Cluracan's Tale

I am rereading Neil Gaiman's "Cluracan's Tale," looking for Andersonian parallels and as usual finding more of them than I had expected.

(i) Titania appears and converses both in "Cluracan's Tale" and in Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest.

(ii) Cluracan addresses the question of whether fairies have souls which comes up in Anderson's fantasies.

(iii) He travels between realms/universes like several Andersonian characters.

(iv) He tells his tale in the Inn of the Worlds' End, Gaiman's equivalent of Anderson's Old Phoenix.

(v) Cluracan's mission from Titania is to prevent the Psychopomp of the plains from becoming the physical ruler not only of Aurelia but also of all the cities of the plains. Carl Farness of the Time Patrol tells us that Wodan is the Psychopomp and The Shield Of Time shows us that it is better if church and state are separate.

(vi) The Psychopomp imprisons the Cluracan with cold iron which harms Faerie as we have read in The Broken Sword.

(The white-skinned guy addressing the Cluracan later got his own story written by Mike Carey.)

Wind, World's Edge And Time

"Dagobert stayed unrestful, though; folk said that was the blood of his father in him, and that he heard the wind at the edge of the world forever calling." (Time Patrol, pp. 382-383)
-copied from here.

"'I hear hoofbeats,' [Gora] said low. 'I hear hoofs galloping out on the edge of the world. It is Time riding forth, and snow falls from his horse's mane and lightning crashes from its hoofs, and when Time has ridden by like a wind in the night, there are only withered leaves left blowing in the gale of his passage. He rides nearer, I hear worlds sunder before him -'"
-Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter XVII, p. 116.

"Now and then on that planet, Jong Errifrans thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn...
"'Some trick of the wind, off in the cliffs yonder,' Mons Rainart suggested."
-Poul Anderson, "The Horn of Time the Hunter" IN Anderson, The Horn Of Time (New York, 1968), pp. 11-26 AT p. 11.

"...the horn of a hunter..." (p. 26)

Once at night, Hadding sees the light elves bounding to the horizon and hears their horn (here).

Dagobert is the son of a time traveler who is believed to be Wodan.
Gora is the daughter of the troll king.
Jong is a space traveler.
Hadding is an incarnation of the god, Njord.

A wind calls from the edge of the world.
Time rides like a wind at the edge of the world.
Time the hunter blows a distant horn - or it is a trick of the wind.
The elves' horn is heard from the horizon.

A knight of ghosts and shadows summons from beyond the world's end. (See here.)

Wind and Time are almost personified. Distance joins them in these evocative passages.

Battle At Sea

Nicholas van Rijn of the Polesotechnic League, (also here) Dominic Flandry of the Terran Empire, Manse Everard of the Time Patrol and Skafloc Half-Elven fight battles at sea.

In Skafloc's battle:

war-horns blow;
sails and masts are lowered;
ships row, linked by ropes;
arrows fly;
three hit Skafloc's armor;
elves fall;
spears, darts and stones are thrown;
Skafloc's shaft pins a hand to a mast;
a rock hits his helmet;
Imric's ship hits Illrede's;
warriors smite with swords and axes;
Skafloc leans his shield against the enemies' and strikes with his sword;
beside him, Firespear wields a pike and Angor of Pictland uses a long axe;
each fallen warrior is instantly replaced;
Skafloc kills a troll;
Firespear kills the replacement;
Skafloc leaps across and kills the troll to the left;
Angor beheads the troll to the right;
elves swarm after Skafloc and stand back to back;
Skafloc stands ahead of the elves because his iron mail would harm them;
they cover his back, clear the bows of trolls, then move aft, driving the trolls back;
Skafloc challenges Valgard;
elves continue to board while their archers continue to shoot;
Skafloc's sword opposes Valgard's axe;
both fall wounded and roll under the benches;
Grum Troll-Earl leads a charge;
Angor severs Grum's right arm;
Grum catches his stone club with his left hand, breaks Angor's neck, then crawls to shelter to carve healing runes on his wound;
Skafloc and Valgard resume their fight;
Skafloc's sword breaks on Valgard's axe;
Firespear and other elves attack Valgard;
the elves hold the troll flagship;
Valgard dives overboard;
he is weighed down by his byrnie but grabs a floating mast;
ships have been wrecked by ramming and collisions;
Valgard and others steer the mast towards their ships;
Imric oversees his fleet as a sea-mew;
Illrede will be doing likewise, therefore is not to be found on his flagship;
the elves scuttle the troll ship and return to Imric's;
Imric reports that the elves are outnumbered two to one and that some trolls are landing unopposed;
foe cut ropes and the fleets drift apart;
Imric's longship rows to support two elven ships surrounded by three hireling craft and one troll dragon;
arrows fall on the elves but their quivers are nearly empty;
bat-winged Baikal demons attack with lances (like Diomedeans);
the elves spend their last arrows but the Baikal continue to swoop;
the longship lays alongside the goblin ship from which the arrows are coming;
Skafloc leaps across;
he bisects one goblin, gashes open another and beheads a third;
Firespear transfixes two with his pike while mortally kicking a third;
more elves board and the goblins retreat;
Skafloc throws heavy arrow chests to the longship;
elven archers slaughter the Baikul;
the other two elf ships rally against the goblins, Oni and imps;
trolls board the longship;
Skafloc, running forward, slips on blood and falls as a spear meant for him kills Golic of Cornwall;
Skafloc, rising, is beset by trolls;
he shears a troll's face with his iron shield and rejoins the elves;
snow falls more thickly and the wind rises;
fighters fall to the lower deck but rise to fight on;
Skafloc throws his now battered and useless shield at one troll and kills another with his sword;
a troll protected from iron by leather seizes him from behind;
caught in a bear hug and rolling on the deck, Skafloc strangles the troll, then splits his skull on a mast;
he is the first elf or human to kill a troll barehanded;
his "'...deed is worthy of a Beowulf and will be unforgotten while the world stands...'" (p. 107);
the elves have won the sea battle but at great cost;
however, another fully crewed troll longship approaches and mounted trolls wait on the shore;
England is lost to the trolls;
the elf longship steered by Skafloc rams the troll dragon and smashes it on the skerry;
Skafloc and the elves not too badly wounded dive and swim ashore;
the mounted trolls attack and kill some but most escape;
an erne bears the sea-mew to earth;
they transform into Illrede and Imric;
trolls club and bind Imric;
Skafloc must "...reach Elfheugh and Freda ahead of the trolls." (p. 109)

Goblins And Other Trash

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), Chapter XIV.

"...the clamorous glaives..." (p. 100)

Knowing that a human being moves too slowly to join in the dangerous sword dance, Leea nevertheless mocks Freda, then suffers a wound while she is distracted by listening to Skafloc's reply: hubris and karma.

Sloth and wishful thinking prevented the elves/Terrans from preparing for the next troll/Merseian onslaught.

Skafloc says that the troll host includes "'...goblins and trash like that...'" (p. 102) but Imric replies that goblins "'...are good warriors when they have the weapons they need.'" (ibid.) These are races that can appear in any fantasy whereas a few other beings belong only to their creators -

Tolkien: hobbits, Orcs, Balrogs;
Lewis: marshwiggles.

Did Poul Anderson create any fantasy beings?

In sf, anyone can write Martians but should either invent a new version - Stapledon's and Lewis' are different from Wells' - or acknowledge if he is, e.g., writing a sequel to The War Of The Worlds. John Christopher acknowledged that he had unconsciously plagiarized Wells' Martian tripods.

The Twilight Of The Elves

(Image: an electrum coin.)

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977).

"Shields blinked along the wales..." (p. 95)

"...a jewelled dagger in an electrum sheath..." (p. 97)

Are the elves about to meet their "twilight" at the hands of the trolls? Meanwhile:

"The cool blue twilight loved of the elves seemed to drift like smoke through the hall..." (p. 97)

Freda cannot see the far wall and only glimpses "...the vine-carved rafters." (ibid.) There is another food list, shorter than usual:

meat
fowl
fish
fruits
spices
confections
ales
meads
wines

The elves feast before their new war with the trolls.

Darker Elves And Stranger Beings

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977).

Pictish elves are descended from elves, trolls, stolen women and "...still older folk..." (p. 96) If such interbreeding is possible, how do the various breeds remain distinct? Their mixed ancestry makes these Pictish elves shorter, heavier and darker "...than true elves..." (p. 95) So they are not true elves? Anderson seems here to be invoking the Eddaic distinction between light and dark elves although the latter are thought to be dwarves.

There are other strange beings:

elves who are master smiths with some dwarf blood, many descended from Odin or Wayland, and fighting, like Thor, with hammers;

"green-haired, white-skinned sea folk..." (p. 96), who maintained a fog for dampness on land (are these also a kind of elves?);

"...a few rustic half-gods whom the Romans had brought and afterwards abandoned..." (ibid.);

"...shy, flitting forest elves..." (ibid.)

Whereas Poul Anderson retells the stories of Hadding and Hrolf Kraki, he writes a sequel to the story of Tryfing and, uniquely among his Viking books, makes the Norse supernatural beings coexist with every other national pantheon. Thus, The Broken Sword is more akin to Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and American Gods than to Anderson's own War Of The Gods or Hrolf Kraki's Saga. Immigrants bring their gods with them but can then abandon them - so there can be both half-gods brought by the Romans and "American gods" brought from Eurasia.

Across The Universes

A novel by Poul Anderson is like a mountain-top launching pad that not only presents a panoramic view but also propels the reader across space, time or myth. The title of this post is borrowed from an Alan Moore collection: Across The Universe.

Anderson's narratives traverse multiple dimensions that sometimes converge:

a ship sails from Midgard to Jotunheim just as spaceships fly from Earth to everywhere else;

"Odin" is a god in heroic fantasy, a man in historical fiction and a time traveler in science fiction;

both Tir-nan-Og and Tau Zero involve time dilation;

the Roman Empire falls in historical fiction and the Terran Empire falls in a future history;

Merseians are like civilized trolls;

far future Artificial Intelligences are indistinguishable from gods to newly created human beings.

In case the Merseian-troll comparison is regarded as fanciful or inappropriate:

"...after his human guests had left, Ruethen and his staff had rolled out huge barrels of bitter ale and caroused like trolls for many hours..."
-Poul Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (New York, 2012), p. 193.

Tir-nan-Og

Poul Anderson, The Broken Sword (London, 1977), p. 95.

Wealth gleams in the streets of Tir-nan-Og and the caves of the leprechauns so the Sidhe cannot be bought with the promise of booty in Trollheim.

Tir-nan-Og is the Land of the Young and WB Yeats wrote:

"I HAVE drunk ale from the Country of the Young..."
-copied from here.

(I thought that he drank wine but the text says "ale.")

This boast sounds like the one in the Rig Veda:

"Have I not drunk Soma?" (see here)

Tir-nan-Og anticipated time dilation which Poul Anderson celebrated in Tau Zero. There seems to have been an ancient intuitive recognition that time is relative, not absolute.

Addendum: At secondary school in the Republic of Ireland, I read an Irish poem, see here. It begins "Ta Tir na nOg..." We translated "Is cat ag cru ne greine" as "The cat milking the sun."

Is cat ag crú na gréine.
-copied from here. (Scroll down.)

And see Cul an Ti.

Cities In Anderson And Gaiman

Because I had just returned from London, I posted links to earlier blog references to appearances of London in Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series and then added a link to posts on other cities in Anderson's works. Since doing this, I have extended the "Great Cities" list. There were several omissions. In Anderson's Technic History alone, great cities are to be found on the planets:

Earth
Merseia
Freehold
Avalon
Aeneas
Hermes
Serieve
Llynathawr

- and probably also on several others.

Back in Lancaster and watching office workers eating sandwiches in the square in front of the Town Hall, I was reminded of Neil Gaiman's Sandman story, "A Tale Of Two Cities" (see here), so I reread this story looking out for any Anderson parallels but temporarily forgetting that this is a "Cities" story and that I had just posted about cities in Anderson's works!

London

I have just returned from a five-day trip to London. For London in Poul Anderson's works, see:

London
Eddies In The Stream Of Time: Mainwethering (here)
Reality And Interpretation
In The Past
Eddies: Mainwethering II
Ys Old Town

Manson Everard of the Time Patrol visits London in "Time Patrol" and in "The Year Of The Ransom" but does London appear in any other works by Anderson?

For other cities in Anderson's works, see here.

While I was in London, I informed a new acquaintance of this blog so, Richard Anderson, if you are reading this post, welcome to Poul Anderson Appreciation.