A Son of the Rock

Macmillan, 1981, 59 p. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes.

This is a children’s fantasy set in southern Scotland in the time of legends when the castles were made of wood. It is beautifully illustrated with full-page colour plates and integral black and white images.

There has been a dragon living for years in a cave below the pools of the Water of Milk on the estate of Tundergarth, growing from an egg to adulthood over the centuries (as dragons do) and taking the odd bullock for food. The old Lord wasn’t bothered about this loss to his stock but when he dies the new one, Angus Og, comes down from the north as inheritor to the estate and resolves – much to the dismay of his wife Matilda who has formed an attachment to the beast – the dragon must be killed. (This particular Dragon is always capitalised whenever he is mentioned but dragons in general are not. He also has had no interaction with other dragons so does not quite know how a dragon should behave.)

Angus Og is persuaded not to do the deed himself as he does not have the necessary equipment nor protection and under Matilda’s urgings sends to Carlisle to fetch Robert le Douce whom Matilda knows will kill the dragon as kindly as possible. The price though, gold in the weight of a lamb, is something he balks at. The deed having been done, the unworldly dragon not knowing he ought to have fought, Angus Og reneges on the payment and Robert le Douce brings the two parts of the dragon’s body he had separated back together so that it could be restored to life. Means then have to be found to keep the dragon in food, though Og still maintains that no bullocks are to be used. Matilda’s solution is elegant but costly.

A delightful aspect of this was the liberal use of Scots words and phrases, a phenomenon not normally to be found in children’s literature.

Godden feels constrained to point out (in a preface) that the Angus Og portrayed in this book is not the historical Lord of the Isles nor his namesake prize bulls but may be an ancestor of the one in the Daily Record cartoon strip.

Pedant’s corner:- gainsayed (gainsaid,) a missing comma before a piece of direct speech (x 3,) “the drizzle that Scots people call a smurr” (it’s usually spelled ‘smirr’,) “‘I’ll have it’s blood for this’” (its.) “‘Am’nt I as good as a Knight?’” (congratulations for the grammatical form; but it’s spelled “Amn’t”,) has’nae (is spelled ‘hasnae’,) av’a (usually spelled ‘ava’.)