By John Hood
RALEIGH — I once wrote a musical play with a character who spoke almost exclusively in words beginning with “a.” The practice was, in her own words, “awesome” and “awfully annoying.”
Her appellation was Alpha. Actually, she was the first volume of an encyclopedia come to life. Most characters in the show, Turn the Page, were either books or electronic devices transformed into people. It wasn’t as weird as it sounds, but I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. The musical was last performed more than two decades ago, by a teen theater troupe in Raleigh.
Far more accomplished artists than I have alliterated (or assonated) their way to fame and fortune. Although the word itself was coined in the 15th century by Italian humanist Giovanni Pontano, the literary device is ancient. You’ll find alliteration in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit verse. Germanic-language epics such as the Poetic Edda, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Beowulf also exhibit it.
Indeed, one of the most insightful interpreters of the latter work, Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien, discussed in depth the allure of alliteration in his article “On Translating Beowulf.” It was a device Tolkien wielded widely in his own fiction, including The Lord of the Rings. In a subsequent analysis of alliteration, his friend and fellow fantasist C.S. Lewis furnished the following frolic:
We were talking of dragons, Tolkien and I
In a Berkshire bar. The big workman
Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe
All the evening, from his empty mug
With gleaming eye glanced towards us;
‘I seen ’em myself’, he said fiercely.
For me, a former 4-Her, alliteration has long served as a memory aid. When describing the major themes present in my first historical-fantasy novel, Mountain Folk — much of it set in 18th century North Carolina — I used four Hs: history, heroes, heritage, and human nature. For its sequel Forest Folk, I went with four Fs: folklore, faith, freedom, and facades (in the sense that appearances can be deceiving, in both speculative fiction and human experience).
Well, the third novel in the series, Water Folk, has just been published. Set primarily in the middle of the 19th century, it also contains North Carolina content but journeys farther afield to depict events in Missouri, Oklahoma, the American Southwest, and the high seas. Its characters include historical figures such as Sam Houston, Santa Anna, and North Carolina Senator Willie Mangum as well as dwarfs, elves, nymphs, and a seafaring minotaur.
Can you guess where this is going? I can summarize the major themes of the novel with, yep, four Ws: waterways, writers, wisdom, and wrath.
Much of the plot of Water Folk occurs on or around bodies of water: springs, ponds, lakes, and rivers as well as the North Atlantic and South Pacific. Waterways can present a paradox, cultivating commerce and civilization but sometimes conveying catastrophe (as we North Carolinians know all too well).
As for writers, they often appear as characters in my chronicles. Washington Irving encounters Ichabod Crane and something of a headless horseman. Edgar Allan Poe rolls his eyes at Davy Crockett. Herman Melville gains inspiration from a surprising source.
Wisdom and intelligence aren’t synonymous, as any regular role-playing gamer will grasp. In Water Folk, various human and nonhuman characters chase after knowledge without fully understanding what that knowledge will bring. They are smart fools.
Another tragic flaw I explore is the inability to control anger. Recall how Alexander Pope’s translation of The Iliad begins: “The wrath of Peleus’ son, the direful spring / Of all the Grecian woes, O goddess sing!” As it happens, one of the Water Folk characters prone to self-destructive wrath, Sam Houston, was in real life a Homer devotee who could quote long stretches of The Iliad from memory — and does so in my tale.
I still write newspaper columns and magazine pieces to inform and influence. Now, with my fiction, my intent is to illuminate and inspire. Interested?
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
