{"id":446,"date":"2015-02-28T14:27:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-28T14:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chimneyrabbit.com\/?p=446"},"modified":"2015-06-14T15:14:25","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T15:14:25","slug":"origin-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/?p=446","title":{"rendered":"Origin story"},"content":{"rendered":"

I could read and write before I went to school – my Mum taught me using comics, I seem to recall, and I remember writing my name in big bold capitals – JOHN – before my aunt, who was a teacher, told my mother off for not teaching me to write lower case letters first.<\/p>\n

So when I went to school, I had a slight advantage, and was always treated as an advanced reader. I burned through school reading books faster than they could assign them to me, so my teachers used to have to dig out\u00a0other<\/em> books for me to read. When I was around seven years old, my teacher gave me a book that contained\u00a0tales from mythology – Thor and his hammer from Norse mythology, Finn MacCoull from Celtic legend, and Beowulf from the Anglo-Saxons. How I loved those stories! The memory of that book stuck with me for decades, although of course I couldn’t remember what it was called, or who it was by.<\/p>\n

It’s been nearly 40 years since I read that book, but even now I\u00a0have\u00a0a fascination for myths, legends, fantasy, and history. I studied Classics at university because I was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology. Of the six books I’ve written, five have been fantasy, and one history. This book is my origin story – this is the bat bursting through young Bruce Wayne’s window; this is my radioactive spider-bite.<\/p>\n

So of course it was extremely annoying that I couldn’t remember what the book was called. I tried searching on the Internet, but I didn’t have much to go on – it was a school reading book available in the early 1970s, and it had Beowulf, Finn and Thor in it.<\/p>\n

Then I got lucky, and found a mention on a web page of a book that had similar myths – it was called\u00a0They Were Brave and Bold<\/em>. It didn’t sound\u00a0quite<\/em> right – it seemed very American, from an American publisher, and I recall the stories being very European – but I ordered a second-hand copy from Abebooks, just in case.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the right book. It didn’t have Beowulf, Finn, or Thor. All the stories were from North America. Further research suggested that this was a cut-down paperback version of a previously-published, much larger hardback. But I was pretty sure the book I’d read hadn’t been a big thick book at all.<\/p>\n

More trawling through the listings at Abebooks brought another<\/em> edition to light. Another paperback, but with a different selection of stories – and it was issued by a\u00a0British<\/em> publisher. James Nisbet published the Janet and John series of early reading books, so they definitely had a connection with British schools. This was looking promising!<\/p>\n

I ordered a copy. It turned up:<\/p>\n

\"Brave<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s called\u00a0Brave and Bold<\/em> (note the omission of “They Were” from the title) and the authors (although I presume in this case, editors would be the more appropriate term) are listed as Miriam Blanton Huber, Frank Seely Salisbury, and Charlotte Huber (the same editors\u00a0as the other, American, editions).<\/p>\n

I pulled the book carefully from its envelope and checked the tablet of contents:<\/p>\n

\"Brave<\/a><\/p>\n

Thor! Finn! Beowulf! There was just one more thing I needed to check. I remembered that the Thor story involved the theft of Thor’s wife’s hair, and its replacement by the dwarfs with a golden wig… was that in there? If that was included, there could be no doubt.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0turned to page 87 and started reading. Yes! There it was:<\/p>\n

“[Loki] was determined to steal the golden hair. As noiselessly as he could, and more like a thief than a god, he crept into the palace, cut off the golden locks, and carried them away.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I read through the rest of the book. The story of Finn disguising himself as his own baby and pretending to squeeze water out of a stone – that had stuck in my mind, too. Beowulf and the dragon – that was so familiar.<\/p>\n

\"Beowulf<\/a><\/p>\n

I’d finally found it.<\/p>\n

Strangely, I had no recollection of the Sinbad story, or\u00a0The White Cat<\/em> – although my Mum had a beautiful volume of The Arabian Nights with fantastic glossy colour plates in it that I read over and over when I was young, so that may have pushed out the earlier memories of Sinbad.\u00a0The White Cat<\/em> is a delightful fairy tale that\u00a0is apparently related to the Brothers Grimm’s\u00a0Puddocky<\/em> and also to\u00a0The Frog Princess<\/em>, but perhaps 44-year-old John appreciates it more than 7-year-old John did.<\/p>\n

The illustrations – by Florence and Margaret Hoopes – are beautiful. From the frost-giants on the cover to Grendel on the back, through all the full-colour pictures that accompany each story, each picture fits perfectly. The Beowulf story in particular has pictures full of dynamism and energy.<\/p>\n

I’m so glad that I’ve found this book at last. Not just for the nostalgia, but\u00a0for the influence it had on me as a young reader. I must have read hundreds of books in those very early years, but this is the only one that’s stuck with me – and now I have my own copy.<\/p>\n

\"Brave<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I could read and write before I went to school – my Mum taught me using comics, I seem to recall, and I remember writing my name in big bold capitals – JOHN – before my aunt, who was a teacher, told my mother off for not teaching me to write lower case letters first…. Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Beowulf-and-the-dragon.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p37h7H-7c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":519,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnkfulton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}