In 2007, I posted my translation of the 15th-century romance “The Taill of Rauf Coilyear,” a 972-line Middle Scots poem about the kerfuffle that ensues when Charlemagne, separated from his entourage by a snowstorm, seeks refuge in the home of a proud and irascible collier (a sort of medieval Tommy Saxondale). Combining folklore motifs with burlesque humor and elements of chansons and chivalric romances, “Rauf Coilyear” is a lively but rarely-read tale of courtesy, hospitality, and knighthood. To my knowledge, it’s also the only medieval romance in which Charlemagne totally gets slapped in the face.

Because enough people found the earlier version both readable and entertaining, I’m pleased to make The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier available as a snazzy 56-page paperback. The translation—which imitates the form of the original in 75 thirteen-line rhyming, alliterative stanzas—is freshly polished and lightly annotated, and the bibliography is current. I’m offering this little book as a literary curiosity, an experiment in self-publishing, and a way to help defray the costs of maintaining this blog.

To order a paperback copy of The Tale of Charlemagne and Ralph the Collier, please send $12.50 via Paypal to jeffsypeck -at- gmail -dot- com. (That price includes U.S. shipping. Please add $2 for shipping to Canada and Mexico or $4 if you’re outside North America.) Be sure to include your mailing address; you’ll receive a book in around two weeks.

To download a version specially formatted for the Amazon Kindle, just pop by the Kindle store.

To receive a 572 KB, DRM-free PDF of this book via email, please send $5 via Paypal to jeffsypeck- at- gmail -dot- com. (I ask only that you honor my request not to redistribute the PDF.)

If Paypal doesn’t work for you, email me and I’ll give you an address where you can send a check or money order.

To preview this book, you can see a low-res PDF of sample pages or view larger images of the front and back cover.

No one else has ever translated “Rauf Coilyear” into rhyming, alliterative, modern English verse, and I doubt anyone else will be nutty enough to try—so whether you’re a longtime reader of this blog, a student of medieval literature, or a collector of truly obscure manifestations of Charlemagniana, I hope you’ll find this translation a satisfying read. Despite what Mamillius claimed, sometimes a sad tale isn’t best for winter after all.

Gasch’s Guide to Gargoyles and Other Grotesques says that this bone-clutching critter on the north nave of the National Cathedral is a basenji, an African dog that can’t bark but does tend to yodel. Our neighborhood basenji earned his place in the 1959-1960 gargoyle design competition; his artist, as you’ll see, is already the subject of apocrypha.

EPIPHANY

Bereft of bark, I bat my bone about,
And do my simple service as a spout,
And in my mind I romp across the grass
And nip at skirt-clad ankles as they pass,
And let no lofty insight cloud my brain;
Discernment falls and drips away, like rain.
…but once, a sunny pilgrim made me think:
Her left hand clutched a sketch-pad sopped with ink,
Her right hand led her son—and in my spine,
I knew those hands determined my design.
That sprinkler-misty morning, I awoke
And listened to my maker as she spoke:
“Imagine: When a thousand years have flown,
We’ll look up and see this pup-spout of our own.”
The boy stepped back suspiciously and said,
“I hope by then we’re looking down instead.”

Having spent years watching Washingtonians pass beneath him, the elephant on the west facade of the National Cathedral has lost all patience for us. While the old line about elephants never forgetting is generally true, it’s just as true that elephants don’t remember what they’ve read in ways that we smaller-brained creatures would consider logical. As such, this discontented bibliophile sees the city through his own singleminded filter. You know how elephants are.

UBI SUNT QUI ANTE NOS CONCULCAVERUNT?

Send for some plaid piper; let him march the mice away:
Staffers squeak and scatter into fifty shades of gray.
No heroes hold the hilltop hall, nearby presides a fool;
Let Shanthi and Kandula and Ambika romp and rule!
Come, my trunk-faced children! Stomp from Carthage to the Alps.
Make the Romans quaver from their sandals to their scalps!
Send for Ethiopians, with war-mounts wont to kneel
By the walls of war-torn Mecca, and watch Abrahama reel.
Send for Greeks where tesserae wash up along the strand;
Find tuskers in the market tracing crosses in the sand.
Send riders out to Roncesvalles; let Roland raise his horn!
Bring Isaac and Abul Abaz from Baghdad’s bangled bourn.
Send for steeds from Siam, where we didn’t yield an inch!
Send for Blair in Burma (though he’ll shoot you in a pinch),
And Wallinger and Buckingham and one who hears a (who?)
And Jumbo (how?) and Jim Crow (what?) and Samwise Gamgee too.
Send for (ah!) Ganesha on a ten- or twelve-arm day!
Let trunks transform to trumpets, blow bureaucracy away,
And laugh as legends leap and lunge and light up dull D.C.!
(And if, at last, nobody comes, then maybe send for me.)

(The blogger apologizes to Langston Hughes. The elephant, of course, apologizes to no one.)

[UPDATE: Welcome, Books, Inq., readers and followers of the Washington National Cathedral Twitter feed! To read the previous entries in this series, hit the “gargoyles/grotesques” tab. For future entries, check back soon…]

Just above the wild boar on the south nave of Washington National Cathedral are several smaller gargoyles and grotesques. Without binoculars or a zoomable camera, you might easily stroll by without ever noticing them, but it’s worth stopping in front of the garden and looking up. The most interesting critters aren’t about to clamber down to you, however much some of them may in fact desire to do so.

AN OCTOPUS REAPPRAISES HER LOBSTER

I hear the hot breath of the lobster I love;
The trees wilt below us; there’s nothing above.
You snore and I shudder, for sleepless I know
The oath of adventure we swore long ago:

“Between us, our limbs number eighteen in all;
Let’s creep from this tank and slip over the wall
And forever be free! Let’s aspire to perch
On a spire of our own on the loftiest church.”

You clawed at my tentacle, tender and green,
Like the first awkward kiss of a king and his queen.
You scuttled, I swam; through the garden we went.
Where grass gripped the stones, we began our ascent.

A lobster lives long, as no octopus can,
But a lobster has in him but one perfect plan.
I longed for longevity; no girl expects
To ask of her lobster, “So what happens next?”

You curl up contentedly, dreaming of me;
I cling to my cornice and scarcely feel free.
“I won’t let you down,” you once vowed, and I sighed.
I love that you’re honest; I wish you had lied.

It would have been idyllic: basking in the glare of the Adriatic, nudging sleepy turtles in the olive grove, ignoring the pre-recorded pleas of the muezzin that tumble down the mountain…but when a friend invited me to write Becoming Charlemagne at his Montenegrin beach house, I turned him down, just as I had to say “no” to generous offers that might have put me in a cottage in Ireland or poolside in Florida. Traveling with easily-misplaced articles and books felt like a great way to miss a deadline, and I vividly imagined Balkan crime lords challenging me to win back my crate of medieval scholarship in a drinking contest ungoverned by nominal adherence to the rule of law.

My irrational fear of becoming a cautionary tale in The Economist notwithstanding, I’ve kept an eye on the e-book market for a device that does everything I need it to do. A few weeks ago, I was stunned to see a TV commercial for the latest Sony Reader, an obvious attempt to scrape away some market share from the Amazon Kindle. But how big, really, is that market? Amazon hasn’t said how many Kindles are out there. I’ve spotted two Kindles in the wild, and plenty of pundits, media people, and bloggers do go on about them, but the device is hardly ubiquitous. So how un-ubiquitous is the Kindle?

Here are some ratios derived from my latest Becoming Charlemagne royalty statement. I have no idea how typical these numbers are, but here’s where e-book sales stand in the life of one modest, midlist pop-history book that’s been in print for three years:

• Ratio of Kindle copies sold to print copies (hardcover and paperback) sold: 1 : 302 
• Ratio of e-books in all formats sold to print copies (hardcover and paperback) sold: 1 : 47
• Ratio of Kindle copies sold to other e-book formats sold: 1 : 5.45
• Ratio of Kindle copies sold to Microsoft Reader e-books sold: 1 : 3

Interestingly, Kindle sales are lumped under “MOBIPOCKET” on a HarperCollins royalty statement because the Kindle uses that e-book format (and Amazon owns the company), but 16% of the Mobipocket sales for BC occurred before the release of the Kindle in late 2007—so there’s no telling if all the sales I’m ascribing to Kindle even went to Kindle users.

So there it is: e-books account for only 2% of this one book’s total sales, which includes hardcover, paperback, and various e-book formats—and Kindle sales account for no more than 0.3% of total sales.

Perhaps, compared to sales in other genres, these numbers are weirdly low. For all I know, people who read little medieval-themed pop-history books by unknown authors are atypically hostile to e-books or simply aren’t early adapters in general. Maybe people who buy mysteries, science-fiction novels, or political screeds are far more open to new technology?

Whatever the case, while I’d like to be enthusiastic about e-books, I can’t help remembering what Charlemagne said in 793 when his flunkies promised him a canal between the Danube and the Rhine: “When you say it’s going to happen ‘now,’ well, when exactly do you mean?”

Washington National Cathedral is known for its quirky gargoyles, but recently my friends’ five-year-old spotted a relatively mundane beastie around 35 feet up, wedged among the dragons and monsters that overlook the Bishop’s Garden. I imagine this creature must think rather highly of himself. And so I give you…

A SONNET FROM THE BOARTUGUESE

I ask: Did He who made the squirrel make me?
He shaped the petty weevil, slug, and fly:
For as thou art to them, am I to thee,
When ’round the garden durst thou slouch and sigh.
I grin, and father pestilence on high;
I bristle, and beshrivel every leaf;
I twitch an ear, the goldfish gasp and die;
I blink, and roses beg for sweet relief.
Yet tourist, when thou turnst to tend thy grief,
My holy tusks and tail thou shan’t recall,
Though still I mince thy mind with unbelief;
Between these buttressed groves I govern all.
Let dragons thus proclaim in wyrmish lore:
“Among our roosts there ruled a humble boar.”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is perched on the gable,
It searches and lurches, befickled by fable.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten the cat!”
“And what shall we do about that, my child,
What shall we do about that?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is stalking our roof,
Its claw-pricks primeval, primordial proof.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten dear brother!”
“And why can’t we get us another, my child,
Why can’t we get us another?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, alights in the hall,
Its grindings and growlings begrizzled by gall.
The gargoyle, Mother, has eaten poor father!”
“And why must you be such a bother, my child,
Why must you be such a bother?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, is greedy for gore,
Befouled and bedeviled, beframed by the door.
The gargoyle, Mother, is coming for you!”
“And what do you dream I can do, my child,
What do you dream I can do?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, has eaten you whole,
Its hellmaw begobbling you, body and soul.
The gargoyle, Mother, is spitting you out!”
“And why did you have any doubt, my child,
Why did you have any doubt?”

“A gargoyle, Mother, bespews its hot breath,
Its burning and burbling betoken my death.
The gargoyle, Mother, has torn me in two!”
“And why must you mourn only you, my child,
Why must you mourn only you?”

This week, I’m busier than Shane McGowan’s dental team—but here are some spiffy links.

At Writer Beware!, Victoria Strauss compiles recent links about the business of writing.

Much discussion ensues when John Scalzi upbraids the three biggest science fiction magazines for not accepting electronic submissions.

Strange Horizons tells aspiring writers the “stories we’ve seen too often.” So does Clarkesworld: “stories about young kids playing in some field and discovering ANYTHING. (a body, an alien craft, Excalibur, ANYTHING).”

At Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner offer a “turkey city lexicon” of writing errors and hackneyed plots. Heck, the SFWA’s entire roster of writing-advice articles is superb.

Steven Hart serves up a link-rich post about editing, book promotion, and publishing contracts.

Jake Seliger wants to know: What’s the deal with white covers on nonfiction books?

Jason Fisher explains “the Lewis/Tolkien collaboration that might have been (but never was).”

Steven Till points us to John Crowley on the art of historical fiction.

Per Omnia Saecula bravely continues its “bad medieval movie” series.

The following is an open letter to the Sci Fi Channel people.

Dear Sci Fi Channel People:

I write to you with the dogged affection of a spurned but hopeful suitor. Your Sci Fi Channel Original Movies have long provided me with superb background noise for otherwise dreary weekends of writing. I admired Sharks in Venice, I thought Dragon Dynasty was a hoot, and SS Doomtrooper more than satisfied my nostalgia for the entirely unrelated video-game franchise I’m sure you didn’t intend it to resemble at all. You even made an awful sequel to the awful Dungeons and Dragons movie! I should be grateful.

Instead, like the Mansquito tending the juice bar at a Dracula family reunion, I sense a distinct lack of opportunity, and the only sound I hear is forlorn and fruitless sucking.

Let facts be submitted to a candid world: Battlestar Galactica has ended, your parent company is unsteady, and your new name sounds like a social disease. I get that your monster-and-disaster B-movies turn a profit, but when even I can no longer distinguish Croc from Supergator or Frankenfish from Snakehead Terror, then your future is bleak.

With fingers bloody from clinging to the bottom of the midlist, I’m writing to offer two magic words that will rescue your faltering network:

Becoming Charlemagne.

We’ll start, as Battlestar Galactica did, with a miniseries—but unlike effects-driven productions that require custom sets and scores of Canadian character actors, Becoming Charlemagne: The Miniseries will be a model of parsimony. Given Sci Fi’s substantial catalog of wholly owned intellectual property, we can easily edit and re-dub scenes from Minotaur, Ogre, Gryphon, Grendel, Wyvern, Dragon Sword, Dragon Storm, and Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy to craft a Charlemagne narrative that is as entertaining as it is astonishingly thrifty.

After the miniseries proves viable, we’ll frugally film the resulting Becoming Charlemagne: The Series on location in the Balkans. My contacts in the Belgrade suburbs can ply our army of extras with homemade moonshine, perhaps in lieu of pay. To ensure a smooth transition, the miniseries should establish the existence of Brutalist architecture in ninth-century Aachen, an anachronism that only inflexible purists will decry.

I understand that television executives don’t leap gaily into edgy, cerebral projects—so if it helps, think of Becoming Charlemagne: The Series as “Battlestar Galactica in the woods.” The parallel with Charlemagne’s legendary Twelve Peers speaks for itself (”there are many copies, and they have a plan”), but if medieval jargon leaves you cold, feel free to substitute more familiar language. A Saxon, for example, might profitably be thought of as a tree Cylon. An angel in a hot red dress is hardly out of the question.

While you ponder my proposal, I’ll continue my vigil outside the bedroom windows of Sci Fi executives, raising my boom box aloft in an attempt to sell you on my other marketable idea: a starkly “reimagined” version of the failed 1992 series Covington Cross. Graphic medieval violence is, I believe, the resolution of all your fruitless searches, and while there are certainly worse shows we could remake, market research proves that the smart money flocks to projects in which the Skye is always the color of Ione.

Yours in sacré Charlemania,

Jeff

cc: Steven Spielberg; Peter Jackson; Christopher Tolkien; Rosamund McKitterick; Pierre Riché; John Rhys-Davies; Mirek Topolánek, President, European Union; Steve Voigt, President, King Arthur Flour Company; Coolio

No one has ever asked me how I celebrated when my agent sold my book, but if someone did, I’d answer, “by eating an ostrich in the Philippines.” In August 2004, I was visiting friends in Manila, and getting the good news was just part of a strange and memorable trip. I took a ferry to Corrigedor and watched nearly a hundred people get seasick, I shopped at one of the big Muslim pearl markets, and I dined at what was, during its brief existence, the world’s only all-Spam restaurant. The landscape was beautiful, the poverty was palpable and sad, and the people were quirky—and I fondly remember it all once a month, when a Filipino telemarketer leaves me an answering-machine message praising my book and offering to help me promote it.

BookWhirl may have a Wisconsin mailing address, but they’ve told as least one blogger that they’re in Iowa, and the small print on their Web site attributes copyright to Yen Chen Support, an outsourcing firm with a call center in the Filipino province of Cebu. From their island stronghold in Southeast Asia, BookWhirl minions have pestered such authors as Piers Anthony, Lee Goldberg, and April Henry, but all in vain. Their questionable services include a press release campaign; the “Online Directory Listing,” which involves posting advertisements “to various sites that have high traffic rates”; and the “Email Marketing Advertisement,” which should settle any remaining concern about the need to secure honest employment for exiled Nigerian princes.

Oddly—or perhaps not—the BookWhirl site lists not a single endorsement, ringing or otherwise, from any of the 130 mostly self-published authors who’ve used their services, and the professional qualifications of the BookWhirl staff are an enigma coated in ube and wrapped in the deep-fried milkfish of mystery. The company touts its “experienced team of online marketing strategists, ad copywriters, graphic artists, and web designers,” but neither their Web site nor any of their tiresome press releases list the name of anyone with publishing or marketing experience. In fact, the Web site lists no employee names at all.

I haven’t the foggiest idea why BookWhirl thinks they can help me. Their unsolicited calls probably violate federal law, and I don’t support their efforts to profit from the gullible. Still, the next time I get that call from Cebu, I’ll enjoy hearing someone who hasn’t read my book tell me how thrilling he found it. He’s just doing his job, and he can’t possibly know how silly he sounds, but aspiring writers can learn from his folly: empty praise is a service you don’t have to pay for.