Reusing myths in children's literature

This could be viewed as the ‘pick and mix’ approach to rewriting traditional material for a modern audience, and refers to the way in which authors ‘borrow’ or introduce mythic story elements into their work. The list of authors who do this, to a greater or lesser extent, is extensive, and the ways in which they use the material is as varied as the material they borrow, but there are three main ways in which mythic elements are used by modern authors: transposed directly in their original form, translated to suit the story, or as archetypes. I would like to illustrate these three approaches by considering the ways in which modern authors have used mythic characters, before studying a work which makes use of all sorts of mythic elements in all three ways, namely Elidor by Alan Garner.

Characters from myth, legend and folktale can be used by modern authors as individuals, as stock characters or as archetypes. The first of these ways is least common as it can have a Verfremdungseffekt[1], introducing something alien into the story, and requiring an effort on the part of the author to assimilate this character into their world. This is what Diana Wynne Jones does in The Homeward Bounders, explaining the presence of legendary characters such as Prometheus, the Flying Dutchman and the Wandering Jew by making them exiles (‘homeward bounders’) in the same way as her main characters, and by extension, re-explaining their roles in their own stories by recasting them in this new light:

Have you heard of the Flying Dutchman? No? Nor of the
Wandering Jew? Well, it doesn’t matter, I’ll tell you about them in
the right place; and about Helen and Joris, Adam and Konstam, and Vanessa, the
sister Adam wanted to sell as a slave. They were all Homeward
Bounders like me.

p.7

The effort required to assimilate mythic characters leads to them more usually being used as stock characters or archetypes, where the character can be altered as necessary to fit the modern story. So in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Cerberus becomes Fluffy, guarding the trapdoor to the ‘underworld’ where Dumbledore has hidden the stone to keep it from Voldemort. This gives an added resonance to Harry’s trip through the trapdoor, casting it in terms of the heroic pass through death (as described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces). However, often characters are used merely to add colour to a narrative, to give it the flavour of a fantasy tale, as in The Chronicles of Narnia, where Lewis peopled his world with all the creatures of classical mythology, Dryads and Naiads, fauns, centaurs and satyrs. Most of these have no function in the narrative, much as their equivalents often don’t in the Harry Potter books, where in both for example the seer nature of centaurs is useful (Glenstorm and Roonwit in Prince Caspian and The Last Battle respectively and Firenze in Harry Potter), but hardly essential, and their function could arguably be fulfilled by some other means. It is interesting that this is one of the main criticisms levelled at the Harry Potter books by Pennington (2002):

Rowling also seems to purchase her marvellous assorted creatures from the Sears
catalogue of fantasy clichés: poltergeists, longing ghosts, dragons,
hippogriffs, giants, humongous spiders, vampires, werewolves, trolls, unicorns,
a sphinx, sirens, Pegasus horses (and I am certain that I have missed
some). With such a menagerie, Rowling is unable to develop any of
the fantastical creatures; in fact, she seems to expect the readers to bring
that magic to her creations, a dubious technique at best.

Pennington, 2002, p.82

I would dispute that this is a ‘dubious technique’ and argue instead that expecting readers to bring magic to such creations is a perfectly valid use of this sort of stock mythical character. That is precisely the reason they are there, to help readers experience the magic by the associative process of recognising them. From a very young age children are able to pick up on these stock characters and so the authorial use of them helps to create the parameters within which the story will be received and interpreted. A book chock-full of centaurs and dragons is asserting its identity as a mythic fantasy, much like wearing a badge or a uniform. This is not to say that it is necessary to create the desired ambience, merely that it is one way of doing so.

The use of archetypal characters is far more subtle, and not restricted to this kind of fiction, but as a function of the human psyche can be found in all literature. Archetypes underpin myth in the most fundamental way, due to their prevalence in human thought, and therefore are taken up most enthusiastically by mythic writers. A full discussion of the Jungian interpretations of children’s fantasy fiction is too wide a topic to explore here, and one which has been considered in some depth by many critics (see for example Mills (2003) and Cech (1992)). I wish merely to stress that as characters in myths are often as much archetypes as fully-fledged personalities, so too are their equivalents when used by modern authors attempting to harness the power of myth in their work. The adult fantasy author David Eddings referred to his conscious use of archetypes in writing The Belgariad as ‘mythic fishhooks’, designed to ‘catch’ the reader (Eddings, 1998, p.12). He may be unusual in using archetypes so deliberately, but most authors of modern mythic fiction, particularly that written for children or ‘genre fantasy’ for adults, do so to a more or less conscious extent. The use of archetypes lends psychological depth to a work, and the mythic and archetypal are inextricably entwined in any consideration of the role and value of literature which seeks to be built on such foundations. Authors often play with archetypes, twisting and subverting them, as for example Diana Wynne Jones having her heroine transformed into an old woman in Howl’s Moving Castle, undermining the received picture of the Old Woman as a threatening character in hundreds of fairy tales, but maintaining the archetype itself in the background.

Alan Garner’s Elidor is a very heavily mythic book, possibly the most weighted in this sense of any of his works. It is packed full of borrowings from myth, legend and folklore, assimilated to a greater or lesser extent. At its most basic level, it is an almost bare but very atmospheric story about four children who find themselves taken into a parallel world, dark and wasted, where they are prompted by a mysterious guide, Malebron, into retrieving four ‘treasures’ from a mound. They are then chased from Elidor by shadows and return to their own world, where they hide the treasures, but continue to be pursued by shadows until eventually a unicorn, which they’d been told by Malebron had to sing before Elidor could be redeemed, breaks through and is killed, at which point the children are able to get one last glimpse of the light returning to Elidor as they throw the treasures back. However, this surface story belies its inner complexity as it is deeply layered with mythic resonances that work on both a symbolic and an archetypal level.

On a symbolic level, Elidor can be read as a Grail story, with numerous references to Grail mythology. Malebron, the mysterious fiddler who calls the children into the other world, is Garner’s version of the Fisher King, the ‘maimed king’ (Elidor, p.38) of a wasted land, awaiting the arrival of a boy who will save him and his world. His name even echoes that of the Fisher King in Robert de Boron – Bron. Roland is Perceval, in the same way, the naïve boy who does not understand what he has to do the first time he comes to the ‘Grail Castle’, and has to leave and travel elsewhere for a long time before he understands and can return. The treasures, despite their more straightforward mythic correspondence with the treasures of the Celtic Tuatha Dé Danann[2], also equate with the ‘treasures’ of the Grail legend – the bleeding spear, the stone (the form the Grail takes in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s version), and of course the cauldron, the most common form the Grail takes. The Biblical aspect of the Grail legend is reflected in the climax of the book where Findhorn, the unicorn (the unicorn being a medieval symbol for Christ) is stabbed in the side by the spear from Elidor (the bleeding spear associated with the Grail in medieval legend was said to be the spear of Longinus which pierced the side of Christ on the cross) and is comforted in his death by Helen, who carried the cauldron, remembering the Grail as the cup in which the blood of Christ was collected by Mary Magdalene. And of course, it is Findhorn’s death which saves Elidor and cleanses it of its ‘sin’. Such potent use of mythological symbols endows the story of Elidor’s redemption with much more meaning than it might otherwise have. When taken in conjunction with an archetypal reading, this depth of meaning increases yet further to transform Elidor into a universal tale of redemption.

There are many ways in which Elidor can be seen to reflect archetypes, but two of the archetypal readings are particularly pertinent, that is, Roland’s story as a hero myth, and Elidor’s relation to our own world as its dark shadow. Joseph Campbell, in his work The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), describes how the universal hero, as found in myths, legends and stories of all kinds the world over, shares fundamental characteristics and follows the same pattern in their quest, whatever their goal may be. As such, this can be applied to the heroes of all the books I am discussing, and David Colbert, for example, has described how Harry Potter fits the description of the universal hero (Colbert, 2001, p.155-166), but in the context of examining the universality of Elidor it is worth comparing Roland’s story to this fundamental blueprint.

Campbell summarises the heroic adventure as follows:

The mythological hero, setting forth from his commonday hut or castle, is lured,
carried away, or else voluntarily proceeds, to the threshold of
adventure. There he encounters a shadow presence that guards the
passage. The hero may defeat or conciliate this power and go alive
into the kingdom of the dark […] or be slain by the opponent and descend in
death. Beyond the threshold, then, the hero journeys through a world
of unfamiliar yet strangely intimate forces, some of which severely threaten him
(tests), some of which give him magical aid (helpers). When he
arrives at the nadir of the mythological round, he undergoes a supreme ordeal
and gains his reward. The triumph may be represented as the hero’s
sexual union with the goddess mother of the world (sacred marriage), his
recognition by the father-creator (father atonement), his own divinisation
(apotheosis), or again – if the powers have remained unfriendly to him – his
theft of the boon he came to gain (bride-theft, fire-theft); intrinsically it is
an expansion of consciousness and therewith of being (illumination,
transfiguration, freedom). The final work is that of the
return. If the powers have blessed the hero, he now sets forth under
their protection (emissary); if not, he flees and is pursued (transformation
flight, obstacle flight). At the return threshold the transcendental
powers must remain behind; the hero re-emerges from the kingdom of dread
(return, resurrection). The boon that he brings restores the world
(elixir).

Campbell, 1949, p.245-246

Roland is ‘called to adventure’ (Campbell, 1949, p.58) by the chance of finding Thursday Street and the abandoned church, and ‘crosses the threshold’ into Elidor, which is the ‘zone unknown, the fateful region of both treasure and danger’ (p.58). His journey through Elidor, for example the dead forest of Mondrum and his entry into a tumulus, equates to the heroic pass through death. Roland then faces the trials of the stone circle, entry into the Mound of Vandwy and the temptation of the branch of apple blossom, before he and his brothers and sister achieve the treasures. They are then able to return to their own world, having succeeded in the quest, or at least the first part of it. For Garner doubles the hero quest, in much the same way as medieval Arthurian romances did, by forcing his hero to pass through a dual cycle where at first he achieves what he initially set out to do but does not resolve the problem, and must continue to wander before finally gaining the knowledge to complete the quest in the second cycle. This is what Roland must do once he has returned to his own world. He has the treasures, now he must learn about them, and Elidor, so that when the moment comes, when Findhorn breaks through, he will know what must be done to save Elidor and fulfil his prophesised role.

Structurally therefore, Elidor follows the pattern of the universal hero myth. Garner’s use of this pattern (although to what extent this was or could have been a conscious decision is debatable – Campbell’s point is that in writing of heroes and the heroic, this is the pattern that the story will take) makes Roland’s story relevant to everyone, everywhere. Heroes are there ‘as scapegoat[s] […] [having] to do the suffering for everyone’, and reading about them ‘gives you this sense of something other and better, […] a sort of blueprint of how to manage’ (Jones, 1992). This is why both authors and readers are drawn to the idea of the universal hero, and why it is one of the most fundamental ways in which myth informs modern literature.

If Roland is a universal hero, undertaking a universal quest, then his goal must also be universal. And this is where a Jungian interpretation of the land of Elidor and its relationship to our world comes in. One of the interesting features about Elidor in Garner’s work is its non-presence. ‘Garner has been criticised for creating a new world and then abandoning it (only five of the twenty chapters are set in Elidor), but he is essentially interested in Elidor as an idea rather than as a reality. Elidor’s value is as a point of reference by which we may understand the emptiness and futility of our own world’ (Philip, 1981, p.45-46). I would go further and say that Elidor actually represents the Jungian Shadow, the dark obverse of our world. Cech (1992) has discussed Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea as a ‘dramatization of one young person’s discovery of and reconciliation with his own shadow’ (Cech, 1992, p.84), a reconciliation which, according to von Franz, ‘is the beginning of individuation, the lifelong process of coming to know our own unconscious and its “regulating center”, the Self. The shadow represents “those qualities and impulses [an individual] denies in himself but can plainly see in other people”’ (von Franz, The process of individuation, quoted in Cech, 1992, p.83). The childrens’ journey into Elidor and attempts to come to terms with this shadowy land that they were shown and which increasingly impinges on their own world can be seen as Garner’s attempt to achieve reconciliation with the shadow aspects of the modern world. The importance of attempting this reconciliation, of facing the shadow, was described by Le Guin in terms strikingly similar to the scenes in Elidor where the shadows break through:

The less you look at it […] the stronger it grows, until it can become a menace,
an intolerable load, a threat within the soul.

Le Guin, 1979, p.64

Again Roland felt the charge as abruptly as if it had been switched on, and he
arranged everybody in a tight group on the lawn facing the spot where the
shadows had appeared. […]
“Watch the rose bed. And keep
watching,” said Roland. […]
The two shadows stood on the rose bed. […]
“Is
this one of your hallucinations, eh?” said Roland, and tried to turn his head to
see how Nicholas was reacting. But his neck muscles were
locked. The shadows darkened.

Elidor, p.148-149

The children had to face the shadows in order to shift them from being a threat to being a physical presence and therefore able to play their part in the ultimate redemption of Elidor through Findhorn’s death. In Jungian terms then, through the children being made aware of Elidor, our world’s shadow, recognition and understanding is made possible for all those living in our world, and Elidor becomes a universal hero myth. Garner’s work shows therefore how the use of mythic elements, in various ways and to various extents, gives a modern story additional depth and resonance. Many of the authors of such mythically based stories which fall into this category, would I’m sure agree with Diana Wynne Jones’s aim ‘to write fantasy that might resonate on all levels, from the deep hidden ones, to the most mundane and everyday.’ (Jones,1992, [web page]). This multilevelled resonance might not always be completely achieved, but even an imperfect achievement is significantly more satisfying for the reader than one which ignores the deeper levels of the human psyche. The use of mythic elements in modern stories allows authors to come closer to achieving this than they would be able to on their own.

Notes

[1] Effect of distancing or alienation
[2] ‘Their former homes were four magical cities, Falias, Findias, Gorias, and Murias. From them they take their principle treasures: from Falias Fál or Lia Fáil, the stone of destiny, which cries out under a lawful king; from Findias the sword of Nuadu, which allows no one to escape; from Gorias Gáe Assail, the spear of Lug Lámfota, which guarantees victory; from Murias the cauldron of the Dagda, which leaves everyone satisfied.’ The Oxford dictionary of Celtic mythology, p.415. Garner also uses the names of the cities as the names of the four castles in Elidor.

References

Campbell, Joseph (1949) The hero with a thousand faces, London : Fontana, 1993

Cech, John (1992) ‘Shadows in the classroom: teaching children’s literature from a Jungian perspective’, in Sadler, Glenn (ed.) Teaching children’s literature: issues, pedagogy, resources, New York : Modern Language Association of America, pp.80-88

Colbert, David (2001) The magical worlds of Harry Potter: a treasury of myths, legends and fascinating facts, London : Penguin.

Eddings, David; Eddings, Leigh (1998) The Rivan Codex, London : HarperCollins

Garner, Alan (1965) Elidor, London : Collins, 1974

Jones, Diana Wynne (1981) The Homeward Bounders, London : HarperCollins, 2000

--- (1986) Howl’s Moving Castle, London : HarperCollins, 2000

--- (1992) ‘Heroes’ [web page] <http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/heroes.htm> Accessed 20th October 2004

Le Guin, Ursula (1968) A Wizard of Earthsea, London : Penguin, 1993

Lewis, C.S. The Chronicles of Narnia:

--- (1950) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, London : Collins, 1987

--- (1951) Prince Caspian, London : Collins, 1987

--- (1952) The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, London : Collins, 1987

--- (1953) The Silver Chair, London : Collins, 1980

--- (1954) The Horse and his Boy, London : Collins, 1980

--- (1955) The Magician’s Nephew, London : Penguin, 1963

--- (1956) The Last Battle, London : Collins, 1980

MacKillop, James (2004) Oxford dictionary of Celtic mythology, Oxford : Oxford University Press

Mills, Alice (2003) ‘Archetypes and the unconscious in Harry Potter and Diana Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock and Dogsbody’, in: Anatol, Giselle Liza (ed.), Reading Harry Potter: critical essays, Westport ; London : Praeger, pp.3-13

Pennington, John (2002) ‘From Elfland to Hogwarts, or the aesthetic trouble with Harry Potter’, The Lion and the unicorn, v.26:no.1, pp.78-97

Philip, Neil (1981) A fine anger: a critical introduction to the work of Alan Garner, London : Collins

Rowling, J.K. (1997) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, London : Bloomsbury

--- (1998) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, London : Bloomsbury

--- (1999) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, London : Bloomsbury

--- (2000) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, London : Bloomsbury

--- (2003) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, London : Bloomsbury

--- (2005) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, London : Bloomsbury

Reworking myths for children

Reworkings of mythic stories are a complex and subtle way of passing on traditional tales, offering a challenge for author and reader alike. It is not surprising that this technique is attractive to many authors, who have attempted to create new stories using old ones, retaining their structure and meaning but grafting events and characters of their own on to them, adding new flesh to old bones.

Several authors have commented on what they see as the importance of reworking mythic stories rather than just retelling them, and it is interesting to consider why they hold this view. It shows a level of consciousness to their art, as they are deliberately remoulding one story into another, intentionally recasting an old story for a new generation for some purpose or another. Prior to moving into reworking traditional tales in his Arthur trilogy, Kevin Crossley-Holland had concentrated on straight retelling in many works for both adults and children. He describes his departure from straight retelling into reworking with his Arthur trilogy as ‘the bigger discovery for me’ as he found he ‘could actually relate legends to elements in Arthur’s life’ (Kevin Crossley-Holland, Interview with Write Away! [web page], 2002):

I never visualised it like this. First, I wrote an Arthurian novel
for adults based on the life of Sir Thomas Malory but was unable to complete
it. Then one day I was about to go and have supper with a
publisher friend, Judith Elliott, and explain why I still hadn’t started doing
the retellings of the Arthurian legend for her. And the reason was
that I had realised that the last thing I wanted to do was another set of
retellings. I was sitting at my desk looking dismally at a large
hunk of obsidian and I caught sight of my reflection, and I thought that’s it –
it’s the seeing stone – it’s between worlds – it’s the crossing
place! And at once I knew I had solved the problem in a simple way.

Kevin Crossley-Holland, Interview with Write Away!, 2002

The Arthur trilogy is not a complete reworking however. Rather it combines a retelling of the main events of Arthurian legend with a reflection and reworking of them in the story of the Arthur of the title, a young boy growing up in a medieval manor on the Welsh-English border at the end of the 12th century. However, the additional material brings the retelling into sharp focus for the reader, as the events of Arthurian myth are related to Arthur’s everyday life, and by extension, brought into the life of the reader. Arthur may be living several centuries before the readers, but he is a very real hero, easily identifiable with, and as he learns about his life through watching his namesake’s adventures in the seeing stone, so too can the readers take heed of the lessons the stone portrays. ‘What Arthur is seeing is a series of models, the whole gamut of human experience’ (Kevin Crossley-Holland, Interview with Write Away!, 2002). The reader sees this too, with the extra dimension of Arthur as interpreter and as a second series of models. The books thus retain the clarity of a straight retelling, passing on the Arthurian legend in an unadulterated form, with the complexity of a secondary story filter, bringing the traditional tale to life and relevance, which is the main strength of a good reworking.

Most reworkings are more subtle than the Arthur trilogy. They may make their source material explicit, such as with the frequent references to the Mabinogion and the story of Math ab Mathonwy in Alan Garner’s The Owl Service, or the quotes from Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer heading the chapters in Diana Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock, but this is more in the nature of the writer leaving clues, and the writer seems more concerned to weave the old material into the new seamlessly, absorbing it fully into their story. In this way the traditional story becomes something new and different, as the modern author highlights, pulls out or submerges various aspects to suit their work. In the hands of different authors therefore the same tale can take on entirely different characters. Charles Butler (2001) has discussed this with reference to the ballad of Tam Lin, in particular looking at the unusual way it was handled by Alan Garner in Red Shift in comparison to Catherine Storr’s novel Thursday. I would like to expand on his comments, referring also to Diana Wynne Jones’s treatment of the ballad in Fire and Hemlock, in order to show how reworkings can alter the transmission of traditional material.

Butler (2001) points out that the main way in which Garner’s treatment of the Tam Lin story differs from most other modern interpretations is in its male focus. He puts the Tam character centre stage in the person of his three male protagonists, Macey, Thomas and Tom, with the various Janet characters as supporting roles, in contrast to other authors who have dealt with the tale from a female perspective. This brings out different aspects of the ballad, such as the effect of the ‘possession’ (here cast in terms of fits, epilepsy or going beserk) on the possessed himself, and emphasising the need of the Tam character to have a Janet who will hold on to him, as in the ballad, through all his shape-shifting (usually expressed by modern writers by shifts in character or personality). It is significant that ‘the story of Jan and Tom is the only one of the book’s three narratives to lack the ballad’s happy resolution’ (Butler, 2001, [web page]) as this is the only one where the Janet character stops holding on to her Tam.

Jan’s failure to ‘save’ Tom is usually understood as Garner’s bleak comment on
the spiritual sterility of modern times, and as far as Tom’s own condition is
concerned that is probably right. Jan’s story can be read more
positively, however. She is a young woman with her own ambitions,
and a proper sense of her existence as a person beyond Tom’s clawing emotional
needs. Moreover, in refusing to tolerate Tom’s parasitic and
increasingly violent behaviour indefinitely (“There’s a limit to debasement”
(p.183)), she shows a self-respect that is surely wholly healthy.
Jan’s incipient feminism helps her to survive, even though it is one aspect of
the very modernity that has made life intolerable to Tom. […] Ironically Red
Shift’s tragic reversal of the outcome of the Tam Lin myth may also be its most
striking feminist gesture.

Butler, 2001

It is interesting to consider this and Garner’s use of three time-strands in this novel in the light of his comments about reworking myth in general. In his 1975 lecture ‘Inner Time’, he refers to ‘relevancy’ as ‘the myth [choosing] the form for its clearest expression at any given moment. In doing so, elements may be revealed and materials used that earlier versions obscured or did not need’ (Garner, 1997, p.110). The three ‘expressions’ (to use Garner’s term) of the myth found in Red Shift can be seen as the three ‘relevancies’ for the three different periods of time, and their different emphases and outcomes can be explained in this way. The interpretation about the ‘spiritual sterility of modern times’ and Butler’s feminist interpretation are therefore both applicable to the story of Tom and Jan. A 1970s expression of Tam Lin, according to Garner, cannot end happily if the only way to achieve a happy ending is by the subordination of the female partner’s needs.

According to Butler (2001), ‘it is surely not a coincidence that [most of the writers who have reworked the ballad of Tam Lin] are female, for Tam Lin can easily be seen as a proto-feminist text.’ The character of Janet has proved extremely attractive to modern authors, as so many traditional tales have weak, stereotypical or subordinate female characters. I will not discuss the issue of gender roles in traditional tales and modern interpretations at length here, but it warrants mentioning with reference to Diana Wynne Jones’s Fire and Hemlock, another reworking of Tam Lin.

Jones discusses the creative process of writing Fire and Hemlock in her 1988 essay The heroic ideal – a personal Odyssey, which she begins by describing her life-long search for the female hero. Her desire ‘to have a real female hero’ is what led her to choose Tam Lin as the base for the novel ‘because that had a real female hero, one of the few Britomart-like heroes in folklore’ (Jones, 1988, p.134). Fire and Hemlock is therefore a more traditional ‘expression’ of Tam Lin than Red Shift, focussing as it does on the experience of the Janet character, Polly, whose determination to hold on to her Tam, again called Tom here, is presented as a battle against his possession by the Queen of the Fairies. Jones’s depiction of Tom’s possession is more literal than Garner’s – Tom Lynn is not ‘away with the fairies’ in a metaphorical sense like Garner’s Tams. But this is merely a matter of atmosphere, and masks a more profound similarity. The key to Jones’s intepretation of Tam’s possession is a Frazerian view of the ballad’s tithe to hell – she makes this explicit by having Tom give Polly a copy of The Golden Bough to read at a central point in the narrative, Polly’s nightmarish trip to Bristol where the threat of the Leroys (the ‘fairy folk’) becomes clearest and Polly’s abandonment by her family most stark. Those taken by the Queen of the Fairies must be sacrificed in order that her consort may have immortality (‘Kings killed at the end of a fixed term’, Frazer, p.274), and this is the fate which Polly must save Tom from. The tithe to hell seems at first glance to have been submerged in Garner’s interpretation, although Butler (2001) points out that ‘one way of viewing Tam Lin is […] as a hero who contrives to let someone else suffer the punishment originally intended for him’ and that ‘Red Shift makes the question of infernal substitution explicit’ at the end with Jan’s accusation to Tom that ‘Other people have to go to hell to find words for you!’ (Red Shift, p.187).

The greatest similarity between Garner’s and Jones’s reworkings of Tam Lin is however in their treatment of the ‘holding on’ aspect of the ballad. I have already discussed the significance of Jan’s decision to stop holding on to Tom in the contemporary narrative thread of Red Shift, but this is also the choice Jones has her Janet make. In fact, Polly does this twice. Once when her jealous spying gives Laurel (the Queen of the Fairies) the opportunity to make her forget Tom, and then at the end when she marches down to Tom ‘hanging, swaying, […] on the very edge of the trench […] to take everything away, and do it now’ (p.334), to reject him completely, and in this way, to save him. ‘The only way to turn that wild strength of the horse to Tom’s advantage was to deprive him of it completely’ (p.334). In the same way, the only way to turn the strength of Tom and Polly’s love to his advantage was to deprive him of that completely, for Polly to stop holding on to him. In both Fire and Hemlock and Red Shift, the importance of holding on from the original ballad is twisted so that the books’ climaxes come from letting go instead. The only difference is that in Fire and Hemlock, the ‘chilly logic’ of Laurel means that by letting go, Polly does save Tom – for her, holding on would mean losing him.

In looking at these two authors’ treatment of the same traditional material it can be seen that reworkings reinterpret their source material in a very profound way, unique to each author and story. Something entirely new is created each time an author digs up the mythic bones of the past and rebuilds them in the present. This gives a good reworking a life that few other interpretations of traditional material can have; as Garner says: ‘retellings are stuffed trophies on the wall, whereas I have to bring them back alive’ (1997, p.111).

It has to be said, however, that this kind of profound reworking is not easily achieved. Red Shift and Fire and Hemlock are both extraordinarily difficult and complex books, and make demands of their readers above that of almost all other books published for young adults. Various critics have questioned Red Shift’s status as a children’s book – the review in the Times Literary Supplement called it ‘probably the most difficult book ever to be published on a children’s list’ (quoted in Philip, 1981, p.87) and it has to be wondered whether it was published as a children’s book purely because all Alan Garner’s previous books had been so. Nonetheless, it does have adolescent protagonists, at least in the most modern of the three story strands, and deals with the quest for the self which is a feature of so many young adult novels, so that I would classify it as such, as a book, like Fire and Hemlock, which is demanding but satisfying for intelligent adolescent readers. Many reworkings are complex and demanding in this way, at least those that fully assimilate their source material and turn it into something new, rather than a simple allegory or retelling in a different setting, such as C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or Diana Wynne Jones’s Eight Days of Luke where she translates the Norse story of Loki into the present day. Simple reworkings such as these (and Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy, which in its reworking parts is a fairly simple one-to-one correspondence, lifted into another time and place) seem more formulaic, less inspired, more an exercise of the author to see how they can fit the old to the new rather than a creative act producing something entirely new but equally powerful. As Diana Wynne Jones says, ‘the immense and meaningful weight of all myths and most folktales could drag a more fragile, modern story out of shape’ (1997 [web page]). It is a rare thing for an author to achieve a story which is strong enough to carry the weight and retain its own shape, casting its shadow back on the myth as much as the myth casts its shadow over the story. This, I would argue, is the reason for the complexity of the reworkings which have achieved this. They have to be strong, to resist the pull of their traditional shape.

References

Butler, Charles (2001) ‘Alan Garner’s Red Shift and the shifting ballad of Tam Lin’, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, Summer 2001. Also web page: <http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/tl.html> Accessed 27th October 2004

Crossley-Holland, Kevin (2001) Arthur: the Seeing Stone, London : Orion

--- (2001) Arthur: at the crossing-places, London : Orion, 2002

--- (2003) Arthur: King of the Middle March, London : Orion, 2004

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