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This article relates to The Sea of Trolls
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was originally compiled on the orders of King Alfred the Great in
approximately A.D. 890. It was subsequently maintained
and added to by generations of anonymous scribes until the
middle of the 12th Century. If you have any interest in British history it's
worth skimming the version at Project Guttenberg (which is
compiled from about 8 distinct versions of the Chronicle), if only to read the entries for such well
known dates as 1066.
Some people believe that the nursery rhyme, 'Jack and Jill
went up the hill to fetch a pail of water....' comes from a
Norse legend about two boys (Hjuki and Bill) who were sent by
their father to collect song-mead from Mimir's Well. On their
way back, with a full bucket of mead, they were carried off by
the moon god.
As an interesting aside, you may remember a few weeks ago that I recommended
The Dreamwalker's Child by Steve Voake, and noted in his bio that he's
the former headmaster of a school in the South of England nicknamed the Jack and
Jill school because local lore says that the well in the school grounds is the
one that Jack and Jill went to. It seems that like so many popular
legends, more than one group lay claim to the story as, somehow, I don't think
that the Norse legends about a well of knowledge in the land of giants had in mind a charming village in the South of England! Having said that, both sources might be wrong - as others contend that Jack and Jill is a reference to Charles I and his tax reforms, while others believe it to refer to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. For more about this see the "BookBrowse Says" linked from The Dreamwalker's Child.
Is there such a Chinese curse as "may you live in interesting times"?
In a speech in South Africa in 1966, Robert F Kennedy said, 'There is a
Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times'....Journalists
picked up on the phrase and it has been re-quoted countless times since.
Ironically it appears that there is no such Chinese curse. The closest Chinese
variation is the proverb, "It's better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a
man in a chaotic period."
This "beyond the book article" relates to The Sea of Trolls. It originally ran in February 2005 and has been updated for the May 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings.
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
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