A CAVALCADE OF EDITED BY ROGER LANCELYN GREEN ILLUSTRATED BY VICTOR AMBRUS "Believe, then, if you please, that I can do strange things: I have, since I was three year old, conversed with a Magician, most pro- found in his art, and yet not damnable." Shakespeare NEW YORK HENRY Z. WALCK, INC. First published in Great Britain 1973 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Magicians Copyright® 1973 KOGLR IANCELYN GREEN Illustrations Copyright © 1973 VICTOR AMBRUS All rights reserved ISBN- 0-8098-2422-1 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 72-6877 Library of Congress Cataloging m Publication Data Green, Roger Lancelyn, comp. A cavalcade of magicians. SUMMARY: A collection of tales and poems from various countries and times about magicians. First published in 1973 under title: The Hamish Hamilton bo.ok of magicians. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Magicians • [1. Magicians Collections] illus. PZ5.G698Cax3 . Juvenile literature. - Fiction 2. Literature I. Ambrus, Victor G. y II. Title. [Fie] 72-6877 ISBN 0-8098-2422. Printed in Great Britain Contents INTRODUCTION INVITATION; The Sorcerer's Song w. s. GILBERT 1 MAGICIANS OF ANCIBNT DAYS Teta the Magician 'A Hittite Charm against a Wizard's Spell' The Magician/win Corinth The Sorcerer's Apprentice Virgilius the Sorcerer 2 MAGICIANS OF THE MIDDLE AGES Aladdin and the African Magician Merlin, the Wizard a/Britain Bradamante and the Wizard The Franklin s Tale: retold from Chaucer ELEANOR FARJEON 3 MAGICIANS OF FOLKLORE The Magician s Horse The Gifts of the Magician The Magicians Pupil The Magician zrho had no Heart The Wizard King "Chinoolz and Chinok" ANDREW LANG 4 MAGICIANS OF LATER DAYS The Castle of Kerglas EMILE SOUVESTRE The Magician and his Pupil AMELIA GODIN The Magicians' Gifts JULIANA HORATIA EWING v CONTENTS The Magician turned Mischief-maker JULIANA HORATIA EWING 200 The Princess and the Cat E. NESBIT 206 The Magician who Wanted More ANDREW LANG 225 The Crab that played with the Sea RUDYARD KIPLING 242 Prince Rabbit A. A. MILNE 254 EPILOGUE: From The Tempest WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 270 Notes on Sources 271 Acknowledgements 274 Introduction HE Oxford English Dictionary tells us simply that a Magician is "One skilled in magic or sorcery; a necromancer, wizard": but we all have our own picture of the ideal Magician who comes immediately to mind when that Word of Power is uttered. It has probably always been so. Every primitive tribe of savages in the jungles of long ago had its Magician: but perhaps he was not as great and awe-inspiring as the Magician whom the oldest member of the tribe could remember from when he was a boy. . . . Indeed, there arc still magicians in the remotest comers of the world: I met one the other day in thejungles of far Peru, "on the banks of the turbid Amazon". There was a white magician living not far away, whom we could simply call a Doctor: but if he failed in his cures, the Witch Doctor of the tribe turned to magic to help his people. For a Magician really means a wise man, one who knows more than the general run of people. The Magi who followed the wonderful Star which led mem to Bethlehem were Magicians, for Mage is but another variant of the word. And, as they came from the East, they were thought to be wiser than the people of Palestine: for wisdom dwelt in the East, and Babylonians were thought to be the greatest magicians in the world. Ur of the Chaldees is in Babylonia, and Abraham came from it in search of the Promised Land. His descendant, Moses, was the greatest Magician of Israel, and he defeated Pharaoh's magicians in the Land of Egypt, though the Egyptians ^d another version of the story and are the earliest people whose tales of magic have come down to us. As people grew more civilized their attitude to Magicians began to change. Magicians were not so common, but were much wiser when they did exist— « f* _ / it they really existed at all. The ancient Greeks were not very sure about it, and there are few Greek myths in which magic plays a part—and their later writers tend to treat magicians as pure fancy—as Lucian did. And even witches were already little more than useful characters for fiction . . . though vn Vlll INTRODUCTION one feels that Apuleius, who wrote about them in his Golden Ass at much the same time, was not at all sure, and wanted to be on the safe side. . . . It was in the Middle Ages, when the Romances of Chivalry were being written—tales of King Arthur and Charlemagne, Huon of Bordeaux and Bevis of Southampton—that Magicians really came into their own, and of them all Merlin was the most famous and appears in the greatest number of tales: I command you to remember Arthur's court and me. Merlin, Master of all men there . . ." The end of the Middle Ages w^as also the period when Black Magic was greatly feared. A Black Wizard had sold his soul to the Devil in return for his magic powers—and deserved to be burnt at the stake. Sonic of them really tried to gain power and long life by these means: there was Giles de Retz, for example, who began as a Marshal of France and a friend of Joan of Arc, and ended by sacrificing children to the Devil in an attempt to regain his youth. His deeds were so atrocious that out of them grew the story of Blue Beard; but the would-be wizard Giles makes his most memorable appearance in S. R. Crockctt's romance The Black Douglas (1899). An even more famous Magician, a real man who became a legend, was Dr. John Faustus about whom both Marlowe and Goethe wrote plays and Gounod an opera. Even early scientists and inventors like Roger Bacon and Cornelius Agrippa and Dr. Dee were apt to be classed as Magicians and had to be very careful what they did and said—and able to prove that they used no magic. But the same period was producing such great narrative poems as Ariosto's Orlando Fwioso and Spenser's Faerie Queene full of marvels and Magicians, magic spells, Dragons, fairy princesses, and all the rest of it. And a century later fairy tales began to be written down, and fairy tales invented by the ladies of the Court of Louis XIV of France—and the Magician of Fiction had, once and for all, ousted the real Mages: though their distant cousins are still with us in various disguises ranging from Spiritualise mediums to psycho- analysts. The earlier stories in this Book of Magicians give examples of most kinds of wizards from the ancient Egyptians to the Medieval and chivalric; and also of the more powerful Magicians of Fairy Talc and Folklore. "When literary INTRODUCTION IX invention begins, the choice becomes more difficult. There are Magicians and Sorcerers, Wizards and Necromancers of all sorts playing larger or smaller parts in full-length stories: but I have not tried to make extracts, since it has always seemed to me that to do so spoils the enjoyment when one comes to read the whole book—besides usually proving unsatisfactory in itself. But I hope that the Magicians in this volume may encourage readers to set out In quest of other workers of magic more fully described elsewhere. And there is a bounteous crop from which to choose. If there are few good stories of the Magicians of actual savage folklore, there are excellent and authentic Wizards to be found, for example, in Rider Haggard's romances ofZululand a century ago, from the great Zikali in Child of Storm and Finished to Indaba- zimbi in Allans Wife and Hokosa, the hero of The Wizard. There is one of the greatest Wizards of romance. Gandalfthe Grey, inJ. R. R- Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; and very fine wicked Magicians in John Masefield's The Midniglzt Folk and The Box of Delights, not to mention the splendid Snagaraguus in that undeservedly forgotten " fairy thriller" Josephine by Geoffrey Mure, and my own Black Wizard in The Land of the Lord High Tiger. And there are Magicians who live in the modern world hkeJ. B. S- Haldane's My Friend Mr. Leakey, or come into it like my Wonderful Stranger or, best of all, have a foot in more worlds than one like the splendid Magi- cians in C- S. Lewis's The Voyage of "The Dawn Trcader" and The Magician's Nephew. But there are heaps more in books both earlier and later—and by now most of you are probably saying, with A. A. Milne's Woodcutter; "In realms of Fairylore I need no guide nor tutor." And, though I cannot end by waving a magic wand and transporting you into the very Lands of Enchantment, I can at least invite you, like Tennyson's young mariner, to follow the Gleam that shines from it: "Oh young Mariner, You that are watching The gray Magician With eyes of wonder . . . The Master whispered 'Follow the Gleam!' " Invitation "The Sorcerer's Song" W. S. GILBERT Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells— I'm a dealer in Magic and Spells, In blessings and curses, And ever-filled purses, In Prophecies, witches and knells! If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"- Ifyou^d melt a rich uncle in wax— You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe. We've a first class assortment of Magic; And for raising a posthumous shade With effects that are comic or tragic, There's no ...
widez2