Life's a forge, a loom, and a lump of clay

[bloodygranuaile]

 In the fourth book of the Chronicles of Prydain, Taran Wanderer, the Assistant Pig-Keeper sets off on a quest to find his parentage, because he wants to ask Princess Eilonwy to marry him, which is something we could see coming from a lot earlier in the series. This is by design the kind of quest that sets a hero off on a series of tasks exploring all the surrounding lands to see where he fits in, which is always a fun sort of quest to read along with. Taran's first few stops have him revisiting folks he's met in prior books, such as the boisterous King Smoit, in whose cantrev Taran smooths out a fight between two warring lords who keep stealing each other's cows. Then Taran winds up back in the Marshes of Morva, where he had gone in The Black Cauldron, to seek out the three hilarious witches who keep wanting to turn him into a toad, to see if they can help. They suggest he go find a magic mirror up in the mountains somewhere, which will show him the truth of himself. Taran for a while abandons this quest and just sort of wanders around instead, where he spends some time thinking he's the son of a herdsman on a very bleak moor (there is much character growth occurring during this arc, since thinking he's the son of a herdsman puts a dent in his hope that he was really a nobleman and would be a socially appropriate match for Eilonwy), then goes and spends some time living off the land with a very lucky and resourceful scavenger guy and his family; then he goes and spends some time among the craftsmen of the Free Commots, which is basically a set of democratically-run towns famous for having really skilled craftspeople. In true fairy tale fashion, in Taran's time in the Free Commots he learns three trades--smithing, weaving, and pottery--and while none of them turn out to be his calling, he crafts three items for himself in his time there (a sword, a cloak, and a  bowl) that turn out to be very useful and important later on. 

 

Since Arawn is very much a background menace in this book and Achren has been reduced to living harmlessly with Dallben, our main external antagonists in this book are a mercenary, who steals Taran's sword and gets away to continue to be an ass in the next book, and an evil wizard who actually *does* turn Taran's companions into animals (temporarily; obviously Taran defeats the wizard at the very last possible second). In his journey, though, Taran hears a lot about how the life of the common people of Prydain is partly as hard as it is because Arawn has stolen many of their long-kept, hard-earned secrets about crafting and farming and all that stuff, and his general evil deathiness has made the land less fruitful. So it's fairly clear where we're leading up to in the final book. 

 

I'm not going to spoil what we do or don't learn about Taran's parentage in the end, but there's a very clear moral message about it. Out of all the Prydain books, this is structured the most like an archetypal fairy tale, with lots of episodic adventures in which people learn very important things about the world and themselves and how to treat other people and what's really important in life. 

 

Pretty much the only bad thing in this book is that Eilonwy's off princessing for the whole thing, a state of affairs that I dislike almost as much as Taran and Eilonwy do.