turning to William Morris in need of beauty

 ….to remove from horrors and the din I desperately reach to take a familiar page from —a— somewhere else

   —like a ‘News from Nowhere’ 

    to a great and safe and very distant land out of the present I love to take a break with Mr. Morris.The rebel Textile mogul from The Arts and Crafts Movement of the Industrial Revolutionary times —who is actually the little known father of Fantasy/Scifi. 

His work in fiction and art has been well known to have inspired Tolkien; was part of the PreRaphaelites and ‘the Birmingham Set’ while at Oxford

William Morris is a page in my dictionary; an artistic muse hero for me; 

The novel opens like a grand adventure; like some middle earth midlands

In his style here one may see how he inspired another local to write a series of stories which became their own folktale of epic legends 

 from the House of the Wolfings by William Morris

“The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream….”

continues pages later, 

“Now the name of this House was the Wolfings, and they bore a Wolf on their banners, and their warriors were marked on the breast with the image of the Wolf, that they might be known for what they were if they fell in battle, and were stripped. The house, that is to say the Roof, of the Wolfings of the Mid-mark stood on the topmost”

So drawn into wonder with these words of great adventure— where will it lead us to?

“ …the men of one House might not wed the women of their own House: to the Wolfing men all Wolfing women were as sisters: they must needs wed with the Hartings or the Elkings or the Bearings, or other such Houses of the Mark as were not so close akin to the blood of the Wolf; and this was a law that none dreamed of breaking. Thus then dwelt this Folk and such was their Custom….”

Legends have many meanings 

 the most fun come with great and detailed hand drawn maps that have interesting word symbols with forests and valleys and unknown creatures