Setting: The Perilous Realm

"Don't you see yon bonny, bonny road

That lies across the ferny brae?

That is the road to fair Elf-land

Where thou and I this night maun gae"

Thomas the Rhymer, traditional.

Having introduced trolls and shape-shifted humans into the story it seemed to be no great leap to introduce elves. My elves are neither the whimsical creatures of Victorian nursery tales, nor are they the noble, sometimes comical and yet slightly distant beings of Tolkein's Middle Earth and subsequently of much of modern heroic fantasy. I think they are closest to Alan Garner's Lios Alfar, which are drawn from Scandinavian sources and are very distant from humans, who they despise because of pollution. But I too have looked back at the traditions and have drawn my own conclusions.

There are not a great many sources that have much to say about the elves of Anglo-Saxon myth. The poem Beowulf lumps them together with devils and monsters in one line, which does not speak well of the way in which they are seen. The same fear and repugnance can be seen in the semi-magical remedies of Bald's Leechcraft, which includes a spell against Elf-shot, which seems to represent any illness in humans or livestock which strikes out of nowhere rather than a specific malady. Elves were thus seen as being creatures who were pitiless, spreading illness and misfortune. Bertred voices his repugnance the most when they are confronted by Gamol in the hills south of Jeddart. His brothers share the same culture (more or less) but it seems that it is Bert who speaks for them, being very careful with his words, and being incredibly polite, using formal language and nice titles for the other-worldly being.

Gamol is a high elf, lordly and well versed in magic, able to see things from afar, aware of the plight of the brothers, but most importantly only distantly relating to it emotionally. The affairs of men are of little consequence, but his curiosity is piqued and he furthermore has been troubled by some riddles that he has collected - presumably in other moments where his ennui has been overcome by the lure of the interesting. He has no desire to harm the brothers, but nor is he interested in helping them. Indeed, although he offers to give them some help if they can explain his riddles, he also threatens to make things very bad for them if they do not.

I did not want to have the elves to be particularly understandable, nor the land in which they live. Mist seems to have a connection with entering their world, but later in the book a rather minor elf makes his appearance and it seems that he is wholly in the real world; he even has a little local knowledge. When Frith asks his brothers what an elf is after meeting Gamol, they do not give an answer, although Edgar gives a guess. Edgar's guess is derived from the story of the Voyage of St Brendan, where at one point the saint encounters islands of birds who had been among those angels who neither rebelled against God with Lucifer, not aided the loyal angelic host in their struggle against the upstart. When Frith turns the question to the nature of the old gods followed by the Anglo-Saxons, Edgar becomes more defensive and the speculation ends. Edgar is the one who is most close to an understanding of Christianity, having been partly raised by Bishop Paulinus, yet he still does not understand Christianity, he just likes the stories.

Unlike Trolldom, which has a real presence in the world according to the book, Elfland is definitely Other, although it lies closer to the real world at some places than others. Although Gamol's Path is marked on the map, his hall is not. The lines quoted above suggest that the road to Elf-land can be discovered (it is revealed along with a road to Heaven and a road to Hell). Tam Lin is found by Janet at Cartershaugh, Thomas the Rhymer encounters his elven queen near Erceldoune.

So those are my elves: not quite as evil as the Anglo-Saxons seem to have seen them, yet not creatures of nobility and goodness either. They are alien and the concerns of their perilous realm of Elfland eclipse their occasional passing interest in the mortal world. If it suits them they can be helpful to mortals, but they would be just as happy to harm or hinder them. Potentially the equal of angels, they have no joy, no real purpose and the hint of an alliance with, or being in thrall to the lord of Hell. Gamol makes a passing reference to the Teind. This is a feature of Borders' lore that is seen in both Thomas the Rhymer and more urgently in Tam Lin. Both of these characters are enticed into Elfland and they seem to prosper there, but whereas the fairy queen seems to want to protect True Thomas, poor Tam Lin needs the intercession of his mortal lover Janet to save him. The Teind (another word for a tithe) is exacted upon the elves by the devil. They are allowed to make up the numbers with trapped humans - either enticed in as adults like Thomas or exchanged in the cradle for a fairy child (a changeling). If there are not enough humans to fill the Teind then they seem to have to offer up some of their own folk instead. It would seem that the changeling, although it meant the temporary loss of a child, was preferable to them to the permanent loss of the same child in this way.

There are some interesting Northumberland tales of elves who are very unlike the fairy elves of Victorian stories. These elves are fierce, being roused to chase a lad who rides his horse three times widdershins (anticlockwise) around a quarry which they have made their home; they are caring, leaving a child with a poor farmer with instructions to anoint his eyes daily from a pot of eye ointment - which of course he uses on himself to his detriment; they are cruel but loving of games, carrying away children which have to be ransomed back with gifts that are the answers to riddles. These fierce and cruel - yet occasionally noble - creatures are all additional sources of inspiration for the elves that you meet in the Adventures of the Billy Goats Gruff.

The role of magic

I have had some misgivings over the role of magic in the book given that it is also a book with a real historical background. As soon as the plot line had been realised, the magic was a necessity for the simple reason that young men cannot pretend to be goats and everyone who sees them treat them as goats if they are just imagining it all. They have to become goats and that needs magic.

For there to be magic it follows that there should be a practitioner of magic, so I had to give the family Gruff an enemy, Cerdic or Caradoc. He is not particularly effective as an enemy until the time of the battle, spending his time in miserable conditions in Harthope Valley eating broth made from squirrels or hedgehogs and longing for a bit of decent goat's flesh. His putative enemies don't even think of him as an enemy - they simply are not aware that the man exists to be a threat to them.

He however knows them and he holds them and their king to be responsible for his squalid living conditions. So we learn a little about the history of the little land I call Dinware and how Ida joined it to his own realm of Bernice with the promise to its inhabitants to protect them from Christianity.

King Eadwine however accepted Christianity and even brought his foreign priest to Gatburgh, a place sacred to the old ways. His father, then the priest of the place had carried on regardless in his pagan practices but had died the following year, leaving Gatburgh without a pagan priest. When Cerdic turns up to claim his place as high priest, he is turned away.

So he has a grudge and among the damage that he inflicts upon the family is to turn the youngest three sons into goats. Only later does he perform more difficult magic to make the change permanent, a thing which as all good tales insist must have a get-out clause, the charm that will undo the spell.

I thought about this for a while, trying to think about all of the spells that are overcome in traditional tales - such as the Frog Prince, the Beast, the Seven Swans; all of these seemed to know what would break the spell and hang around waiting for the right person to come along. Rather than have my young billies blundering along blindly, I made sure that they knew what their fate would be. They are also unable to reveal the method of their disenchantment to others.

After these spells cast at the beginning of the book, the magic sort of dries up. It has not entirely gone but there are no more wizards chucking spells about. Obviously there is magic of a background nature whenever the brothers stray through into Elfland but magic there has an altogether different quality. The trolls do not seem to use magic, although they have their Gifts and they seem comfortable with things which are magical, perhaps they even make some things which are magical.

Finally there is the problem of protection. I mention in the book that Cerdic looks at a pagan king and sees upon him charms that will turn aside his magic. Why then can Cerdic use magic against the brothers, who are Christian?

My only answer is that the brothers had been baptised but aside from hearing some stories that they liked and therefore talk about amongst themselves, they never truly understand what it is they have become part of. This time is discussed by Bede as being a time when kingdoms became Christian and then returned to their old ways, for the understanding of a religion with only a single god was not established. They could understand a jealous god wanting his brothers (and sons, cousins, lovers, sisters ...) ignored and all of the glory being given to him but not that the gods had gone away, were no longer capable of offering luck to whoever would treat with them.

This ambiguity can best be seen when Frith asks his brothers what elves are (a question that does not get a precise answer - more of a guess really!). In the dramatis personae the elves are listed as Osen, which is my own word based on the name element Os as in Oswald, Oswy, Oswine, etc. which is usually interpreted as God in lists of name meanings. Os is an older element referring to the pagan gods and is directly linked to the Aesir of Norse mythology. I have tried to avoid obvious links with Norse mythology because although that mythos can shed a light on Anglo-Saxon religion, it is a dim light and not at all helpful. There is no evidence, for example, of a god equivalent to Loki in Anglo-Saxon religion. The trickster role is therefore taken by Woden, which explains why the chief of the Anglo-Saxon pantheon is identified with Hermes/Mercury rather than with Zeus/Jupiter in comparisons between cultures.

Another symptom of their half conversion to Christianity is the name that all of the characters use for Christ, namely "The Healer" This is a very wide play on words. One of the names of Christ in the Old English period is se halend which could literally be translated as "the one who makes things whole" and is therefore equivalent to conventional epithets such as the Saviour or the Redeemer. However, by calling him "The Healer" I have hoped to add a level of ambiguity. By itself it is not a bad title to give Jesus - he was a healer. To the minds of children and young men it resonates with magic - the stories of miracles would have been of great interest to pagans who accept the everyday reality of magic in their lives. In addition it illuminates the lack of understanding that the characters have for Christianity in that they misinterpret the meaning of one of their titles for Christ.