Legends of the Pendragon ed. by James Lowder (review)

REVIEWS123 efforts of whom were largely responsible for the preservation of so many of the earliest Welsh manuscripts. Both the general reader and the scholar will find a wealth ofscholarship within these pages. As a milestone in the study ofWelsh palaeography, the volume is both an essential book ofreference and a readable and attractive introduction to the field ofWelsh medieval manuscripts for Celticists and medievalists alike. It is likely to remain an authoritative and indispensable work in its field for years to come, and provides a tantalizing foretaste ofwhat is yet to be anticipated from Daniel Huws. MAREDUDD AP HUW National Library ofWales james LOWDER, ed. Legends ofthe Pendragon. Oakland, CA: Green Knight Publishing, 2002. isbn: 1-928999-19-0. Pp. 320. $14.95. Opening a collection ofshort stories always has a certain birthday feeling to it: all those stories, like individually wrapped presents, waiting to be read. Like most birthdays, some ofthe presents are just what you always wanted and some are not. Legends ofthe Pendragon is subtitled 'Twenty Original Stories of Camelot's Founding,' but this subtitle does not quite do justice to the eighteen short stories and two poems. While all are set in the time before the Round Table, the subjects stretch from the marriage ofVortigern and Rowena to the gathering ofknights at Arthur's court. Focusing on this timeframe, not as well covered in literature as the heyday and the passing of Arthur, allows for more freedom of individual interpretation. Still, the fall of Camelot is constantly present in the reader's mind: after all, we know how the story ends. While this inevitable conclusion guarantees that any author will have to work hard to surprise us, it also has benefits: stories about the childhood and youth of Arthur, and of other characters, take on a poignancy created in the tension between the readers knowledge and the characters' lack of knowledge about the end. The short stories in this anthology are all set in this area of tension. Some of them use the tension directly, such as Beth Anderson's 'TheTime in Between,' with its Merlin desperately trying, again, and again, to prevent Camelot from falling, or Valerie Frankel's 'Tea and Company,' focusing on Merlin and Nimue. Some authors simply take advantage ofthe fact that comparatively little has been written, much less established in any Arthurian canon, of the early years of the characters. A common feature to some stories is to employ a change ofperspective: for example, Clarissa Aykroyd and Cory Rushton both choose to change the perspective on King Pellinore, previously—to me, at least—a fairly anonymous knight, and produce very different stories. Aykroyd explores the hunt for the Questing Beast, shining a new and fascinating light on this enigmatic concept, and Rushton chooses to portray the very briefly mentioned mother of Tor, and her rape by a passing Pellinore, giving her a story both before and after her encounter with the knight. The collection is rather uneven. There are some true gems, perfectly cut and sparkling, such as Frankel's 'Tea and Company,' with its light touch and novel 124arthuriana Interpretation of the Merlin-Nimue relationship. There is also Phyllis Ann Karr's 'Squire Kay in Love,' showing us a first experience ofconflicting loyalties, Darrell Schweitzer's dark and haunting tale 'The Last Giant ofAlbion,' and Nancy Varian Berberick's 'Hel's Laughter,' portraying Rowena and her marriage to Vortigern in a fashion that creates sympathy for the Saxon princess in the most pro-Celtic hearts. Together with the two poems, Marcie Lynn Tentchoff's 'Nimue's Song' and Andrew H. W. Smith's 'The Enthronement of Arthur,' these four selections are also remarkable for their language, whether it be transparent, hardly noticed as the reader is caught up in the story, or noticably present, sometimes charmingly apt and elegant, sometimes rich, allusive, and archaic.There are also some stories which are not successful; indeed, some ofthe stories suffer from a flatness oflanguage, often because ofover-elaboration or an archaism which fails to work. A few stories fail to portray the characters with even a minimum ofcredibility; any attempt to depict the heroes and heroines of romances as human beings...