Let Us Ride To ... Camelot!

 

Wideo Wednesday: What I've Been Watching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6FP8S3u28

The Shadow of the Tower, Episode 1: Crown in Jeopardy

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhs1vGBRLf4&list=PLYStFnmqabhIG0NNsDZzjh5zT6Q5vnmhU

Wodehouse Playhouse: Romance at Droitgate Spa

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rMnsy8fp5I

Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: The Nine Tailors, Episode 1

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMxB96KoQ2A

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, 1970

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxG9tDK9MAo

Jimmy Akin on The Next Pope

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VGrwETTKOc

Joseph Pearce, The Authority, St. Robert Southwell 

Well, my watching of Elizabeth R. for my Shakesperean jag last week led me to The Shadow of the Tower (1972), a BBC series made after The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970) and Elizabeth R. (1971) but chronologically taking place before either, as it's about Henry the VII, the much-wived Henry's father. YouTube is missing Episodes 9, 10, and 11, so I imagine if I am ever going to see the whole saga I'll have to buy the collection. The first disc of my Elizabeth R. looks splotchy anyway and wouldn't play even after cleaning. These Seventies BBC offerings have such superior acting and filming you soon ignore the somewhat primitive stage sets. "They built up with their bare hands what we still can't build today."

Someone has also uploaded the whole series of Wodehouse Playhouse, a puckish collection of tales, some of which I caught on its first run here on PBS back in the day. I can finally see them all. "Romance at Droitgate Spa" is the episode (second in series 1) that I remember most fondly, but they're all worth a gander.

I missed most of the Ian Carmichael run of Lord Peter Wimsey (1972 -1975); I remember catching an episode or two over at Nanny's during college, reruns no doubt. Now I'm watching them on my phone while I make supper. "The Nine Tailors" is one of the five Dorothy L. Sayers books adapted during this era.

And my Merlin whirl led me to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1970). I didn't even remember it until my research reminded me I had memories. It might be what prompted us to get the Classics Illustrated comics magazine of the tale.

Since Pope Francis's passing everything has been in a tizzy about choosing the next Pope. Jimmy Akin gives his thoughts on the process and who might be in the running. Personally I favor Cardinal Robert Sarah, for many reasons. Although he's already 79, he could still have a good decade in him.

And my Shakespearean thoughts also took me to an episode of The Authority, a series by Robert Pearce about authors in what has been called The Great Conversation. St. Robert Southwell was a poet and contemporary of William Shakespeare during the Tudor persecutions. Southwell was martyred and eventually sainted. There's an episode of The Authority about Shakespeare, too.

Family Lore, Family Recipe

For supper tonight I made ‘dipdip’ noodles for a side dish, basically just macaroni made with tomato sauce; ‘dipdips’ is our family name. I’ve been avoiding pasta rather regularly for my diet, but as there was a cup of it left over and everyone had had their fill, I decided I might indulge. Besides, it’s not at its best when eaten after saved by refrigeration. I remarked to my sister that I was a little trepidatious about it; it would be a shame if thanks to my medication my taste had changed, and I no longer enjoyed the dish named after me. She showed some surprise. She thought that I had only named the dish, not that it was named after me. That surprised me, but then she only came on the scene when it had long been established in family lore.

And thereby hangs a tale, of sorts. It has nothing to do with dip of the chip dunking variety. When I was very small, my nicknames abounded. One I remember that Mom was very fond of was ‘Bee Wee Bottow’, mimicking how I (BB), as a toddler, would ask for a bottle. But all the ‘B’s in my name also got me ‘Bippity Boppity Boo’ (Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo) from an old Disney record, or ‘Bippity’ or even somehow ‘Bip-Bip-a-Dip’. Because tomato sauce noodles was one of my favorite dishes, they were called ‘Bip Bip’ noodles, which morphed to ‘Dip Dip’ noodles or even just ‘dips’ in time.

The classic form of ‘dips’ is made with macaroni noodles, though egg noodles or shells are an acceptable variation. A dash of parmesan cheese is a good addition, and there is even a named variant, ‘dips with woost’ (Worchestershire sauce) which is how many of the family like to eat them to this day.

The recipe makes one of the simplest and most savory of comfort foods (of our family). For every one cup of elbow macaroni (dry) you add one 8 ounce can of tomato sauce. For a ‘lighter’ version you can use one 8 ounce can to two cups of macaroni. After you’ve cooked the macaroni, you drain, put it back in the pot, and add a couple of tablespoons of butter. Stir, and when the butter’s melted you add the sauce, then salt and pepper to taste. Thus is the alchemy performed.

There was a rather unpleasant variant that happened in our childhood from time to time. This was macaroni made with a can of stewed tomatoes seasoned with pepper and salt. I remember picking out the seedy, stringy tomatoes with a shudder and moving them to the side of my plate. It has not been made again since I started cooking for the family. Canned tomatoes are acceptable but only in a spaghetti sauce or chili if added to actual tomato sauce, but not otherwise. 

 

 

The Figure of Merlin

There’s no telling how long I’ve been fascinated by the figure of Merlin. Probably the first time I ever saw him was in his T. H. White/Walt Disney incarnation, in the clip of the ‘Wizard’s Duel’ from The Sword in the Stone, that was shown on The Wonderful World of Disney each year at Christmas. But he was everywhere in children’s programming when I was small.

In King Arthur and the Square Knights of the Round Table (1966; 1969, American release) Merlin is a force for good, King Arthur’s wise man; in  the 1970 CBS: Famous Classic Tales version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court Mark Twain’s Merlin is a villain, the epitome of the superstition, chicanery, and ignorance of Twain’s perceived version of the Middle Ages; in The Saturday Superstar Movie of The Adventures of Robin Hoodnik (1972) he appeared as Whirlin’ Merlin, a magician for hire engaged by the bad guys; in the 1972 The Brady Kids animated show, Larry Storch voiced Marlon, a magical bird expy of the famed magician, and his old pal Merlin, a beardless, W. C. Fields sound-alike even appears in one episode. Merlin appeared as a figure representing the artist in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao, a movie that was often on TV.

In Fourth Grade Jerry Williams brought a comic book to class, DC’s The Demon #1, that featured Merlin as a catalyst to Jason Blood’s back story. In Fifth Grade I read Blanch Winder’s Stories of King Arthur and was enchanted: the first few stories were about Merlin and his origins, perhaps the first place I ever saw Merlin young before being a bearded sage. Then came Middle School and Merlin was let loose.

I graduated into the next level of Merlin. Howard Pyle’s King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, actually reading T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave (another young Merlin tale), all were in the Briesemeister library. Even in The Dark is Rising Merriman Lyon, the Oldest of the Old Ones, was Merlin, a fact I might have known right away if Under Sea, Under Stone (the first book in the series) had been available.

High school took me to the research phase on Merlin. Geoffrey Ashe was the main Arthurian scholar then, in search of the historical origins of King Arthur and his court, including how the figure of Merlin developed. Those were the years that The Book of Merlyn (T. H. White’s unpublished conclusion to his Matter of Britain books) came out, as did John Steinbeck’s unfinished The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights. I read C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength, where the awakened Merlin plays a pivotal part. Towards the end of high school, I read Merlin by Robert Nye, which drew on a lot of the original sources as well as on scurrilous humor.

While in college, a lot of those original sources became available to me, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory and Spencer and so on, including drips and dabs from medieval tales. That was when I read Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex, where of course Merlin appears in the early chapters. The movie Excalibur (1981) featured Nicol Williamson as the mercurial magician.

And so it goes. Merlin is a character of greater or lesser importance in dozens of books (many of dubious quality, but I had to look into them), TV series (I might mention the 2008 BBC series – which I never watched, or the 1998 Sam Neill miniseries), and films since then, so many in fact I cannot keep up with them, nor I doubt could anybody. Merlin is even an ‘historical figure’ in the Harry Potter mythos. Villain, hero, youth, sage, bard, devil, wizard – Merlin continues to fill all those niches, and may well continue to do so through all time.

Roscoe Lee Browne as Merlin in the 1978 Once Upon a Classic episode, "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"