The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights

Last Christmas Adam bought me two children's books by John Masefield, poet and prolific prose writer. Masefield was poet laureate of the U.K. from 1930 until his death in 1967. Click here to see a list of his books. Do you know his work? Perhaps you recognize this snippet of a poem: 

I must go down to the seas again,

to the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall ship

and a star to steer her by.

That's John Masefield.

I'd like to tell you about the two books Adam gave me. He bought lovely new hardbacks with fabric spines, a pleasure to hold. Careful attention was given to these editions, crafted by Dr. Philip Errington, archivist of the John Masefield Society. Masefield's original manuscripts were studied and used. Madeline L'Engle wrote an Afterword to The Midnight Folk, noted to be Masefield's favorite book.

Both books focus on the orphan boy Kay Harker, who lives in his family home, Seekings, and is watched by guardians and a governess. Kay has a vivid imagination. In the earlier book (1927), The Midnight Folk, he joins with various animals and toys to defeat the evil enemies (witches and scoundrels), defend his family's honor, and reclaim long-long treasure. In this book, Masefield's accurate knowledge of sailing ships comes into play. The Midnight Folk shows Kay as a little boy without playmates who seems to invent nighttime adventures from the deep wells of his imagination in order to relieve the dullness of his life with a mean governess. In the end though, his seeming dreams and imaginations are proved real enough. To a child-reader, these fine delineations between real and fancy hardly matter. The fun is in the stories themselves, and Masefield keeps his Plot-Pot full and simmering with plenty for Kay to do. 

Will a modern child enjoy this book, with its many "tellings" and histories and games with Rat and Fox and Otter? L'Engle says, "when I was a child such complex interweaving of strands delighted me more than they confused me." Will an adult enjoy a book that seems to meander from one setting and time to another and another? I made myself stick with it and soon discovered it very enjoyable. As L'Engle says, "This book makes demands on the readers, but it is well worth the trouble." I agree.

The later book (1935), The Box of Delights, is perhaps the more accessible of the two. The plot action is more direct, the magical elements take a back seat, Kay's flights of imagination are diminished, and he has companions, the Jones children: Peter, Jemima, Susan, and the precocious Maria. The expected English children's adventure book plays out: a group of adventurous children find themselves in a large country home over Christmas and are given a task to preserve good and defeat evil, in the face of indifference from the adults around them. Their adventures take them farther afield and involve a broader cast of human characters -- and all of it feels firmly set in the real world. The villains are the same, but the emphasis on witchcraft that's so heavily present in the first book is mostly absent in the second, which is a bit of a relief.

They are very different books, and I enjoyed them both -- the first as one would enjoy a movie from which one emerges blinking from the cinema mumbling, "Well! That was unusual! But I do think I liked it." And the second, like a movie that elicits the more common, "That was great! It reminds me of   pick-any-well-loved-action-movie  . I hope they make a sequel."

Masefield was a poet, so I'll leave you with two of the many songs he inserted into The Midnight Folk for the animals and humans to sing at night. This song is sung by Rat, whose lingo is mangled inscrutably, but who longs for bacon-rind to chew. Kay is able to secure him a nice fat haggis (a somewhat offensive Scottish sausage akin to 'chitlins,' for you Southerners). Rat sings happily to his haggis, which he calls a "Naggy":

Of all the foods as good as tart,

There's none like pretty Naggy;

He warms the cockles of my heart,

Though he is so cold and baggy.

What though the wise eat mutton pies,

Or pasties made of staggy,

To all the wise I makes replies,

Give me my pretty Naggy.

Oh let my jaw lay down and gnaw

Until my teeth are jaggy,

Both cooked and raw the Scots whae ha

My ain braw sonsie Naggy."

Toward the end you see Rat must've taken a bite of the haggis because his dialect drifts into Scottish. Masefield even uses internal rhyme for a Rat eating haggis!

If anybody is still reading (haha!), here's another sweet, brief poem that tells the feelings of a man long dead and shackled who's at last been freed to pursue the next world. His description of relief at his own departure is lovely, as he meets someone waiting for him:

After long years alone,

Ironed to flesh and bone,

It is most sweet to pass

Like wind above the grass,

Free ever, and to find

The waiting mind.

Then to set forth together,

To know the new strange weather,

And where the new road leads;

To put old burdens by,

And have the wind and sky,

Light as the wild-duck's feather

Or dandelion seeds.

What beautiful thinking, for a children's book! If you find copies of these two at your libraries or used book stores, do read them. Masefield should be better known in the U.S. as one of England's finest authors.