Editing The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (section)

==Background==
===Alan Garner===
[[File:Weirdstone.journey.jpg|thumb|375px|right|Map drawn by Charles Green to illustrate the book.]]
[[File:Weirdstone.Edge.jpg|thumb|300px|Map of [[Alderley Edge#The Edge|The Edge]] drawn by Charles Green to illustrate the book.]]
Alan Garner was born in the front room of his grandmother's house in [[Congleton]], Cheshire, on 17 October 1934.<ref name="Philips 1981">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 11.</ref> He grew up not far away, on [[Alderley Edge]], a well-to-do rural Cheshire village that by this time had effectively become a suburb of [[Manchester]].<ref name="Philips 1981"/> Growing up in "a rural working-class family",<ref name="Thompson">[[#Tho89|Thompson and Garner 1989]].</ref> Garner's ancestry had been connected to Alderley Edge since at least the 16th century, with Alan tracing his lineage back to the death of William Garner in 1592.<ref>[[#Gar10|Garner 2010]]. p. 05.</ref> The Garner family had passed on "a genuine oral tradition", teaching their children the folk tales about The Edge, which included a description of a king and his army of knights that slept under it, guarded by a wizard,<ref name="Thompson"/> and in the mid 19th century, Alan's great-great-grandfather Robert had carved the face of a bearded wizard onto the rock of a cliff next to a well that was known in local folklore as the Wizard's Well.<ref>[[#Gar10|Garner 2010]]. pp. 08–09.</ref>

Alan's own grandfather, Joseph Garner, "could read, but didn't and so was virtually unlettered", but instead taught his grandson the various folk tales about The Edge,<ref name="Thompson"/> Alan later remarking that, as a result, he was "aware of [the Edge's] magic" when as a child he would often play there with his friends.<ref>[[#Gar10|Garner 2010]]. p. 09.</ref> The story of the king and the wizard living under the hill played an important part in the young Alan's life, becoming "deeply embedded in my psyche" and influencing his novels, in particular ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen''.<ref name="Thompson"/>

In 1957 Garner purchased Toad Hall, a late mediaeval building in Blackden, seven miles from Alderley Edge. In the late 19th century the Hall had been divided into two agricultural labourers' cottages, but Garner obtained both for a total of £670, and proceeded to convert them back into a single home.<ref>[[#Bla08|Blackden Trust 2008]].</ref> It was at Toad Hall, on the afternoon of Tuesday 4 September 1957, that Garner set about writing his first novel, which would result in ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen''.<ref name="Philip 12">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 12.</ref> Whilst engaged in writing in his spare time, Garner attempted to gain employment as a teacher, but soon gave that up, believing that "I couldn't write and teach: the energies were too similar". He began working as a general labourer for four years, remaining unemployed for much of that time.<ref name="Thompson"/>

===Landscape of Cheshire===
Like many of Garner's books the novel is set in the real landscape of Cheshire, in this case focused around [[Alderley Edge]], and features fictional characters interacting at genuine sites such as the sandstone escarpment of [[Alderley Edge#The Edge|the Edge]], the Wizard's Well, the open mine pits, and the Beacon."<ref name="Philip 26">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 26.</ref> Literary critic Neil Philip would later relate that "this sense of a numinous, sacred potency in landscape" was something that imbued all of Garner's work.<ref name="Philip 27">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 27.</ref>

In a 1968 article Garner explained why he chose to set ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' in a real landscape rather than in a fictional realm, remarking that "If we are in [[El Dorado|Eldorado]], and we find a [[Mandragora (demon)|mandrake]], then OK, so it's a mandrake: in Eldorado anything goes. But, by force of imagination, compel the reader to believe that there is a mandrake in a garden in Mayfield Road, Ulverston, Lancs, then when you pull up that mandrake it is really going to scream; and possibly the reader will too."<ref name="Philip 25">[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 25.</ref>

Some features of the Cheshire landscape mentioned in the story are:
{{div col}}
*[[Alderley Edge]]
*St. Mary's Clyffe
*[[Alderley Edge#The Edge|The Edge]]
**Castle Rock
**Holy Well
**Stormy Point
**Iron Gates
**Druid Stones
**Old Quarry
**Golden Stone
**The Wizard Inn
**West Mine
*Highmost Redmanhey
*Radnor Wood
*[[Alderley Park|The Parkhouse]]
*Dumville's Plantation
*[[Monks Heath]]
*Sodger's Hump
*Bag Brook
*Marlheath
*[[Capesthorne Hall]]
*[[Redesmere]]
*Thornycroft Hall
*Pyethorne Wood
*[[Gawsworth]]
*[[Danes Moss]]
*[[Macclesfield Forest]]
*[[Shutlingsloe|Shuttlingsloe]]
*Piggford Moor
*[[Cleulow Cross|Clulow Cross]]
{{div col end}}

===Mythology and folklore===
====Story====
The legend of [[Alderley Edge#The Wizard of the Edge|The Wizard of Alderley Edge]] revolves around a king and his sleeping knights who rest beneath the hill, waiting for the day when they must awake to save the land. Each knight had a steed, a pure white horse.  However, at the time the knights were placed under their enchanted slumber, the wizard whose job it was to guard the king and his knights found that they lacked one horse.  One day, he encountered a local farmer taking a pure white mare to sell at the market.  The wizard bought the horse, offering the farmer many rich jewels taken from the king's secret store of treasure under the Edge in payment.<ref name="Philip 1981. p. 23"/>

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|title     =
|quote     = "As I turned toward writing, which is partially intellectual in its function, but is primarily intuitive and emotional in its execution, I turned towards that which was numinous and emotional in me, and that was the legend of King Arthur Asleep Under the Hill. It stood for all that I'd had to give up in order to understand what I'd had to give up. And so my first two books, which are very poor on characterization because I was somehow numbed in that area, are very strong on imagery and landscape, because the landscape I had inherited along with the legend."
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|source    = Alan Garner, 1989
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====Language====
The majority of the non-English words used in ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' have been adopted from [[Norse mythology]]. For instance, the [[Svartálfar|svart-alfar]], which means 'black elves' in Scandinavian, are described as the "maggot-breed of [[Ymir]]", a reference to the primeval giant of Norse myth; while the realm of Ragnarok, which in Garner's story is the home of the [[malevolent spirit]] Nastrond, is actually named after the [[Ragnarok|Norse end-of-the-world myth]].<ref>[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 35</ref> [[Fimbulwinter]], the magically induced winter weather that hinders the children's escape, also refers to Norse [[eschatology]].

====Characters====
Other terms are taken not from Norse mythology, but from the [[Welsh mythology]] encapsulated in Mediaeval texts like the ''[[Mabinogion]]''. For instance, Govannon, one of the names with which Garner addresses Grimnir, has been adopted from the mythological character of [[Govannon ap Dun]]. Although Garner avoided incorporating his story into [[Arthurian mythology]], the benevolent wizard in the novel, Cadellin Silverbrow, does have a link to the Arthurian mythos, in that "Cadellin" is one of the many names by which [[Culhwch]] invoked Arthur's aid in the Mediaeval Welsh Arthurian romance about ''[[Culhwch and Olwen]]''.<ref name="Philip 1981. p. 23"/>

Other words used in the novel are taken from elsewhere in European mythology and folklore. The name of Fenodyree, a benevolent dwarf in Garner's tale, is actually borrowed from [[Manx folklore]], where it refers to [[fenodyree|a type of grotesque goblin or brownie]].<ref>[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 34.</ref> Meanwhile, the Morrigan, whom Garner presents as a malevolent shapeshifting witch, has a name adopted from [[Irish mythology]], where she is [[Morrigan|a war goddess who is the most powerful aspect of the tripartite goddess Badb]]. Literary critic Neil Philip also argued that further folkloric and mythological influences could be seen in the character of Grimnir, who had both a foul smell from and an aversion to fresh water, characteristics traditionally associated with the [[Nuckelavee]], a creature in Scottish folklore. Accompanying this, Philip opined that Grimnir was also "half identified" with the creature [[Grendel]], the antagonist in the Old English poem ''[[Beowulf]]''.<ref>[[#Phi81|Philip 1981]]. p. 36.</ref>