Woodward: Book Meme

This is my response to being tagged (along with Vehige) by Steven McEvoy at Book Reviews and More. I'll leave it to Vehige to pick further victims.

The book turned out to be the Scribner's edition of The Boy's King Arthur -- Sidney Lanier's modernized and abridged version of Malory's Morte d'Arthur (with N.C. Wyeth's wonderful illustrations). Although it was conceived as a way of making Malory accessible to children (hence the name), this book has yet to capture the fancy of my own two boys, who, at age 8, are still perhaps a bit young for it.

In any event, here is the requisite excerpt from page 56, a rather graphic account of Sir Launcelot hunting a boar. (The gloss on "rove" is Lanier's.)


Then Sir Launcelot ran at the boar with his spear. And therewith the boar turned him nimbly, and rove [gashed] out the lungs and the heart of the horse, so that Sir Launcelot fell to the earth, and or ever Sir Launcelot might get from the horse, the boar rove him on the brawn of the thigh, up to the hough bone. And then Sir Launcelot was wroth, and up he gat upon his feet, and drew his sword, and he smote off the boar's head with one stroke.


Sir Launcelot was admirably slow to become "wroth," wasn't he?