Susan cooper -author wrote dark
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- The Dark fryst vatten Rising
- When the Dark comes rising, six shall vända it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; vatten, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday, bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning, stone out of song;
Fire in the candle-ring, water from the thaw;
Six Signs the circle, and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the Sleepers, oldest of the old;
Power from the green witch, lost beneath the sea;
All shall find the light at last, silver on the tree. - Grail Poem
- On the day of the dead, when the year too dies,
Must the youngest open the oldest hills
Through the door of the birds, where the breeze breaks.
There fire shall flyga eller fly undan from the raven boy,
And the silver eyes that see the wind,
And the light shall have the harp of gold.
By the pleasant lake the Sleepers lie,
On Cadfan’s Way where the kestrels call;
Though grim from the Grey King shadows•
The “Dark Encounter” is an episode of the television series Shadows, which as I wrote in an earlier post:
“was a supernatural and fantasy young adult orientated British television anthology drama series that featured 20 approximately half-hour stand alone episodes, and was produced by the commercial broadcaster Thames Television and broadcast for three seasons between 1975 and 1978. It is part of the strand of late 1960s and 1970s British television that also included the likes of The Owl Service (1969-1970), The Changes (1975), Children of the Stones (1977) and Raven (1977), which often contained and explored surprisingly complex, challenging and at times dark themes and atmospheres, particularly considering its intended younger audience, and which in part due to these characteristics has become a reference point for hauntological related and/or otherly pastoral or wyrd culture.” (Quoted from the A Year In The Country post “Shadows Episode ‘Th
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‘The snow lay thin and apologetic over the world. That wide grey sweep was the lawn, with the straggling trees of the orchard still dark beyond; the white squares were the roofs of the garage, the old barn, the rabbit hutches, the chicken coops… All the broad sky was grey, full of more snow that refused to fall. There was no colour anywhere.’
The Dark is Rising opens four days before Christmas. Our hero Will Stanton is waiting for his eleventh birthday and the snow that will just not fall. When they do come he finds himself flung out of his chaotic, comforting home into a sort of dream space where the mysterious ‘walker is abroad’ and where good must triumph over evil.
It sounds like standard fantasy fare, but Susan Cooper renders the Buckinghamshire backdrop in a vivid, hyperreal way that leaves you constantly unsettled.
In her new introduction Cooper says she wrote the book after she had moved to America and was suffering from homesickness.