a gallimaufry

The Eildon Tree, by William Croft Dickinson

Having enjoyed Borrobil so much I splashed out and bought the sequel, The Eildon Tree. This was published in 1947 and unlike Borrobil it was never re-issued. It has a different illustrator too: James S. Richardson, who provides mediaeval-influenced line drawings, in place of John Morton-Sale.

The Eildon Tree begins with Donald and Jean standing beside the Eildon Stone which, they are assured by Andrew the ancient shepherd, stands by the spot where the Eildon Tree once grew. Ballad-lovers will know that it was by the Eildon Tree that Thomas the Rhymer first laid eyes upon the Fairy Queen riding by in ‘grass-green silk’. Andrew tells a version of the story of Thomas the Rhymer, who travels to Elf-land with the Queen and is given the gift of ‘a tongue that could never lie’ (hardly a useful gift, I’ve always thought) which here means that he can foretell the future. Thomas is then brought back to the ‘real’ world, a turbulent mediaeval Scotland which has been divided into three under three kings. However, Thomas remains a servant of the Fairy Queen and is eventually summoned back to Elf-land. Andrew concludes his tale by adding that at times of great need Thomas will return to Scotland.

(Meredith Morris Williams, ‘The Fairy Queen and Thomas the Rhymer’, illustration for Elizabeth Grierson (1910), The Scottish Fairy Book. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company)

No sooner has Andrew left them than Thomas the Rhymer arrives and the children find they are now sitting by the Eildon Tree, the stone having vanished. Thomas the Rhymer tells them some prophecies, one of which they are part of, and gives each of them a vision. Donald’s vision is of a black knight defending a besieged castle; Jean sees a ship leaving an island. These visions and prophecies are crucial to what follows, as the children find themselves in the Middle Ages during a power struggle between Gabran the Good and Maldred the Malcontent, a usurper. They are taken to the castle of Dunverran, captured, escape through secret passages and help to restore Gabran as the sole and rightful king. (In an afterword, Croft Dickinson explains that this part of the plot is inspired by events in Scottish history from the end of the thirteenth century, when the heir to the Scottish throne died aged eight and a number of men stepped forward to claim it.)

When The Eildon Tree was written, children’s time-slip novels were still quite unusual. Its predecessors are Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill, E. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle and Alison Uttley’s A Traveller in Time, but it is quite different from them: closer really to the Narnia books and The Lord of the Rings. Their portal to the past is not a house or an object but a person, Thomas the Rhymer: Thomas’s uncertain status as a ‘real’ person signals that the past the children will enter may not be the ‘real’ past, informed though it is by Croft Dickinson’s knowledge of mediaeval history. This is also unusual, since most authors of time-slip novels take pains to situate their stories in an accurately recreated past. Perhaps Croft Dickinson is making a subtle point about the impossibility of doing that.

The most absorbing parts of the novel, I found, were those in which the children played an active part: escaping through the secret passages, hiding in the heather and taking a boat down the river at night. The climax of the book is the siege of Dunverran which is probably more thrilling for children to read than me. As in Borrobil Jean is a slightly more compelling character than Donald although, older now, she has lost the charming habit of inventing words as she did in the earlier book. For much of The Eildon Tree they are under the protection of two knights, Hugh of the Hill and Gilbert of the Long Bow, both of whom are very brave but otherwise slightly bland; they speak in that slightly antiquated, ‘heroic’ way that the ‘high’ characters speak in the novels of Lewis and Tolkien.

They sat down beneath the green shelter of the trees. Everything seemed strangely still. No song of birds, no sound of scuttling small animals, no hum of insects came to them. No breath of wind rustled the leaves above. Of all of them, only Hugh seemed to be undisturbed and unaffected by the strangeness of it all. From time to time Gilbert looked cautiously about him, pretending to be merely curious; but Donald and Jean both knew that like them he was under the weight of suspense, that like them he was feeling that fro the surrounding stillness something unwelcome, something fearful might suddenly spring upon them and hold them powerless in its grip. Again Donald shuddered at the eeriness of it all. Jean began to draw closer to Hugh. And at that moment a long drawn-out cry broke the silence of the wood.

‘Four of you! Four of you!’

The Eildon Tree is for slightly older children than Borrobil. Not only are Donald and Jean a little older themselves, but there is some darkness here and the tone is less light-hearted and more adventurous. Magic has been replaced by mysticism. I have now discovered that there is a third novel in the series, The Flag of the Isles, which draws on the Battle of Culloden. Perhaps, if it’s not too wildly rare and expensive, I might read it...

Borrobil, by William Croft Dickinson

How frequently have we all wondered what a mash-up of Puck of Pook’s Hill with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, as written by C.S. Lewis, would be like! Good news, my friends, today I have discovered the answer, and it is Borrobil, written in 1947 by a distinguished professor of Scottish history. (This information I gleaned from Geraldine Harris’s excellent review at FantasyReads. She also notes the similarities of Borrobil to Brisingamen, though unlike her I still prefer the Garner novel, perhaps because I never read Borrobil as a child. It is amazing how much more powerful the impact of a book when read as a child.)

Why was the wood so strange and mysterious? There it stood, a dark ring of trees, on the top of the distant hill. It looked much like other woods. Yet there the children had never been. There they so much wanted to go.

[...] they began to wonder about the wood. Sometimes it seemed dark and aloof, forbidding, frightening; at other times it appeared lonely and friendless, as though it were longing for someone to visit it and to enter its shade. Soon, as they played in the meadows or round the haystacks, the children found themselves turning to look at it, almost as if it had called to them, whispering to them, “Come to me. Come to me.” And at night, especially, this call of the wood seemed to be even more urgent, more impelling. Then the children would gaze from their bedroom window at the dark spiky crown breaking the line of the sky until they felt drawn towards it, until they felt they must go and answer its call.

Thus begins Borrobil. Donald and Jean are on holiday, that perfect time for adventures in children’s literature. Drawn to and repelled by the wood, one night they feel compelled to go there in a memorable journey through the dark countryside. Among the trees they find nine standing stones on a low mound, with two fires burning on either side of what seems like an entrance. A little bit of dancing later, and they have inadvertently summoned Borrobil and been transported back into the past. Borrobil is a friendly guide, ‘the merriest, queerest little man’ they have ever seen; he explains that they passed between the fires at a significant moment, Beltane. At Beltane every year the White King of Summer challenges and defeats the Black King of Winter. The children are now in the ‘dead’ past, the domain of the Black King. When the White King defeats him, they will return to the ‘living’ present. But in the mean time, Borrobil will take them to a dragon fight. And thence on to other adventures, including capture by an evil wizard, a visit to a fairy knoll and a close escape from the Blue Men of the sea, as well as a fierce battle against marauding Men of the Long Ships.

The novel is principally a series of journeys ending in mortal combats, brightened with stories, songs and poems mainly related by the resourceful Borrobil. The light, humorous tone, the presence of the kindly yet powerful Borrobil, and Maroc’s second sight, which usually reveals the outcome of a battle before it begins, keep any darkness at bay. Even when Jean is captured by one of the Men of the Long Ships, Maroc immediately has a vision of her safe. This makes the book a charming and ‘safe’ read, suitable for even quite young children.

Donald and Jean’s rôle in the adventures is fairly passive; they are observers, tourists even in this fantastical world, protected by Borrobil (who is a sort of super-parent figure). Even so, when necessary they play their part. Twice they are required to give a gift and each time their offering – three biscuits, a lucky stone, the humble kinds of things that children might have in their pockets – is accepted as valuable and worthy. With quite some strength of character, they resist the lures of the fairies, so that Borrobil may borrow a pony from them. As two of the members of the army of five, they help to turn a battle in their friends’ favour. The adult characters all treat the children with great respect and courtesy, which is always pleasing to a child reader. The book seems to be telling us that children may not be able to swing mighty swords and defeat giants, but in their own way they can make an important contribution.

Croft Dickinson has definitely drawn on Scottish folklore for some at least of the elements in this story, such  as the Blue Men and the details of the fairy mound. Morris points out that he was knowledgeable about Iron Age archaeology and drew on it for the descriptions of Giric’s underground home and the tower fort of the Men of Orc. Alas, I know too little about the subject even to know how much of the main action is based in Pictish history or myth, and how much springs from the author’s own imagination. Certainly my superficial researches have yielded nothing about a hero named Maroc, a Princess Finella or a King Brude. However, some of the stories have a tinge of familiarity about them: I have heard the tale of King Eochaid and the white dog before, although not with those names. I’m curious to read more about this. Can anyone recommend anything?

Borrobil itself is currently out of print, but it was re-issued in 1964 as a Puffin with a lovely cover by Pauline Baynes and copies are not too expensive. I am not really surprised that it is no longer in print as that is the case for so many excellent children’s books, but I was surprised that neither William Croft Dickinson nor Borrobil merited a reference in the latest edition of the Oxford Guide to Children’s Literature. Given its place in the history of children’s books – Geraldine Morris calls it ‘the missing link’ between Lewis and Garner – this is a sad omission. Don’t let it prevent you seeking it out.