Three years ago I blogged about a chidren's book I had read as a youth and was trying to identify.

I read this book sometime between 1977 - 1984, got from a local library in upstate New York where we were for the summer. Here's the details I remember:

* Setting is medieval.

* A young man is lame. He has a vision. (A bridle is somehow involved). He must seek out his namesake to be healed.

* There's a quest to find his namesake. (A warrior, perhaps?)

* At one point, he is with a woman / witch at some standing stones (Stonehenge?). She "opens" them and they're really computers, although he doesn't understand what he's seeing.

Thanks to the folks at Loganberry Books I was able to identify it as The Namesake by C. Walter Hodges. (I was indeed confusing two books -- there's a Stonehenge scene in Namesake but no witches or protocomputers.) It's long out of print, but I finally decided to pick up a used copy.

It's great.

The young man, Alfred, is indeed lame (one-legged, in fact, which in the 9th C was unusual enough that he is regarded with superstition) and he does in fact have that vision -- to give "what is under his hand" to his namesake, in order to become master of his affliction rather than its servant. What's under his hand when he has the vision is an old bridle. His namesake is Alfred, brother of the King of Wessex, Ethelred, who eventually succeeds the throne and becomes Alfred the Great. Most of the book is not, as I remembered, the boy Alfred's quest to find his namesake, but rather what happens after -- how the King takes him in and teaches him to write, and how he helps in the wars against the invading Danes. Most of which is pretty bloody, so I wouldn't give this book to any child under the age of 12. (The pagan Danes don't come off too well, so I probably wouldn't give this to any pagans -- sorry Thudfactor.)

Hodges (about whom there is not much on the web, except his obit) was primarily an illustrator, and he brings an illustrator's eye to his fiction, like Mervyn Peake. There are also some wonderful illustrations in the book.

The thing that I liked best about this was how it made the history of 1,100 years ago seem alive -- I know that sounds like a 7th grade book report statement but it's true. King Alfred comes across as wise and noble but also real. After reading this I found myself wishing that Mrs. Sherman was still alive, so I could send her a copy. She would have loved it.

There's a sequel, The Marsh King, which I'm hoping to get a copy of soon.

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