Hello, Companions! I must be in love... because I've just spent the last twelve+ hours editing, correcting, and adding to the Prydain Wiki -- and Great Belin, I'm exhausted!
My reasons for being here are clear. I've loved Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain since I was a wee lad in the late 1970s, and I've re-read the series many times over the years. Recently I've begun reading the books out-loud to my loverly and appreciate wife, Joanna, doing all the accents and voices, and trying to get the emotions and tonalities just right for her delight or dismay, as the narrative demands. Currently we're on Book Three, about half-way through the series, and she is loving it almost as much as I am.
Noah @ Sherwood, 2010
In introducing her to the books (she is an ardent fantasist but has never read Prydain), I've also delved into my cache of drawings and maps, and have rekindled my deep and heartfelt admiration of these characters, and of the world-within-a-world that Mr. Alexander created in the mid-1960s, just a few years before my birth. I suddenly feel like I'm on fire with creativity, inspired to re-shape old, unfinished drawings into new and striking works, as I re-visit my old friends and beloved locales. This in turn has fueled my drive to add details, upload pictures and correct errors as I see them to the 250+ entries in this wonderful Wiki.
My ultimate goal, which I hope I share with the other masterful contributors here, is to have at the end of our endeavor a complete and thorough Prydain Companion, replete with drawings, maps, and fully loaded and interconnected entries for each of the characters, places, objects, animals, creatures and concepts found in Mr. Alexander's brilliant and inspiring series. The end of that journey is probably some distance away... but I feel certain I can see it, just over the crest of that hill, where that marsh-bird is flying on a breeze salty with the brine of the sea. Or is that a swamp I'm headed toward? Oh no! Could it be I've missed my mark, and am now mired in the Marshes of Morva?
Heh. No matter. I'll find my way. And I hope you'll all join me... companions in adventure, creativity and craft.
From Austin, with love in my heart and a shoe free of stones,
Noah David Henson, vortigern99@yahoo.com