You know how Alice gets lost down the rabbit hole? Well, friends, last week, I went down my own particular rabbit hole. I had the honor and the privilege of reviewing Hilary Mantel’s stunning new novel, The Mirror and the Light (more on that later). But to do that on deadline meant reading (and analyzing and absorbing and then writing about) 764 pages in less than a week. I love Mantel – and was amazed by this book – but I can tell you that was still difficult. Not being able to read the Sunday papers was a particular hardship.
You’d think that with an assignment like that, I’d just straight-out read. But with a book as rich as this one, there are too many distractions. I thought I understood “dotty poll” (p. 100) in context, but did I have it right? What about “megrim” (p. 473) (which, yes, is a precursor of “migraine”)? But what really tripped me up was a reference to the “mouldwarp” – and the “Mouldwarp King” (on pages 327 and 438) Huh? That led me from a Google search to essays on the Pilgrimage of Faith, a mass protest of Henry VIII’s disconnect from the Catholic Church (among other things). A few hours were lost down there… but so much more was found.
Therefore, I am taking the liberty of sharing these excerpts on “The Mouldwarp King” from the Invisible Works UK blog. (You can see my review in this Sunday’s Boston Globe or here.)
Guest post: Martyn Hudson
Like badgers in channels of hypocausts devoid of fire,
The Mouldwarps scatter the cairns of our mothers,
And the bogs hold our fathers pinned to wicker.[1]
The mole is an ‘earth-thrower’ – a mouldywarp, molywarppe, moudiwarp, mouldwarp, moldwarp. The collision between the mole and folklore has often been to the detriment of the mole. In lore a severed paw of the mole, if worn in a bag around the neck could cure toothache and scrofula – the ‘King’s Evil’. Moles won’t touch earth stained by blood, if moles dig deep a dark winter is coming, moles are blind. The blind or hardly-seeing mole is a recurrent motif in folklore and literature but although the mole does have anatomical regression of its eyes due to its burrowing below ground they can see. Their lives are about the conquest and consumption of earthworms in the dark.
But the mouldwarp is also a recurrent feature of political prophecies throughout the medieval period and up to our own. …
… the local folklore of the Mouldwarp, linked as it was to both witches and prophecy, would move beyond these moors and dales to affect the course of the realm above – leading many of the proponents of the prophecy themselves to the lands of the dead. The so-called Mouldwarp prophecies recurred time and time again (in their extant forms without an original source) in the medieval period as part of the Book of Merlin. They were used as coded assaults on kingship and certain specific kings like Henry IV but found their epitome during the Pilgrimage of Grace and the northern rebellion against Henry VIII. As A.G. Dickens has said – the Pilgrimage ‘was riddled with rumour, fable, folklore and prophecy, particularly by those prophecies concerning the rise and fall of kings which are traceable to the writings of Geoffrey of Monmouth and which had appeared in former occasions, for example in the days of Hotspur and Henry IV’.[10] The predominantly Catholic uprising used the Mouldwarp prophecies as its ideological ballast in its contest with Henry but the Mouldwarp motifs had previously been used by the Lollards and early protestant reformers.
Again, you can read more here: https://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/the-mouldwarp-king/
I read a review of Mantel’s latest book (not your review) yesterday. Praised it to the heavens. Best novel of the century! Absolutely five stars. I haven’t read any of them. We have book one. Hans started and bogged down. This was such a bloody age and the older I grow the less interested I am in extreme violence. So. . . maybe will check out book I.
But I want to read your review. The Globe? That is a big honor, because this is obviously a big book.
Yes, the Globe. I review for them regularly, but to be able to do this book – possibly the biggest book of the season and the (probably) final work by my favorite living author… no pressure! I do hope you give her a chance. She is amazing. (I also absolutely adore and recommend her “A Place of Greater Safety,” an all-time fave, which I re-read regularly, and her harrowing “Beyond Black.”)
I’m halfway through the last novel & find very little of these books dwell on the detail of the appalling violence of the time but enough to make ones blood run cold: so glad I didn’t live then! The bulk is in the development of Cromwell’s character & internal reasoning: His astute negotiation of the complex court intrigues & the numerous competing aristocratic houses, against the backdrop of international affairs, where a misstep could lead to murder or the gallows. Highly atmospheric reading & an extraordinary life.
I think the violence, etc., is syntonic – it was just part of life. I love how Mantel shows it to us, and yet also shows that it was simply the way things were. Glad you’re enjoying.
Absolutely love her books, waited for such a long time it seemed for mirror and the light ! Do tend to rush through books but then re read more than once !
I wish she wrote faster. Sigh.
I am reading it now, and love it as I loved the other two. And I’ve been obsessed with the Mouldwarp King for days now.
Yes,LOVE! And as an American, I esp love all the juicy little words like bodge and assoil and dotty poll. My list grows so, and I must keep phone nearby to track them. Thankfully I read very slowly so the savoring is all the more prolonged. Will search up your review. Thanks for getting past mole references to the real meaning of mouldswarp! Recommending j p hartley: eustace and hilda.
I’ve only read Wolf Hall – fascinating.
What are her other books?
Is there a chronological order… or a sequence?
Or does each novel stand alone?
Wolf Hall is the first on a trilogy! “Bring Up the Bodies” and “The Mirror and the Light” complete the story — though (as I’ve said) I’m particularly fond of the French Revolution standalone “A Place of Greater Safety.”