Crab and Bee’s Matter of Britain: Mythlands of Albion

It has been many, many years since I read ‘Matter of Britain’ and even then, it was a condensed version. It was a tough read, being mostly in mediaeval vernacular. As a catalogue of myth and legend, though, I thought it was unsurpassable, despite having to decipher huge tracts of early English with it’s þ, ƿ ð, æ, ȝ, ſ and œ’s littering the page. To be honest, it was only bloody mindedness that got me through it.

Of course, ‘unsurpassable,’ is a term designed to be inaccurate and seemingly only used when an unsurpassable thing has been surpassed. It’s like ‘unsinkable’ in that respect or maybe, ‘This’ll be the best Christmas Walford’s ever had.’

And so ‘Crab and Bee’s Matter of Britain’ comes into being, ushering away the great lost letter’s of the alphabet and replacing the earnestness of the original Matter with something much more approachable, chaotic and gloriously anachronistic.

Subtitled ‘Mythlands of Albion,’ ‘Crab and Bee’s Matter of Britain,’ updates the original, clarifying and obfuscating the source materials; both written and, I suspect, personally collected oral tales. What makes this extraordinary is the feeling of ‘mythic time’ evoked. There are creation myths involving hills and snakes, peculiar ‘sequels’ to modern myth cycles (Pevenseys vs. Hippies being my favourite) and tales of ordinary people thrust into situations destined to become myth.

All of these tales hang in a time between time. They could be now, they could be then, they could be ‘everywhen.’

At various points, I was reminded of Ted Hughes ‘Crow,’ for it’s creation myths and poetry; Snorri Sturlsson’s ‘Elder Edda’ and even tales from the Australian Aboriginal ‘Dream Time.’ Not for content, exactly, but that the events exist in a kind of cyclic time. At that point, we enter the realms of Alan Garner. The sections on Cheddar Gorge particularly resonate with Garner’s work. This is never a bad thing.

These stories within have a universal, Grimm appeal and an impish, gleeful trickerism. This Puckish retelling of legendary tropes is delirious, hypnotic, hallucinogenic and utterly compelling. What was most startling was that in reading the book, there stories became mine. Such is the universality of the tales, that they instantly become part of one’s own personal mythology and you wonder how you ever lived not knowing these stories.

Geoffrey of Monmouth would be proud.

More please.

Buy the book HERE