Epic Cycles and Epicycles

 Preliminary matter one- Recently I've felt a little pressed by my current schedule. Not stressed out really, and actually getting to do a lot of enjoyable and enriching things. Even so, I haven't been able to write, blog, draw, and such quite as much as I would like. Therefore, I will be trying to do more blogging at work, which means I will be laying out the simpler posts like this one on my phone. Please excuse any idiosyncrasies of presentation.

Preliminary matter two- Grace of the blog Choir of Fire recently left the Discord platform due to that company's perfidy. While we all respect that, I'd like to take a moment to express the hope that she will make another blogpost soon so we can all read it, and wish her luck in finagling a way to comment on such posts.

"It is a well-known tendency in tales that are popular and long re-told for them to be enlarged, until they become ‘cycles’, taking up or being linked to other stories with which they at first has slender connexions, or none at all. One of the methods used in this process is to provide the original hero with a son, either a newly invented one, or a character in another story. In either case the son will tend to have similar adventures, with variation, to those of the father.”

- Tolkien, commentary on Beowulf translation, line 734

d8 Signs of Epicycles

1. Filling Time, like taking a siege that takes ten years and trying to show what happens during that time
2. Explaining, like taking a siege that takes ten years and establishing a clear reason it takes so long.
3. Duplication (doublet), the same event happening twice or more, often with variations. May be a character'a offspring going on to do the same things as their parent. May be that secondary takes on the same event "misunderstand" the primary event's purpose.
4. Implantation, an interesting story being fit into the broader narrative
5. Revision, taking an event and negating or explaining it away. May reuse a character or place's name, or give a new one, to cover a seam. Could explain old mythology's elements into a new mythology's milieu. Could simply make a good event now bad or a bad event now good.
6. Squeezing, fitting extra material into what would naturally be a constrained space, like fitting many individual stories of a hero's duels into a space of a single night
7. Recasting, altering a character or place's nature. Like making a god into a wise man or a warrior into a monster. Possibly inconsistently applied, leading to contradictions with invite later explainings-away
8. Exaggerating, taking a notable trait and running with it. A strong man becomes the strongest man possible becomes an impossibly strong man. May later be recast or explained.

In The King of Golden Mountain, a wealthy merchant loses everything to catastrophe. He meets a old man in a field who promises him great riches in exchange for the first thing that brushes his leg when he gets home, to be given over in ten years' time. Thinking of his dog, the man regrets that he will have to give the pooch up but feels compelled because he has two infant children to provide for, and so he agrees. Of course, when he arrives home he finds his son taking his first tottering steps to brush his father's leg and give him a hug. A few weeks later, the father finds chests of hold in his attic.

As the boy grows up, his father spoils him, knowing that he doesn't have so long to live. He lets the boy take sips of his liquor, climb trees instead of go to school, and never punishes him for lying or fighting. Eventually the town priest intervenes, and tries to teach the boy letters and responsibility. After the boy starts to show signs of reform, the old man appears to him one day and offer him a pair of dice. The old man explains that they are loyal dice-- when you say "show me six" they will come up with sixes, and when you say "show me ones" they will come up with ones. The boy is impressed, and shows off the dice around town, using them in bets to win treats and coins. The priest calls the boy into the church one day and explains that gambling is wrong. The boy argues that when one has something really special, one has to put it to use. He rolls the dice, but no matter how many commands he gives or how the dice bounce, they don't obey him. The old man's magic can't enter the church, and so the priest convinces the boy to get rid of the dice and focus on his studies.

The boy's sister, meanwhile, is always kept on the up and up. The father ensures she learns the ways of beauty and society, and can't resist fostering her love of merchant's figures and healthy curiosity. When she is off marrying age, the local lord takes a shine to her and asks the father if a match can be made. The father is thrilled, the daughter is thrilled, but on the day of the wedding she is warned by a servant that the lord has been married six times before. The daughter, reasoning that seventh time pays for all, resolves to see how married life goes, and sure enough the lord is deferential and polite, charming and considerate, but always very secretive. He sometimes goes off on long journeys, leaving her all alone. Before he goes, he says that she has liberty of all his house, save the room in the top of the tower, and entrusts her with the keys of the house. While he is away, she looks through the rooms and finds in each a great treasure-- gems, antique instruments, fine armors, rouges, and fruits.

Curious what prize could possibly be so fine as to exceed these, she opens the door at the top of the tower. Blood runs down the stairs, staining the hem of her dress. Six dead wives hang on hooks. The daughter slams the door shut and locks it again, and notices at last that the key itself is blood-stained without remedy. She hears her husband returning unexpectedly, and when she goes down to greet him, the lord asks if she has been in the room he forbid her. As she is about to answer, blood drips down from the steps onto his head. As he looks up, she runs out of the house and screams to the townspeople who gather in confusion. She says the lord has killed all his wives, but arrives and says she has gone mad. The daughter holds up the key. When the people see its bloodstain, they round on the lord, tear him apart, and give the castle and its estates to the daughter as the rightful heir.

Time passes, and despite knowing the boy's days are numbered the father grows to love him. Eventually he admits to his son the fate set out for him, but the boy is not put out. He has the priest bless him on the day before the deadline, and sits in a salt circle in the field. When the old man arrives, the boy and the father launch into a legal case arguing that the wizard has no right to take him. The old man launches an argument of his own, and eventually they all concede that while the wizard can't take the boy against his will, still the father has given him up, and so they settle that the father will set the boy in a boat, let him float into the sea, and let God and fortune give him what fate they may. True to form, a great wave sinks the boat, and the father mourns a long time.

What he doesn't know is that the boy survives. He wakes up on the shore of a beautiful country, with stately villages and rich fields, but no people at all. Eventually he finds a vast palace richer than even the pope's on a golden mountain, and in the center of it is a small green snake, which tells him that it is a princess under a curse.  The snake claims that its mother was once the lady of golden mountain, and guardian of its best treasure-- the waters of life. A giant demanded the waters from the snake's mother, but she refused. The giant knew that the waters redeemed the body if given in love but were useless if stolen, so in anger he killed the snake's mother and put the land under a curse, that would last until someone suffered pain equal to a jilted heart's pain without complaint. The snake has been here ever since that day.

To break the curse, it says that he must stay in the palace for three nights and never say a word. The boy agrees to undergo this trial. On each night, grim ghosts appear in the palace and beat the snot out of him, but he doesn't utter the slightest sound. Upon the sunrise after the third night, the princess returns to her true form but finds the boy comatose and dying. She pours the water of life over him, and he awakes fully healed. There is much rejoicing, for all the people of the land are back, and the princess marries the boy. Together they have a son, his fortune far exceeds even his wealthy father, and he rules with a humility and wisdom seldom seen in those who suffered so much in youth.

One day, the boy (now a king) becomes homesick. He wants to return to the land of his birth and see how his family is getting on. When his wife (the queen) hears this, she grows pale. When he describes his homeland, she recognizes it as the same country from which the giant who killed her mother and cursed her came from, and where he returned to after casting his spell. But seeing how sorrowful for homecoming the king is, she gives him a magic ring. She says he could use it to go anywhere just by taking it off, turning it, and putting it back on. She gives her blessing for him to go home, but bids him not summon her or her son to that land. The king agrees, and using the ring's set procedure, arrives outside the town of his birth. The men at the gate don't let him in. They can't believe a king would travel alone, and so assume he is a modish rogue or sinister fashionista. So he finds a shepherd and trades clothes with him so that he can fit in, and he enters the town that way. When he meets with his parents, they cannot believe that this man is their son, who drowned so long ago, until he shows  them a certain mark he had born since birth. But even then they doubt that he is a king because his clothes are so shabby, so he uses the magic to call his wife the queen and their young boy. His parents believe his story at last, but the queen is so angry that when next they sleep she steals her magic ring from his finger and uses it to bring herself and her son back to the kingdom, stranding the king with no idea of how to get back. For all that he once wished to return to his old home, he lost the new home where he was powerful and rich.

With no recourse, he wanders in vain hope of finding his kingdom, when one day he finds three giants arguing about how to split their father's estate. It is composed of three items-- a cloak that can make you invisible, a pair of boots that cover seven leagues in one stride, and a sword that magically cuts off everyone's head but the wielder's when she says "everyone's head but mine." Seeing the king, they agree to force him to divvy up the items, and if any of them dislikes his choices, they can simply crush him. The king, having no choice but to agree, asks to try out the items first, starting with the boots. But the eldest giant refuses to let him near the boots in case he tries to run away. They allow him the cloak, keeping an ear out for any escape attempt, and he finds it works marvelously. He takes up the sword, gives it a few practice swings, and says "everyone's head but mine." Stepping around the head of the eldest giant, climbing over the head of the second, and stepping over the head of the third, he straps on the boots and runs, never stopping until he finds the golden mountain.

When the king finds his home, he keeps his cloak about him so nobody can see him. He learns there is a great event at the palace, a wedding celebration for the queen and her new husband. His faces screws up with rage and he sneaks into the palace. Sure enough, there are all the nobles and rich people, eating and drinking and toasting the health of the newlyweds. The king stands behind his traitorous wife, and whenever she is served wine he drinks, and whenever she is served food she eats, until she is so deprived and confused that she shrieks and runs into a private chamber. The king follows her and finally removes his cloak, berating her for leaving him behind. She cries, and he walks out into the hall to dismiss all the guests. No one believes this fierce man in a shepherd's clothes is really a king, so they unite to throw out what they take for an armed maniac. The king curses them and, holding the sword out, says "everyone's head but mine." All at once the palace is as desolate as when he first found it, and he alone is master of the golden mountain.

Out of the silence, the old man walks, applauding the king's bloody work. The king is so surprised, he doesn't try to cut off the old man's head. Instead, he falls to his knees and weeps, finally realizing how horrible his deed is. The old man shrugs and offers to bring life back to the golden mountain, to furnish it with farmer and millers and shopkeepers and soldiers and many other people, so that the king won't be alone. In exchange, the wizard wants to take one of the wedding guests of his choice. The king doesn't want to see the bodies of the people he slew, so he agrees, but weeps anew when the old man grabs the king's son, hiding beneath a table. It explains that "everyone's head but mine" of course excluded the son because a child belongs to their parent until they are grown. The king looks about for salt to make a circle, but it is all clotted with blood. He looks for a priest to bless and save his boy, but the priest is dead. Finally, he takes up his sword, thanks the old man, and says "everyone's head but mine." He kicks the old man's head aside and embraces his son, and they set about clearing the blood from the palace.

People come again to the golden mountain, but they are not wholesome folk. The old man's power cannot resurrect the dead. Instead, it brings grim ghosts to haunt the land, horrifying and threatening the king, who tells his son that  the boy must go, for while the old man cannot take him the father did give him up, and though he wishes he could keep the boy with him, the deal, once made, is binding. The boy tells his father that he will journey down through the cellars and caves of the palace to find the waters of life to bring back the people, and that he will suffer pain equal to a grieving parent's without complaint to break the curse of the old man's deal.

He wanders through dark and cold chambers, and though he expects the grim ghosts to arrest him, they never do. He is scared and lonely, and often cold and numb. He wanders for so long that he fears he will never find the well or the exit. He fears he will die in the maze of darkness. Sometimes he imagines that he sees his mother or hears his father calling. He does not give complaint. One day, quite by accident, he finds the well from which the water of life is to be drawn. Happily he retrieves a saucer of the water and starts back, but by mistake spills it all before he can return. After a second attempt also fails, he soaks the water into his shirt, drinks some of it, and carries two saucers. When, by accident, he finds the sun, he emerges to find the palace of the golden mountain a ruin. While he wandered, many years passed. His father grew old and died, his land went fallow and then to waste, and everything was as the old man had foreseen. He cries, and the tears which held the waters of life spill onto the ground, and the grim ghosts are banished, and the land once more comes to life. The boy's father, tempered by sorrow, returns to him. His mother, sorry for her own mistakes, is back. The people of the land, full of penitents for doubting the appearance of the king when he had suffered so much for a princess who herself looked like a mere serpent, are all returned to him, ready to learn and love and mistake and joke and do all the things of living.

THE END

Please feel free, if you should wish, to copy the story and add a few epicycles of your own, or do a similar exercise for a story that you enjoy.