![]() ![]() I bought this book 2nd hand after reading Tom Shippey somewhere explaining that Walsh had studied English at Oxford under Tolkien and that her children's story about Hengest conveyed fairly well Tolkien's interpretation of the story of Finn and Hengest - which was clearly a great tale of the North in the sixth and seventh centuries but which is known to us only partially from Beowulf and the 'Finnesburg fragment'. Stop if you are not interested in the North, in a world revolving around a code of honor, if the polarities of civilization and barbarity in conflict don't interest you, if conflicting loyalties, warfare, privation, the splendor and poignancy of human existence in the stark terms of a stark way of life in a stark setting are none of your concern. If tragic and grim do not hold you, let go. ![]() The signs of the impending tragedy are what keeps you reading so stop if you would rather move toward something happy. It is a story made out of broken pieces from the past, as Walsh says, one set in the withdrawal of civilization from the north in the early middle ages, and in the rising North-Atlantic culture of Beowulf and The Wanderer. Stop if you don't want to ponder tragedy. The first time I read it I had to get an international interlibrary loan from Australia. ![]() Another interesting thing about it is that I don't think it has ever been published in the USA. I saw an online video in which Tom Shippey once remarked that Tolkien though very highly of this remarkable book. ![]()
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