The Chronicles of Prydain

Overview

The Chronicles of Prydain are five novels by the American writer Lloyd Alexander, published between 1964 and 1968, that follow Taran, an orphan who holds the unglamorous title of Assistant Pig-Keeper, from restless boyhood to the burden of kingship. Set in Prydain, an imagined land drawn from the myths of Wales, the series combines comedy, adventure and real grief. It is one of the landmarks of American children's fantasy and a rare example of 1960s high fantasy written directly for young readers, with a shape — farm boy, wise mentor, dark lord, final war — that would soon become the genre's default.

Origins

Alexander, a Philadelphian, first encountered Wales during the Second World War, when he trained there with the US Army; the castles and mountains stayed with him. Years later, researching Welsh legend for another book, he returned to the Mabinogion and to the Welsh Triads. He did not retell them directly but borrowed freely: Arawn, lord of the underworld in the Mabinogion, becomes the Death-Lord; the enchanter Gwydion becomes a heroic prince; Hen Wen, the pig of the Triads, becomes an oracle. Nearly every name in Prydain comes from Welsh myth or history. The books were published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston: The Book of Three (1964), The Black Cauldron (1965), The Castle of Llyr (1966), Taran Wanderer (1967) and The High King (1968). The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain (1973) added six prequel stories.

The story

When Hen Wen, the oracular pig kept by the old enchanter Dallben, bolts in terror, Taran pursues her into the wider world and into the path of the Horned King, champion of Arawn. He falls in with a memorable company: Prince Gwydion; Eilonwy, a sharp-tongued princess descended from a line of enchantresses; Fflewddur Fflam, a minor king and would-be bard whose harp strings snap whenever he stretches the truth; Doli, a grumpy dwarf; and Gurgi, a hairy, half-wild creature forever begging for "crunchings and munchings."

Each book deepens the stakes. In The Black Cauldron the companions seek to destroy the cauldron in which Arawn raises the dead as deathless warriors, the Cauldron-Born. The Castle of Llyr rescues Eilonwy from an enchantress. Taran Wanderer, the most unusual volume, sets aside battles as Taran searches for his parentage and learns crafts from ordinary people. The High King brings open war against Arawn, and ends with a choice between staying in a world of enchantment and staying to rebuild a mortal one.

Reception & impact

The series was acclaimed from the start. The Black Cauldron was named a Newbery Honor book in 1966, and The High King won the Newbery Medal in 1969, one of the highest honors in American children's literature.

In 1985 Disney released The Black Cauldron, an ambitious and dark animated adaptation that combined elements of the first two books. It cost about $44 million and earned about $21 million in North America, and critics found it confusing and overly somber; animators lamented how much of Alexander's humor and pathos it lost. Sierra On-Line produced a companion game, The Black Cauldron (1985), designed by Al Lowe, in which players guide Taran in search of Hen Wen and the cauldron. Aimed at younger players, it replaced Sierra's typed text parser with function-key commands, an early experiment in making graphic adventures accessible.

Legacy

Prydain showed that the mythological material Tolkien and others mined from northern Europe could be reshaped into an accessible, character-driven epic for children. It stands with Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising as one of the two great Anglo-Celtic fantasy sequences for young readers of its era, and its structure — the humble youth, the companion band, the oracle, the undead army and the dark lord in his fortress — anticipates the adventure templates that tabletop and computer RPGs would adopt a decade later. The Cauldron-Born, unkillable soldiers raised from the dead, remain one of fantasy's most memorable undead armies.