A Green Man Review

It was a dark and stormy night. More precisely, it was a dark and stormy Wednesday night and I’d escaped to the weekly Chix with Stix gathering in the room behind the Library. Most of the time it’s the domain of the Several Annies who spend a year and a day here, assisting our Librarian, Iain Nicholas Mackenzie, and our Archivist, Liath ó Laighin, when she isn’t off on one of her voyages. On Wednesday nights, however, it welcomes anyone who wants to come and knit.

On this particular night one of the newer Annies, the one with the blue hair extensions, couldn’t seem to sit to her knitting. Finally she threw down her needles and got up to pace. (Well, she tried to pace. It’s hard to pace when you’re in stocking feet and you know there’s an invisible hedgehog around.)

‘Will you please sit down, Young Annie!’ snapped Iain Nicholas. ‘You’re making me drop stitches!’

‘Let her be, Iain,’ said Liath softly from her stool to the left of the hearth. ‘She’s reminding me of another night like this, long ago.’

Everyone’s heads swiveled to look at Liath. She seldom speaks at these gatherings, just knits away on those impossibly tiny needles, but when she does speak her stories are always worth listening to.

‘Yes, indeed,’ she said, as if to herself. We all strained to hear her, even the brownies stringing crystal beads on silk for her in the far corner. ‘It was a dark and stormy night like this one. The Building was much younger then, and even more on my side of the Border than on yours, if you get my drift.’ Indeed, no one who has ever dared look into Liath’s eyes can ever forget she is one of the Fey.

‘I had only recently taken up the position of Archivist here. The Librarian, Rónán Mac Airt, was by way of being a cousin of mine on my mother’s side. I had just returned from a voyage to Alexandria to visit the Great Library there, and I brought back with me three apprentices. ‘Interns’ you call yourselves now, but back then any trade worth having was learned through apprenticeships. At any rate, Annipe, Ana and Hannah all agreed to come for a year and a day to work with me and Rónán and learn what they could about libraries, and about our Library.’

Liath paused to check the tension on her work. ‘That cousin of mine wasn’t at all pleased that I brought them back, you know. He didn’t think he needed the help, for one thing. As if a few hundred thousand scrolls were a mere trifle for one man, human or Fey. For another, he wasn’t fond of humans. They were fewer in the Building then, and he avoided them as much as he could. And Annipe, Ana and Hannah were young, young in a way he’d never been or never could be. They laughed, you see, and they scattered hairpins all over the place, and some evenings they stayed too late listening to the Neverending Session and were hard to awaken the next day.’

The Annie with the extensions said, ‘But the Great Library of Alexandria has been destroyed for nearly two thousand years.’

‘And your point is?’ Iain Nicholas said frostily. She subsided back to the hearthrug where she’d been sitting since Liath began her tale.

‘Shortly after I brought Annipe, Ana and Hannah here, I was summoned on business by the King and Queen. When I returned a month or so later, I was shocked by the changes. No more laughter. No more scattered hairpins. No more time to listen to music. Rónán was working those three to death.’ She sighed angrily.

‘Every day, another impossible task. ”Catalogue all the hieroglyphic documents in alphabetical order.” ”Dust down the Akkadian tablets with a damp rag.” Such foolishness! And he’d taken away their individual identities, too, or tried to. He pretended he couldn’t tell them apart — even though Ana was a blonde Greek, Annipe a Nubian and Hannah a raven-haired Alexandrian Jew with the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen on a mortal — or pronounce any of their names. Just called them all ”Annie”. I was horrified. I also knew that if I said anything right away the situation would only get worse. I needed a plan.

‘Two evenings after my return, the girls furtively entered the Pub. We didn’t call it a pub back then, of course, but it was located where the Green Man Pub is now. At any rate, they knew they’d find me there, listening to the Session’s panpipes. I beckoned them to a table in the corner. When they joined me they all started talking at once. I signaled for some honey beer and let them rave.

‘When they wore down, two rounds later, I told them what we were going to do.’

Liath paused to do something complicated with the needles. Before she had finished, the brass carriage clock on the left of the mantle chimed. She looked up.

‘Sweet Mab, is it that late? I’m sorry, I’ll have to go. Did I not mention, Iain Nicholas, that I would be leaving early? A summons to Court.’ She gracefully swept her knitting into another of her tiny bags (and how it all fit in I have no idea) and was gone.

Late on Friday Maggie Pye, the resident corvid, did something odd — she brought a shiny bauble to the Library instead of appropriating one. Iain Nicholas accepted it from her calmly, turned it thrice widdershins and said, ‘Ah, a message from Liath. She has been detained on the Queen’s business, and will return when she can.’

To be continued. . . .

I had an exemplary kedgeree for my breakfast this morning along with a lovely lapsang souchong tea. Now if you’re reading this in the States, you might be puzzled as to what I ate. And when you hear what it is, you might well say that kedgeree doesn’t sound like a breakfast dish ‘tall!

Kedgeree, as prepared by Mrs. Ware and her kitchen staff here at Kinrowan, is a dish comprised of curried rice, smoked salmon and chopped eggs with a splash of cream as well.  On a cold, blustery morning such as we’re having here in the middle of November, since I promised Gus that I’d be part of the crew cleaning up the nearby grounds, it is bloody fine comfort food.

It’s considered a traditional British breakfast dish but its roots are in East Indian, cooking having started its life as khichari, a simple dish of rice and lentils. Due to the British Raj and the colonization of the sub-continent the, dish was adapted and turned into something more suited to those Brits serving in India, and it returned to Britain with them during the Victorian era.

Notice that I said we make it here using smoked salmon, specifically applewood smoked salmon. The salmon comes from the river that runs through our Estate and it works just fine. I Should note that our Kitchen doesn’t use sultanas, though some cooks do. Ours is also quite a bit more spicy than the somewhat milder version most Brits prefer.

She was tall for her age, and lean, a great tree-climber and a magnificent storyteller — Patricia McKillip’s Winter Rose

Here in this quite remote Scottish Estate where the nearest town’s a good thirty-five miles away, the group of less than thirty souls here year round forms a community that’s at its most cohesive when the weather turns decidedly cold and oftimes unfavourable to travel. This ‘hunkering down’ is a gradual process that starts in early Autumn and doesn’t really end ’til after lamb season in April as it’s hard to be a good host when you’re covered with blood, shit and other stuff that’s unpleasant in general.

Pumpkins are versatile food here, so you can help us harvest them now that our first light frost has passed; likewise apples and potatoes need harvesting and proper processing for the uses they’ll be put to. Gus, our Head Gardener, uses for staff anyone physically healthy and able to be properly picky at what they’ll be doing.

However there’s the of some creatures to deal with. We’ve a trio of Folkmanis Puppets of an Autumnal Nature such as a Worm in an Apple.Intriguing? if so, go read the review here.

All work and no play makes Gutmansdottir an unhappy girl indeed, so there’re contadances pretty much weekly here. Tonight a visiting band, The Black Eyed Susans, are playing. But first, let’s see what’s in this edition

Wandering around the Archives, I chanced upon the Patricia McKillip reviews and a story. There are two novels by her, one called Winter Rose and one called Solstice Wood, the latter are supposedly a sequel to the first. How the latter is a sequel to the first is something that escaped me though I suppose there is now even she admits that you can read the sequel without having read the first one which begs the question, is it really a sequel?

Here are those  reviews along with an interview with her and a short story collection she did.

Reviewing Winter Rose, Robert said, ‘The story is told in McKillip’s characteristically elliptical style, kicked up an order of magnitude. Sometimes, in fact, it is almost too poetic, the narrative turning crystalline then shattering under the weight of visions, images, things left unsaid as Rois and Corbet are drawn into another world, or come and go, perhaps, at will or maybe at the behest of a mysterious woman of immense power who seems to have no fixed identity but who is, at the same time, all that is coldest and most pitiless of winter.’

He also looks at that might be sequel Solstice Wood: ‘McKillip has always been a writer whose books can themselves be called “magical,” and it’s even more interesting to realize that she seldom uses magic as a thing of incantations and dire workings, or as anything special in itself. It just is, a context rather than an event, and perhaps that’s the way it should be.’

I feel that many writers are best when running short fiction and she’s no exception to that, so I was pleased Richard reviewed McKillip’s final story collection: ‘With Dreams of Distant Shores, Patricia A. McKillip delivers something that is not quite your typical short story collection. While the point of entry is a series of shorter pieces, the collection builds to and is anchored by the lengthy novella “Something Rich and Strange”, with an essay on writing high fantasy orthogonal to the usual tropes. The book then ends with appreciation of McKillip’s work (and the stories in the collection) by Peter S. Beagle, an elegant coda to a warm, thought-provoking collection.’

Deborah J. conducted an interview with Patricia A. McKillip for us in 2008, in which she generously discussed the purpose of fairytales, her writing process, and much more.

Gary here with music. In new reviews, Deborah tells us about a new single by an old friend, “Ol’ Coquille” by Lauren Murphy, inspired by her Louisiana hometown. ‘The town of Madisonville itself provides some of the soundtrack: rain, the local birdsong, traffic on the bridge, church bells. Lauren’s vocals are as deep and smoky as they’ve ever been; time and the exigencies of life these past years have brought layers and undertones to an already astonishing set of pipes.’

I review Minnesota, the latest from Norwegian guitarist and composer Trond Kallevåg. ‘This time out, Trond draws inspiration from an artist residency he spent on the remote northern Norwegian island of Træna, weaving his instrumental story songs from the emigration stories and old photos he found there into his signature “Nordic Americana” tapestry lovingly shaped from traditional music with elements of jazz and ambient folk.’

I got pretty excited about Roy Brooks’s The Free Slave, a vinyl reissue of a live album by the New York based, Detroit raised drummer. ‘Masterpiece is in no way an overstatement regarding this album. It’s a master class in hard bop by some of the best musicians of their generation, working to bring jazz back to the people and communities where it came from, at quality venues like this one in Baltimore.’

I’m really enjoying another jazz reissue, Kenny Barron’s Sunset To Dawn. ‘The program combines solid acoustic jazz with lots of funky electronic grooves that testify to just how interesting the jazz scene was in the 1970s. It opens on some of the latter, the deliciously funky “Sunset” with Barron’s Fender Rhodes set to max reverb on a long ostinato intro, that eventually opens out into a jaw dropping solo of chorus after chorus, each more intense than the last.’

‘Cindy Walker is one of the most underappreciated American country music songwriters among the listening public, but she’s a legend among her fellow musicians of several generations,” as I note in my review of a various artists’ compilation called It’s All Her Fault: A Tribute To Cindy Walker. ‘When Americana singer songwriter Grey DeLisle — who counts Walker as among her chief influences — learned that Walker’s childhood home in Mexia, Texas, had fallen into disrepair, she gathered some friends to record some of Cindy’s hits.’

From the Archives this Halloween edition, I covered The Torture Never Stops, a DVD release of a Frank Zappa band concert filmed live at the Palladium in New York on Halloween in 1981. ‘The program includes 24 songs and lasts about two hours, starting with “Black Napkins” and ending with an encore performance of “The Illinois Enema Bandit.” In between, he challenges pretty much every aspect of Western culture, music, religion, sexual mores and more with songs that include “Montana” (about a dental floss ranch), “Harder Than Your Husband,” “Broken Hearts Are For Assholes,” “The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing,” “Heavenly Bank Account” and “Suicide Chump”.

I reviewed an album of “dark polar ambient” music by Ugansie, the performance name of Russian musician Pavel Malyshkin. ‘If you like drone or ambient or dark experimental music, Border of Worlds is for you. If you just want something spooky to play in your haunted house at Halloween, ditto.’

Not exactly “music” but Faith reviewed a record by Minneapolis storyteller Steven Posch, Radio Paganistan: Folktales of the Urban Witches. ‘ “The Bride of the Forest” sounds much more European, a tale of a bad bargain that turns out to everyone’s satisfaction after all. To me, “If the People Keep Samhain, Samhain Will Keep the People” sounds like a First Nation’s tale set in Europe. “Witch’s Work is Turning the Wheel” is a short poem about the structure of the universe, where “the only constant is constant change.” As for the witch, she “is the agent of change,” keeping the whole thing wobbling along.’

Judith rhapsodizes about Robin Laing’s The Water Of Life, which includes the song “The Ghost Wi’ the Squeaky Wheel.” ‘Here is a fine tune for Halloween about the ghost of Old Bob Laing. Bob was doomed to push around a barrel with a sqeaky wheel for eternity. Lucky he met up with Willie, who poured some good malt out over the wheel, and the screeching stopped.’

Michael, our resident authority on all things Steeleye Span, gave a positive review of Folk Rock Pioneers In Concert, taken from a 2004 world tour. ‘Rick Kemp’s bass work is alternately tasteful and funky when required, and he also provides lead vocals on a few songs including his own “Samhain” – which also happens to show off Liam Genockey’s rock drumming credentials!

Michael also sings the praises of a trio of albums by one of his musical idols, Heather Alexander: Wanderlust, Midsummer, and Life’s Flame, which contains this particular song: ‘ “Samhain” tears away the veils between one world and the next on the most mystical day of the year, when ghosts and things best left unspoken come closest to the world of the living. Spectral, haunting, and chilling in turn, it’s another example of Heather’s amazing versatility.’

I’ve got some music for you that I think befits the Autumn season. It’s Michele Walther and Irina Behrendt playing Aaron Copland’s ‘Hoe Down’  from his Rodeo album. I sourced it off a Smithsonian music archive which has no details where or when it was recorded which surprised me given how good they usually are at such things.

Oh and Gary did a review of Howard Pollack’s Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man which you can read here.

I found this charming letter in a bundle of archival material that we were cataloging for the Library this past week. L.L. Littlesworth, Esq., was the Estate Librarian for most of the late Victorian era.

From the letters of L.L. Littlesworth, Esq.

East Wing Library Belfry Tower,
Kinrowan Estate,
August 11th, 1865

Dear Owyn,

This afternoon, my good friend Charles Dodgson and his charming companion Alice came for tea. The Cheshire Cat I see often, as he regularly makes his rounds from the conservatory to the kitchens to the library here at the estates. But the library belfry, where I keep my personal effects and from where I write this account, is blessedly Cheshire-free, most days. And it is peaceful — no bells here since who-knows-when. These estates have been here what seems like forever, though every few generations someone feels compelled to expand upon what lay here before him. The entire library wing of this rambling place looks positively Medieval, though I suppose such is the fashion again, what with the Gothic modes and the emergence of the New Romanticism.

So — no bells in this belfry, just books, books, books. And scrolls and codices, more than one illuminated manuscript. Several inscribed stone tablets lean in corners which come and go as stealthily as the Cheshire Cat. Never before I came to work here did I see a place with so many corners, nor such a propensity for those corners to disappear when the fancy took them. Rumor has it some long-ago librarian here used the library’s extensive collected works on the Grey Arts to imbue the walls with a sort of ethereal elasticity. It enables us to continually acquire as many new books as we need, you see, without ever having to let any go.

The estate managed by the School of the Imagination is an easy walk from here; quite close, though closest on third Mondays and full moons. The other side of Oberon’s wood is sometimes quite close indeed, depending upon the circumstances of the hour and His Fey Majesty’s pleasure.

When Dodgson and his charge arrived I took them straightaway to the library for tea. Miss Alice is most enamored of the belfry. ‘Why, it’s rather like a rabbit hole, is it not, Mr. Littlesworth?’ she said. ‘Only it goes up, up, up rather than down, down, down; and it is lined with books rather than roots.’

Upon which my friend Dodgson mumbled, in an off-hand way, one of his famous doublets — ‘Books — boots — roots.’ He’s always thinking, is my friend Dodgson. His mind never rests. And Miss Alice! So fetching a child, and so intriguing. Once Dodgson created her, he could no sooner undo his work than any of us can undo any auto-manifesting fabrication, or flight of fancy made real.

For tea, Cook had laid out quite a feast for our guests (she spends no such labors on simple me!) — hardboiled eggs sprinkled with Paprika from the Indies; lovely slices of delicate fish which virtually melted on the palate; cakes a variety of shapes, and cordials a dozen colors. Dodgson remarked most favorably upon the fare, but I noticed Miss Alice refrained from the repast. When I directed her to the fish, she said — most politely, for she is an extremely well-behaved child — ‘Thank you ever so much, Mr. Littlesworth, but once one has seen a fish in all his livery, it is not quite the same to see him spread wide upon a platter, and seems not quite the thing to eat him.’ When I offered her the plate of eggs instead, she remarked, ‘Oh Mr. Littlesworth! I couldn’t  . .not since it was explained to me by a most insistent mother pigeon that only serpents eat eggs. I think I look not the least like a serpent, do you?’ Upon which I hastily reassured her in the negative. Dodgson was of no assistance. He merely smiled — indulgent of Miss Alice or myself I wouldn’t presume to guess.

In desperation, I piled the girl’s empty plate with cakes of every variety, thinking I’d never met a child who would say no to cakes at high tea. But she demurred, fixing me in a dolorous gaze with those enormous eyes of hers. ‘Mr. Littlesworth,’ said she — ‘A girl who grows all out of proportion for the simple act of eating a cake once might be pitied. She might be praised if she does it again to remove herself from a fix. But a girl who makes a habit of eating cakes, randomly and with no thought to the consequences to her size and shape. …’ She shook her pale head with finality. Our Cook is forever speaking of putting herself on a reducing diet, but I had quite the strong feeling that was not what Miss Alice meant at all.

After tea, I asked which portion of the estate my guests would most like to see. ‘Just please, Mr. Littlesworth, not the Conservatory,’ said Alice. ‘The Cheshire Cat has told me often what a lovely place the Conservatory is — how delightful its flora, how accommodating its fauna. He has recommended most strongly that I visit it while here. But I have decided not everything the Cheshire Cat says is true, strictly speaking.’

At which Dodgson laughed. ‘Are we speaking strictly?’ he said. ‘I make a habit of never speaking strictly, if it can be at all avoided.’

And so my guests decided they would explore the library wing itself, which if I do say so has quite a bit to recommend it. It has the shifting corners, of course, and the telescoping stairwell, which expands or contracts according to the seasons and to its willingness to allow access to a particular book. The library has been most accommodating during my tenure as its keeper. We have a benign relationship, this strange old wing and I. I like to think we co-operate to provide excellent archiving and retrieval services for the many, many volumes which come our way from around the globe and around the clock, as it were. I’m not always sure all of our volumes exist in the same temporal frame-work, though they may share the same shelves of magicked planks.

The remainder of our afternoon passed pleasantly. Time went quickly, as it does when spent in good company. The Cheshire Cat made an extended appearance late in the day, his grin materializing first and fading last, beaming down from its position atop the shelves on the upper landing of the belfry. Miss Alice pointedly ignored his presence, and asked me to explain my new toy, a tintype camera. I deferred to the Good Doctor’s superior knowledge, and he rambled for the remainder of the afternoon, blissfully unaware, I believe, that his young companion was engaged mainly in snubbing the looming feline and his enormous smile. I knew already most of that which Dodgson explained, but his enthusiasm was charming. He is a lovely man when his interests are engaged. His stammer virtually disappears, and he is then the most eloquent of scholars, and the very best of company.

Now the light is fading from my tower. Even that light which reaches here, far over the tops of trees fringing Oberon’s wood. I see the Old Mill Pond from my window. If I look very hard, I can make out pale wisps of smoke rising from the chimneys of the School of the Imagination. I picture my friends there, Dodgson perhaps writing in his journal as I do mine. His Alice — that strange, wonderful creature which is so like an actual human child and yet so unlike — perhaps she sleeps. In this odd twilight which exists between day and night, anything is possible. I think a creature so strange and lovely as Alice might outlive even her creator Dodgson and myself. Will she, I wonder, still be teased by the Cheshire Cat long after these papers crumble to dust; long after some future generation of Estate librarians decide this old belfry is no longer useful, or that some of these books must go?

I slide back onto the shelf by my desk this slim volume Dodgson gave me upon his leave-taking. I run a finger along the title inked onto the spine — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Part of me thinks she will outlast us all, this girl-child entity made real by the power of words alone. For that and for her, I love these books around me all the more.

Her name was Bronwyn ap Tewdwr and she was our guest judge for the annual pudding contest. ‘A pudding contest?’ you ask. And I say, ‘Why not?’ Real pudding, like real ale, is a long way from the packaged puddings that litter grocery stores. And watching a group of talented folk making tasty food is something I always appreciate!

The contest, which covers both sweet and savoury puddings, is held annually in the Fall as a break from the getting-ready-for-Winter tasks all of us are doing. So Mrs. Ware and her Kitchen staff start planning for this by finding interesting ingredients and picking the judge from among the culinarily inclined people that she knows. That person gets a week here gratis and a generous stipend as well.

(You cannot pitch yourself as a judge, as that gets you disqualified. And Mrs. Ware is quite above being bribed even if she has a weakness for Turkish Delight ever since she was a wee girl and read the Narnia books for the first time.)

Now I’ll admit that my only pudding of interest is a dark chocolate one made with bittersweet chocolate. But then I like a dark chocolate bread pudding as well. Maybe even better. The only thing I’ve ever tasted better than that pudding was a dark chocolate bread pudding infused with Madagascar vanilla and a hint of cardamom. Ymmm!

We Swedes have a long tradition of making puddings from scratch. My momor, my maternal grandmother, every Autumn made an apple and almond pudding using a tart apple variety with just vanilla and cinnamon for spicing. Served with warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it was quite wonderful.

Bronwyn decided that though she officially is the arbiter for this contest, anyone interested should have a say. The actual contest took place in what’s called the canning and drying kitchen, as it’s set up exclusively for that purpose. It’s in a building that’s strictly two-season use only as we drain the water before the first real freeze takes place. It’s got two Viking gas stoves, each with eight burners, two sinks for water and cleaning up, and lots of work space.

We started in late morning with sets of four pudding makers, each given ample time to create their pudding from scratch. That group created a pudding using our pear cider; a blackberry and graham cracker pudding, as those bushes were still bearing; a breakfast pudding with bacon, cheddar cheese and mushrooms; and what the Yanks call an Indian pudding which is made with cornmeal and molasses.

Before we wrapped it up many hours later, we’d seen made and had sampled puddings such as black pudding and haggis pudding, groaty pudding (soaked groats, beef, leeks, onion and beef stock), kugel, a Yorkshire pudding, steak and kidney pudding, and several spotted dick and a suet and fruit based concoction. There was even a stellar Christmas pudding that Mrs. Ware said she’d be making for our Christmas eventide meal.

There was a three-way tie for best pudding between the breakfast pudding, the pudding using pear cider and the kugel, which was the work of Rebekah, a Several Annie, one of Iain’s Library Apprentices, from Israel.

All in all everyone was happy with both the food and the comfortable companionship in a contest no one took too seriously. Most of us went for a long walk afterwards to work off the feeling of needing a good nap this engendered.