeor” or
“Esplumoir,” a mysterious word referring to Merlin’s
“disappearance” (cf. 250-51 247) apparently meaning
“moulting cage,” which is used in Perceval, a thirteenthcentury
French prose-romance. It presumably implies a
period of retreat (death?) before transformation (rebirth?).
A favourite word of JCP, who employs it in a number of
other books, including The Owl, the Duck, and – Miss Rowe!
Miss Rowe! (26), Autobiography (643), Morwyn (199), Owen
Glendower (889 728), Porius (608, 738 699, not in 1994),
In Spite Of (204), and Obstinate Cymric (9, 11). See Diary
1930 (26) for JCP’s finding the term in Jessie L. Weston.
Throughout A Glastonbury Romance, JCP presents Merlin’s
“esplumeoir” as taking place in Glastonbury; see 594 571
and under “Merlin.” For further discussion of the term, see
the articles by Helen Adolf, Ben Jones, and John Matthews.

Thought I was going to finish but then we got into a 'planning' discussion about what everyone is up to the next few months...... no reading at all last night in the end!

Now I have finished.

The description of the flood is particularly poignant, dreadfully apt. I've never read anything like it. We had immense flooding in Western New York State one summer in the mid-late seventies but the water was not filled with dead things and human-made debris as it was a notorious enough flood plain that no one built right down in it and we knew too that army corps of engineers was going to let the water out of the dam (Letchworth, Genesee river, if any one cares). However it wasn't like ordinary water -- viscous and swirling and heaving around where it didn't belong.

I'll wait now until you are ready.

You'll want to look at these when you get to the end:

on Cybele and her turrets: here

And this one which is simpler to read here

Amazing how much of the imagery of the book is contained in this description of her.

I FINISHED!!!! And didn't we time it well? We're even now in the ancient festival days of Cybele. Oh my. I read an abridged The Golden Bough and The White Goddess some 35 years ago, so not much of it is left. She does put a different perspective on Bloody Johnny's Blood of Christ, doesn't she? I guess I mean that the whole medieval Grail legend in Glastonbury is a bit deceptive as JCP works deeper into time and eternity. Bah. It's impossible for me to write about the book without sounding like a pathetic academic wannabe.
So now what? Somebody should write a decent review of this book, but I'm afraid that mine would be only a review. So, lead on, friend.

I know -- I was sort of pleasantly unnerved that we should be finishing it during her festival period.

I've read reams and reams of stuff about the power of symbol (semiotics is the fancy word) over the years and I hope I sound anything but academic. I regard the subject as one people should respect and study intently. It's so easy to be manipulated by things deeply embedded in the psyche but not consciously acknowledged.

I plan to write something -- not a review exactly but a 'if you read this here is what to expect' sort of thing.

Congratulations to you both!!

From the little I've read so far, I agree that the book will be difficult to review, but I'm looking forward to your comments and thoughts on finishing the book. Your comments here have been wonderful and informative.

Well done both of you. I've skimmed through the past 40 or so comments, and will come back to them as I make my own way slowly through the book. To be honest, I haven't picked it up for over a month. I am much better at reading one book at a time than keeping several on the go at once, so maybe I should just decide that AGR is going to be the main book and keep at it until it is done... Anyway, I will look forward to sharing your thoughts when I get back to it.

I will await your thoughts with interest --

Meanwhile, I'm still working on my thoughts for a 'review'. Ha.