In the days of Merrie England, a Duke Jocelyn rides forth disguised as a jester to woo Yolande. His problem, and the reason for his disguise, is that he has been injured and is facially disfigured and he wants Yolande to love him for himself rather than for his Dukedom and wealth. He is accompanied by his best friend, disguised knight Sir Pertinax, whose favourite oath is "Par Dex" On his journey he encounters an outlaw named Robin, an old witch and her grandson, a cudgel swinging dwarf named Lobkyn Lollo and a variety of baddies. Adventures include a spell in the castle dungeons and a jousting tournament.
It was written in 1919 and it sounds like a romantic-historical potboiler of the worst type. Indeed, it is peppered with 'quoth' and 'forsooth' and such like. There are twelve chapters which are called 'fyttes' and each is introduced with a rhyming couplet as its argument. But it isn't nearly as dreadful as I'd feared.
It is written in rhyming verse (usually couplets) and blank verse and prose; the author seems to swap from one to the other almost randomly except for the dwarf Lobkyn who has been cursed and has always to speak in rhyme. My heart sank as I saw all the verse because I find that slower and more difficult to read; in fact Farnol's facility with easy rhyme made it quite fun. This wasn't high class poetry but it was decent narrative verse. It was made even more entertaining by Farnol making jokes about this which came close to self-parody. For example, Robin frequently has passages which torture words - "Which is, Witch, that wich none but witch the like o' thee might do ... Thus, but for they witch-like witcheries the which, Witch, witch do prove thee ..."
It also becomes meta-fictional when the author's daughter Gillian (who has a nice line in inter-war slang words such as 'corking' and 'top-hole') interrupts him at frequent but irregular intervals to argue with him about the characters and plot. Naively, Gillian thinks that the author is in control of his characters: "You've made her all of pen and ink./ So you, of course can make her do/ Exactly as you want her to." To which he replies: "Dear innocent! You little know/ The trials poor authors undergo./How heroines when they break loose/ Are apt to play the very deuce,/ Dragging their authors to and fro,/ And where he wills - they will not go."
There are also humorous details. For example: "For 'neath the gate lounged lusty fellows three/ Who seldom spoke yet spat right frequently." (Fytte 1) I can just see the three layabouts, the same in mediaeval days as in 1919 and as now, leaning up against the gateposts spitting on the ground. (Some of the humour is unintentional, such as when heavy drinkers in a tavern are correctly described as 'tosspots' which has changed its meaning since 1919.) I also enjoyed the witch who stage-managed her spells so that her audience believed they were seeing magic when in fact ... A nice touch of the Gothic 'explained supernatural' there.
This isn't great literature but it was entertaining nonsense; it was fun. The characters were caricatures done with Dickensian verve, the plot was just a tweak or two cleverer than standard and it was clearly written by a wordsmith with a love for language. And the meta-fictional aspects added that extra something.
May 2024; 253 pages
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