The US Changeling Book Club
From Changeling Venue
With the confirmation that the new Changeling book will be released at Gencon in the middle of August, it has been decided to wrap up the current Changeling venue by June 31, 2007. For more information or questions, please contact your ARST or the ANST Changeling at storyteller.sprite@gmail.com.
Luckily, with the end of the old world comes the beginning of the new. A new genre means new opportunities for the Camarilla, and the US ANST Changeling office is committed to getting an early start on inspiring players interested in the new genre.
Because reviewers and playtesters are still under heavy NDA, we're offering instead a way to get ideas on the kind of game you may be playing with the launch of the new book.
Starting today (March 5) and continuing over the next few months, a series of books, articles, short stories and poems will be suggested to U.S. affiliate members through the Changeling Book Club. Books will be recommended monthly, and other materials and discussion topics will be sent out every Monday on the changeling-bookclub mailing list available through the CRD or at [1].
Members are invited to read the materials and participate in the moderated discussion on the changeling-bookclub list. Participants who submit reviews to the list of eight sentences or more per book will be eligible for entry in a Changeling lottery, with a chance to win both IC and OOC prizes, including a copy of the new Changeling book when it is released.
Local chapters and domains are also encouraged to participate in this program in true book club fashion, coming together in person to discuss the materials and what they might mean for the new Changeling.
All book club recommendations will be announced both on the changeling-bookclub list and on the Camarilla wiki at http://changeling.cam-wiki.org/index.php/The_US_Changeling_Book_Club
Happy Reading!
Contents |
Changeling Bookclub Recommendation for March
Inspired by comments that Changeling developer Ethan Skemp has made on the nWoD Changeling forums at white-wolf.com, the inaugural selection of the Changeling Book Club is "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury. Various editions of the book can be found on Amazon, at your local bookstore, or at your municipal or school library, enabling everyone who needs a copy to find one with relative ease. (There's also a mid-80s movie version of the story starring Jonathan Price -- but use your imagination! Read the book first!)
Ethan says: "After reading about the Autumn People of Bradbury's, the concept of using that term on the deliberately boring and banal was just… argh, I saw it as criminal. Autumn is the time of Halloween, of a forest the color of fire that whispers dry nothings when the cool wind blows. It's ripe apples on gnarled boughs, scythes in golden wheat, leaves dancing in small whirlwinds in the gutters, a fat yellow moon. Using autumn as a codeword for "dying imagination" is a serious cognitive disconnect for me. Autumn is too damn vivid for that." (http://forums.white-wolf.com/viewtopic.php?t=53628)
"Something Wicked This Way Comes is a 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury. It is about two thirteen-year-old boys, Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, who have a harrowing experience with a nightmarish carnival that comes to their Midwestern town one October. The carnival's leader is the mysterious "Mr. Dark" who bears a tattoo for each person who, lured by the offer to live out their secret fantasies, has become bound in service to the carnival. Mr. Dark's malevolent presence is countered by that of Will's father, Charles Halloway, who harbors his own secret desire to regain his youth." (From Wikipedia)
Below are some links to lesson plans and discussion topics for the book that may help you guide your local Changeling Book Club sessions:
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wicked/
http://www.harperacademic.com/catalog/instructors_guide_xml.asp?isbn=0380729407
http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/somethingwicked/
We encourage everyone to post their impressions of the book, their likes and dislikes, and how they feel the book can influence the Changeling-genre-to-be.
Book Club Selection: Monday, March 12
Today we've got everyone's favorite inaccessible literary medium, poetry! (Ok, maybe not inaccessible, but situationally opaque at least.) To keep from crashing poor little fan sites, I'll be cutting and pasting any short articles or poems that we choose for your reading convenience.
So here's the selection for Monday, March 12:
Gretel in Darkness by Louise Gluck
This is the world we wanted. All who would have seen us dead are dead. I hear the witch's cry break in the moonlight through a sheet of sugar: God rewards. Her tongue shrivels into gas.... Now, far from women's arms and memory of women, in our father's hut we sleep, are never hungry. Why do I not forget? My father bars the door, bars harm from this house, and it is years. No one remembers. Even you, my brother. Summer afternoons you look at me as though you meant to leave, as though it never happened. But I killed for you. I see armed firs, the spires of that gleaming kiln -- Nights I turn to you to hold me but you are not there. Am I alone? Spies hiss in the stillness, Hansel we are there still, and it is real, real, that black forest, and the fire in earnest.
Book Club Selection: Monday, March 19
Good afternoon Changeling enthusiasts!
Today's selection is a bit of real Changeling mythology. A little known story about….well, it's not long. You should just read it. Thoughts and comments are welcome!
The Burning of Bridget Cleary
I had the pleasure of doing the post-performance interview with Tom McIntyre after the An Grianan production of his play, "What Happened to Bridgie Cleary?" during yet another excellent Earagail Arts Festival. Funny what goes through your mind when engrossed in captivating theatre.
With the Patrick MacGill Festival coming up next week (don't forget Com Melly's book launch on Monday) I was transported back some 22 years to Fall River, Massachusetts, where Patrick's daughter, Patricia and her husband, Owen, took me to visit her father's grave and on the same day showed me the house of the infamous axe murderer, Lizzie Borden. Remember the rhyme - "Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. And after that when she was done, she gave her father forty-one". Bridget Cleary was called "the last witch burned in Ireland" and she was immortalised in a children's rhyme: "Are you a witch or are you a fairy, Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?"
On March 15, 1895, twenty-eight year old Bridget Cleary, a cooper's wife, disappeared from her cottage near Clonmel in County Tipperary. Immediately, strange and lurid rumours began circulating the neighbourhood about what had happened. Some said she ran off with an egg seller, others supposed it was an aristocratic foxhunter who had taken young Bridget away. Swirling amid rumours was the barely whispered, but widely held, belief that Bridget had gone with no mortal man; rather, she had gone off with the fairies. The mystery deepened when seven days later her body was discovered, bent, broken and badly burned in a shallow grave. Within a few days, the unimaginable truth came to light: for almost a week before her death Bridget had been confined, ritually starved, threatened, physically and verbally abused, exorcised and, finally, burned to death by her husband, Michael Cleary, her father and extended family who confused her bronchial medical condition with a "fairy dart." They had all become convinced that "their Bridgie" had been taken from them and her fairy-possed body left behind to deceive them.
She was a stylish dressmaker with additional independent income from keeping hens, who eschewed the customary shawls and scarves of her peers for hats and cashmere jackets. Her husband was a cooper from a neighbouring town who also had a good income. That, along with their childless state, had made them relatively well-off compared to their neighbours and family. The Cleary's were friendly with their neighbours - an "emergency man", or caretaker for the landlord who had moved into a farm after a family was evicted during the land wars of the early 1890's. These neighbours were shunned by a small community resentful of such opportunism. Bridget did the shopping for them and may have been the young husband's lover. She was out delivering some eggs and hoping to get payment owed from her uncle, and caught a cold that possibly developed into TB on her two-mile trek home. Over the next week Bridget's condition worsened, yet the doctor, a drunk, refused to come, while the priest stayed 20 minutes and merely gave the last rites. Soon Michael Cleary and Bridget's uncle, Jack Dunne, a seanchai well versed in herb lore, began to circulate the story that Bridget had been taken by the fairies, and the woman in the bed was a changeling. Some herbal cures were prescribed and forced down Bridget's throat - she was also manhandled and held over the fire on Thursday, March 15, while being repeatedly asked if she was indeed Bridget or a changeling. Several family members assisted, and neighbours were present the evening before her death. Several more tests were conducted by her male relatives to see if she was truly Bridget - including throwing urine and chicken droppings on her.
By the next morning, she appeared to recover and was up, dressed and out of bed the following evening, when neighbours came at her request to verify that she was better, and not a changeling. After the neighbours left, seemingly still not convinced that she was truly his wife, Michael Cleary tried to force Bridget to eat three pieces of bread before he would give her a cup of tea- she ate two and insisted on the tea. He waved a burning stick in her face, causing her clothing to catch fire. She passed out, and he threw paraffin oil on the "changeling" and burned her to death, all the while screaming that she wasn't his wife, that his wife would appear riding on a white horse at a ruined hill fort the following evening, when he would cut the cords that bound her with a black-handled knife. On 14 March they held her over the fire to drive the spirits out, and on 15 March Bridget's husband set fire to her nightgown, throwing on lamp-oil to make the fire burn more fiercely. "She's not my wife", he told the assembled people.
"You'll soon see her go up the chimney". Brandishing a kitchen knife at her brothers, he forced one of them to help him carry her to a shallow grave. Shortly afterwards, some men reported to their local priest that young Bridget Cleary, who was known to have been ill, had been burned to death by family members, including her husband, in a case of fairy exorcism. The priest in turn went to the police, who found Bridget's charred body and arrested nine family members, neighbours and friends in connection with the incident. The subsequent trial became a weapon in the hands of Tories opposed to Home Rule for Ireland. After all, how could one grant political autonomy to a people still so in the grip of superstition? Michael Cleary was sentenced to 15 years after which he emigrated to Canada. Tom McIntyre told me an intriguing story from the Clonmel area some time ago when a young man (possibly a Canadian) was observed in the vicinity of the Cleary household only to disappear again. Did Michael re-marry and have a family? I would strongly recommend Angela Bourke's "The Burning of Bridget Cleary" and also worth a look is "The Cooper Wife is Missing" by John Hoff and Marian Yeates. What fascinates me about the Bridget Cleary story is that it happened just over a hundred years ago - in my grandparents time - so that we can't dismiss it simply as some aberration from the Dark Ages. This is what an 1895 publication, "Gaslight", had to say of the burning, an event which provided sensational headlines throughout these islands at the time. "It seems,then, that whatever explanation we accept of the beliefs which led to Bridget Cleary's death, we cannot suppose that it was the purpose of these men to murder her. The account given of the matter by all the witnesses is too fantastic and too uniform not to be genuine. We cannot imagine that they, by pure chance, invented a course of reasoning to excuse primitive superstition, nor is there the smallest evidence to show that any of those motives which, for most part, lead to murder were influencing, or had influenced, any of the actors. The story is too strange not to be true. That such superstitions should still be believed in a Christian country, and by men who by religion are Christian, is appaling enough; but the remedy for such a state of things is not to be found in the hangman's noose, nor yet, perhaps, in the convict prison, and one cannot but feel that it would be in the spirit of that wise and merciful law which ordains that boys under a certain age may not be hanged for capital offenses to spare these men, even if they are condemned; for children they are if, as can, I think, be proved, they have acted under the influences of such superstitious fears, as surely as the savage who fears his own shadow is a child. It is as impossible for educated and unsuperstitious people to appreciate the enormous force which such beliefs exercise on untutored minds as it is for a heathen to estimate the immense powder of religion in determining the conduct of a man. But if, as this paper has tried to show, they killed, but not with intent to kill, still less should the extreme penalty be inflicted."
Source: http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identity/extras/supernat/stories/cleary.htm
Book Club Selection: Tuesday, March 26
Morning folks!
This Monday's (ok, Tuesday's) selection is the short story 'Snow, Glass, Apples' by Neil Gaiman. Because the story is posted publicly, with permission from Gaiman, on a site which benefits the nonprofit Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, I will *not* be copying the entire story to the list.
I do encourage you to go to http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/stories/snow.html and read Gaiman's excellent retelling of a classic fairy tale. (The story is also included in a few short story anthologies, including Gaiman's 'Smoke and Mirrors'.) There is also an audio play version of the story available at http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/snowglassapples/ .
I hope you enjoy it. Happy reading (or listening)!
Changeling Bookclub Recommendation for April
First, I'd like to thank those members who posted their reviews of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Everyone had interesting and insightful things to say and I'm immensely grateful for your contributions. The following people met the eight-sentence-review criterion and will be entered in the drawing for the copy of Changeling: The Lost:
Aubrey Kelly <oocmail.aubrey.kelly@gmail.com>
Chris Middleton <hilariousbookbinder@yahoo.com>
Ben Snyder <bencharacters@gmail.com>
D. Scott McQuiston" <camscotty@gmail.com>
Julia Starr <mail@rokujo.dreamhost.com>
Christopher R. Hopkins <negisa@laughingpirates.com>
Kathy Bunt <millie.mayne@gmail.com>
If you posted a review and I somehow missed it, please contact me privately and we'll fix the problem.
That said, the April selection for the Changeling bookclub is much closer to the realms of Fae than March's selection. We will be reading "Forests of the Heart," by Charles De Lint. De Lint is a consistently excellent contributor to the genre of urban fantasy and this book in particular has overtones of the World of Darkness and the role that the Fae may have in it.
I thought long and hard about whether to recommend this, as it can apply equally well to the feel of Changeling: The Dreaming. I hope that you will find the book a useful tool in learning to bridge the gap between old world and new world Changeling, and how magic -- dark, primal, insistent magic -- can operate in a modern, urban environment. The book is fairly long (around 400 pages) but it's a lively read. (For those of you that are slow readers, we will try extra hard to keep you stocked with entertaining selections for the rest of the Mondays in April.)
The book is fairly recent, and may be at your local library (many libraries have online catalogs where you can look it up, if you'd like to save yourself a trip). It is also available online for under $15:
http://www.amazon.com/Forests-Heart-Newford-Charles-Lint/dp/0312875681/ref=ed_oe_p/002-6987382-7840841
(Amazon also has numerous used copies starting at about $3 for the hardcover.)
http://product.half.ebay.com/Forests-of-the-Heart_W0QQtgZinfoQQprZ1686578
http://search.ebay.com/Forests-of-the-Heart
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9780312875688&itm=18
Here are a handful of reviews and discussions for the book, to help you lead your local bookclub group (As usual, reviews are a bit spoilery. Be warned):
http://www.sfsite.com/06a/fh82.htm
http://www.rambles.net/cdl_forests.html
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/forestsoftheheart.htm
Happy reading!
Book Club Selection: Tuesday, April 9
My sincerest apologies for the lack of Monday post yesterday. To make it up to you, I'm going to post a little something extra after this week's selection.
For April 9, we'll be reading the classic poem "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. It's long, but it's essentially a story in poem form, about two sisters and their encounters with some very capricious goblins.
Because it's so lengthy, I'm linking to an external site for the actual text of the poem:
http://users.crocker.com/~lwm/goblin.html
Here are some pages with information about Rosetti and analysis of the poem itself:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/marketov.html http://www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/classes/377/crossetti1.html http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/crossetti/scholl.html
AAAND...
Since Goblin Market is in many ways a classic fairy tale, I'm going to also recommend a lot of classic fairy and supernatural tales that you might not know. These are not our traditional French and German fairy tales, and though many of them have been Victorianized, they do provide a lot of information on classic tropes of the genre.
Forty-Four Turkish Fairy Tales: http://www.sacred-texts.com/asia/ftft/index.htm Norwegian Fairy Tales: http://oaks.nvg.org/lg4ra2.html Russian Fairy Tales: http://www.lacquerbox.com/tales.htm Indian Fairy Tales: http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/ift/index.htm Welsh Fairy Tales: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8wftl10.txt Romanian Fairy Tales: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20552/20552-h/20552-h.htm
Book Club Selection: Tuesday, April 22
Because I forgot last week (and no one reminded me!) I will give you two pieces of changeling goodness:
First up is Terri Windling's excellent overview of classic Changeling tales (it's a bit long, but good reading):
http://www.endicott-studio.com/jMA0301/changelings.html
Next we have Wiliam Butler Yeats' classic changeling poem "The Stolen Child"
The Stolen Child (1886)
Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
5 The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
10 To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
15 Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
20 To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
25 To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
30 In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
35 Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
40 With a faery, hand in hand,
For to world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
45 Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
50 For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
And last but not least...
Here's a book that looks like it might be fun: http://secure1.white-wolf.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=873
Book Club Selection: Monday, April 30
This week we have the classic tale of 'Tattercoats.' It's kind of an alternate version of Cinderella, in which the premise is a little... off-putting.
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0510b.html#grimm
"Once upon a time there was a king whose wife was the most beautiful woman in the world, with hair of pure gold. Together they had a daughter, and she was as beautiful as her mother, and she had the same golden hair. The queen became ill, and when she felt that she was about to die, she called the king to her side and asked him not to marry anyone following her death, unless she was just as beautiful as she, and unless her hair was just as golden as hers. The king made this promise, and she died...."
And here's a good essay on the topic: http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/fordnky.html.
Excerpt: "The danger accompanying the loss of demarcation between what is real and what is only the semblance of reality, emphasized by repetition, is illustrated by the manner in which those involved (both members of the immediate family and the kingdom as a whole) react when their illusions are shattered, when the fairy tale proves false. This is most markedly visible in the actions of the queen at the start of the novel, but is also evident in the descent into madness, which affects the other characters upon her death."
In case you haven't seen it yet...
http://www.white-wolf.com/changeling/index.php?line=news&articleid=733
A Storytelling Game of Beautiful Madness
Taken from your home, transformed by the power of Faerie, kept as the Others' slave or pet — but you never forgot where you came from. Now you have found your way back through the Thorns, to a home that is no longer yours. You are Lost. Find yourself.
The Core Rulebook for Changeling: The Lost™
• A rulebook for playing the changelings, those humans changed by durance in Faerie to something more than human
• A vivid imagining of the fae beings and places that hide unseen in the World of Darkness
• Provides new player types and antagonists for crossover chronicles as well as chronicles focusing on changelings alone
Some points to think about:
What do you think it means to be Lost? How do you think the above description differs from the definition of a Changeling in Changeling: The Dreaming? What mythological implications does this have? Do you have any other discussion questions for the group?
Come on people, discuss!
Changeling Bookclub Recommendation for May
And what you're not getting is a new book. Why? For one, everyone has seemed pretty thrilled with the de Lint, but I haven't seen any reviews; a lot of our time has gone to the Changeling spoilers and previews. So June 1 we'll have a new book (which is already picked out) for your reading pleasure. I hope to see some reviews soon, but I have to say that I'm *thrilled* with the speculation for the new book and chronicle, so keep at it (and keep the list hopping)!
Book Club Selection: Monday, May 14
For today we've got a traditional ballad -- Tam Lin -- that can be a little tricky to read. To help, I'm recommending the motherlode of background information that is http://www.tam-lin.org/ (it's pretty astounding), which I've taken the following from:
"Summary of Tam Lin : The woods of Carterhaugh are guarded by Tam Lin, a man who demands payment of all maidens who pass through, in the form of a belonging or their virginity. A maiden named Janet travels to Carterhaugh and picks a rose, causing Tam Lin to appear. He questions her presence, to which she relies that Carterhaugh is rightfully hers. She then travels to her fathers house where she exhibits the early signs of pregnancy, much to the concern of the household. She states that her lover is elven, and then returns to Carterhaugh, once again encountering Tam Lin. He reveals he is not elven, but a mortal captured by the queen of Faeries, and that he may be sacrificied to hell as part of the faerie tithe. He then details how she can save him to be her mate, if she will undergo a trial on Halloween night. She must pull him from his horse as the faeries process through the woods, and hold onto him as he is transformed into various beasts, then plunge him into a well when he turns into a brand of fire. When he regains his own naked shape she must cover him with her green mantle and he will be free. She does all of this, much to the anger of the watching Queen of faeries."
Tam Lin
Child ballad #39A The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1882-1898 by Francis James Child
1. O I forbid you, maidens a',
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.
2. There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
But they leave him a wad,
Either their rings, or green mantles,
Or else their maidenhead.
3. Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh
As fast as she can hie.
4. When she came to carterhaugh
Tam Lin was at the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsel.
5. She had na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twa,
Till upon then started young Tam Lin,
Says, Lady, thou's pu nae mae.
6. Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,
And why breaks thou the wand?
Or why comes thou to Carterhaugh
Withoutten my command?
7. "Carterhaugh, it is my own,
My daddy gave it me,
I'll come and gang by Carterhaugh,
And ask nae leave at thee."
8. Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she is to her father's ha,
As fast as she can hie.
9. Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the ba,
And out then came the fair Janet,
The flower among them a'.
10. Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the chess,
And out then came the fair Janet,
As green as onie glass.
11. Out then spake an auld grey knight,
Lay oer the castle wa,
And says, Alas, fair Janet, for thee,
But we'll be blamed a'.
12. "Haud your tongue, ye auld fac'd knight,
Some ill death may ye die!
Father my bairn on whom I will,
I'll father none on thee."
13. Out then spak her father dear,
And he spak meek and mild,
"And ever alas, sweet Janet," he says,
"I think thou gaest wi child."
14. "If that I gae wi child, father,
Mysel maun bear the blame,
There's neer a laird about your ha,
Shall get the bairn's name.
15. "If my love were an earthly knight,
As he's an elfin grey,
I wad na gie my ain true-love
For nae lord that ye hae.
16. "The steed that my true love rides on
Is lighter than the wind,
Wi siller he is shod before,
Wi burning gowd behind."
17. Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh
As fast as she can hie.
18. When she came to Carterhaugh,
Tam Lin was at the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsel.
19. She had na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twa,
Till up then started young Tam Lin,
Says, Lady, thou pu's nae mae.
20. "Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,
Amang the groves sae green,
And a' to kill the bonny babe
That we gat us between?"
21. "O tell me, tell me, Tam Lin," she says,
"For's sake that died on tree,
If eer ye was in holy chapel,
Or christendom did see?"
22. "Roxbrugh he was my grandfather,
Took me with him to bide
And ance it fell upon a day
That wae did me betide.
23. "And ance it fell upon a day
A cauld day and a snell,
When we were frae the hunting come,
That frae my horse I fell,
The Queen o' Fairies she caught me,
In yon green hill do dwell.
24. "And pleasant is the fairy land,
But, an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years,
We pay a tiend to hell,
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
25. "But the night is Halloween, lady,
The morn is Hallowday,
Then win me, win me, an ye will,
For weel I wat ye may.
26. "Just at the mirk and midnight hour
The fairy folk will ride,
And they that wad their true-love win,
At Miles Cross they maun bide."
27. "But how shall I thee ken, Tam Lin,
Or how my true-love know,
Amang sa mony unco knights,
The like I never saw?"
28. "O first let pass the black, lady,
And syne let pass the brown,
But quickly run to the milk-white steed,
Pu ye his rider down.
29. "For I'll ride on the milk-white steed,
And ay nearest the town,
Because I was an earthly knight
They gie me that renown.
30. "My right hand will be gloved, lady,
My left hand will be bare,
Cockt up shall my bonnet be,
And kaimed down shall my hair,
And thae's the takens I gie thee,
Nae doubt I will be there.
31. "They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
Into an esk and adder,
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
I am your bairn's father.
32. "They'll turn me to a bear sae grim,
And then a lion bold,
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
And ye shall love your child.
33. "Again they'll turn me in your arms
To a red het gand of airn,
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
I'll do you nae harm.
34. "And last they'll turn me in your arms
Into the burning gleed,
Then throw me into well water,
O throw me in with speed.
35. "And then I'll be your ain true-love,
I'll turn a naked knight,
Then cover me wi your green mantle,
And hide me out o sight."
36. Gloomy, gloomy was the night,
And eerie was the way,
As fair Jenny in her green mantle
To Miles Cross she did gae.
37. At the mirk and midnight hour
She heard the bridles sing,
She was as glad at that
As any earthly thing.
38. First she let the black pass by,
And syne she let the brown,
But quickly she ran to the milk-white steed,
And pu'd the rider down.
39. Sae weel she minded what he did say,
And young Tam Lin did win,
Syne covered him wi her green mantle,
As blythe's a bird in spring
40. Out then spak the Queen o Fairies,
Out of a bush o broom,
"Them that has gotten young Tam Lin
Has gotten a stately-groom."
41. Out then spak the Queen o Fairies,
And an angry woman was she,
"Shame betide her ill-far'd face,
And an ill death may she die,
For she's taen awa the bonniest knight
In a' my companie.
42. "But had I kend, Tam Lin," said she,
"What now this night I see,
I wad hae taen out thy twa grey een,
And put in twa een o tree."
I have to also strongly recommend "Tam Lin" by Pamela Dean. I think that would be a good C:tL variation--I won't spoil it, but suffice to say she takes the ballad, modernizes it, turns it from song to text, and does a lovely job (in my opinion).
It's definitely got dark tones in it, and it accents C:tL very nicely. :)
Although tam-lin.org does have a *wealth* of info, including translations.
Book Club Selection: Monday, May 21
On time! Yay!
Today we've got a reminder that not all human-abducting magical creatures are ones from the fairy tales we've heard a million times and have been Disney-fied beyond all recognition...
From: http://monsterguide.blogspot.com/2006/02/encantado-dolphin-man-of-amazon-river.html
Encantado Dolphin-man of the Amazon River
It's festival time on the Amazon River; the handsome young stranger in the spotless white linen suit glides through the noise and music of the party with liquid grace. The girls can't take their eyes off him, but he seems to have eyes for one girl only. They dance the night away, and sometime shortly before midnight they slip from the festivities for a walk along the river. Neither the girl nor the mysterious young man is ever seen again. The next morning, a pair of shoes and a discarded party dress will be found on the riverbank. The old folks will turn to each other and whisper: "Encantado."
The encantado -- Portuguese for "enchanted ones" -- are river-dwelling spirits who can take either human form or the form of a boto, the bizarre long-beaked freshwater dolphins of the Amazon. In human form they are pale-skinned and graceful, dressed usually in bright clothes in an old-fashioned style. Their transformation is never fully complete, however: an encantado will always have a bald spot on the top of its head where its dolphin blowhole remains. For this reason, the encantado always keeps his head covered, usually with a broad-brimmed straw hat. The encantado is better at assuming its dolphin form, though strange boto with flippers ending in human hands have been reported.
The encantado are curious about human society, and they are particularly fond of festivals and parties where they can enjoy music and dancing. It is not unheard-of for an enchanted one to dwell on land long-term, making a living as a musician. This fascination with people shows its dark side when a lovestruck encantado abducts a human girl back to its home in the underwater city called the Encante. Most of these girls never return from this mystic place, and those that somehow escape their abductors are never quite right in the head. Many return pregnant; this happens often enough that it's common in some areas for any child whose father is unknown to be called a "child of the boto."
The encantado have great powers of hypnosis and suggestion, and will place victims under their spell before taking them away. It is of critical importance to keep the victim away from the river, using restraints if necessary; they will be drawn to the water, pulled irresistibly by the power of the encantado. To break the spell, a medicine man or wise woman must cast a magical powder -- a mixture of manioc flour and dried crushed chile peppers works well -- over the water where the encantado is known to appear. This powder will usually break the spell and drive the creature away, and any gifts it may have given the victim, such as jewelry or fine clothes, will revert to their true forms: rotting leaves and other river trash.
Changeling Bookclub Recommendation for June
This month's selection is kinda special to me since it's the book that inspired me to start the book club in the first place. When a friend forced me to read it a few years ago (she bought me a copy on amazon and had it sent directly to my house) I was apprehensive. I'm not the reader that many people around me are, it takes a lot to hold my interest to a page.I'm simply easily distracted. However, when a book does grab my attention, I'm likly to finish it in a matter of hours...And that was the case with this month's selection. Then I discovered that I was not the only one who hadn't read it! The world of Changeling fans must know of this book! They must read it! And thus, the book club was born. :)
So, without further adieu, this months' book club selection is War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull. It's not long, it s a wonderful modern faerie tale, and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. The only review I have is the one printed on the back cover of my copy of the book. It reads: "Emma Bull is really good - Neil Gaiman."
To purchase the book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0765300346/rambles Wikipedia Entry (Contains Spoilers): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_for_the_Oaks
Book Club Selection: Monday, June 18th
Morning, folks.
Since we've been discussing elementals and what they may or may not be, I thought I'd give you a poem with a potentially elemental point of view. Feel free to chew on it and pick it apart and decide what about it may or may not work for you, your Changeling chronicle, your stories and your characters. (Incidentally, I find a lot of Levertov's work gets me started on Changelingy kind of thinking, so I recommend poking around at her other works if you like this.)
Enjoy!
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-tree-telling-of-orpheus/
A Tree Telling of Orpheus, by Denise Levertov
White dawn. Stillness.When the rippling began
I took it for sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
of salt, of treeless horizons. But the white fog
didn't stir; the leaves of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.
Yet the rippling drew nearer – and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
Yet I was not afraid, only
deeply alert.
I was the first to see him, for I grew
out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or golden grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower's.
He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
as if rain
rose from below and around me
instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
what the lark knows; all my sap
was mounting towards the sun that by now
had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.
He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! There was no twig of me not
trembling with joy and fear.
Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told me of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots ...
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.
Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.
Changeling Bookclub Recommendation for July
I know, it's been eons, weeks and weeks since you've heard from me. Luckily you've had oodles and gobs of spoilers to take up your time.
Firstly, I'd like to thank the following people for submitting their book reviews to the list. Remember, folks, anyone posting an 8-sentence (or more) review of any of the official recommendations gets their name entered in a drawing to win a free copy of the Changeling: the Lost book!
Jane Skau, coffeekraken@gmail.com, US2002021198
Kathy Bunt, millie.mayne@gmail.com, US2005096553
Chris Middleton, hilariousbookbinder@yahoo.com, US2003112500
Thanks much folks. I hope to see more of your book reviews and recommendations. (And don't forget about the flurry of enthusiastic players over on changeling-lost-ooc!)
This month's selection is a slightly more lighthearted (but hardly fluffy) look at what happens when someone who looks just like you steals your life -- your job, your girlfriend, your apartment, everything...
"Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman.
In general I recommend just about anything Gaiman's ever done as good foundation for PCs and plots in the World of Darkness setting. He has an amazing capacity to build a world that's mysterious, dark, often dangerous, but not without a sense of humor to balance it out.
Here are some (probably spoiler-y) links to reviews of the book:
http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/215.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2005/10/01/gaiman/index.html
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/reviews/books/0-06-051518-X.html
The book is readily available through Amazon in both hard- and paperback, and is new enough that it is (reasonably) likely to be at your local library as well.
Enjoy!
