In his recent children's novel, Gary Gregg taps into a wealth of Celtic history and legend to craft a story which is one part adventure, one part coming-of-age story, and one part exploration of Scottish heritage. A review of The Sporran.
The Sporran
by Dr. G.L. Gregg
published by Butler Books (January 30, 2007)
Hdbk., 300 pgs.
ISBN-10: 1884532888
ISBN-13: 978-1884532887
He told Jacob of how there are a number of sporrans in the world, not all of which look quite like the traditional Scottish purse, but all of which hold great powers. They have been around since we began to remember and can be traced into the ancient Celtic people of northern Europe, Britain, and Ireland.
As a realm rich in culture, Scotland offers countless possibilities to the fantasist. Gary Gregg — political philosopher, teacher, and director of the University of Louisville's Mitch McConnell Center– has tapped into that wealth of Celtic history and legend to forge his multilayered children’s novel The Sporran, a story which is one part adventure, one part coming-of-age story, and one part exploration of Scottish heritage.
A “sporran,” we learn, is the ornate pouch worn on the front of a Scottish kilt. The sporran of the title arrives as a mysterious gift for the tale’s protagonist, Jacob Boyd. Jacob is a small-town American lad who is as refreshingly normal (his thoughts tend more toward baseball and getting a dog than getting a tattoo) as he is refreshingly imaginative (he prefers “thinking about ancient battles” over vegetating in front of a television).
Jacob regards his newly-acquired treasure skeptically at first – the amusingly self-conscious boy notes with disconcertion that the sporran bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a girl’s purse, much as one uninitiated to Highlander garb might mistake a kilt for a skirt. Yet Jacob soon learns that sporrans, far from being signs of effeminacy, are in fact the trademark of warriors – and Jacob’s particular sporran is a relic of the past possessing powers that are — quite literally — unfathomable. It is a bottomless pouch — a sort of trans-dimensional pocket.
For in Gregg’s mythos Scotland lies at the heart of an ancient order dedicated to defending the flame of virtue from the icy grip of evil, and such amazing tools are a part of their trade. This order is comprised of those who – like Jacob – have been entrusted with the use of sporrans, which can be described in one sense as a cousin to the archetypical magician’s hat, from which all manner of unexpected items may be drawn out at the moment of need.
The responsibility of carrying the sporran draws Jacob to Scotland – that nation’s mass of ancient history and lore exerting an irresistible gravity on him, forcing him to cope with booby-traps, riddles, dragons, assassins, and spectral knights. In the process Jacob (and the reader) become acquainted with a motley and eccentric crew of friends, the “order of the Sporrai:” A scholarly motorcyclist, a pair of diminutive elfin undercover agents — and an intelligent pug named Mr. Nibbles, who is in the habit of riding in motorcycle sidecars, sporting tiny doggie-goggles and a biker’s vest.
With these allies at his side Jacob struggles against sinister forces in a race to recover the legendary Lia Fail – the “Stone of Destiny,” a sort of mystical lodestone which is charged with the fate of the British Isles, if not that of the world.
The most obvious comparison to The Sporran would be the recent Harry Potter series – a boy discovers fantastic, hidden forces and is chosen to be a hero in a battle between good and evil. Yet the differences are striking, and well worth considering.
The most obvious difference of course is that it is unlikely that Dr. Gregg – an admirer of the late Russell Kirk — will any time soon attempt to identify any of his protagonists with any of the (politically-privileged) oppressed class any time soon. This is in sharp contrast to Rowling, who recently made waves by announcing to all the children who are fans of her books that Dumbledore is a homosexual – a lame gesture toward avante-garde publicity-seeking at which even some liberals have rolled their eyes. It is also worth noting that the villains of the Potter series are almost always associated with the aristocracy – as if the message children need to hear in our semi-barbaric, historically-unconscious age is that evil is the product of gentlemen, of refinement and cultivation and tradition.
This brings up the contrast of Jacob’s mentor and guide, Professor Chadwick von Niblick, who could just as easily be a character-sketch of a genuine conservative intellectual of the old school. For that matter, even the colorful description of von Niblick’s parlor is based on Kirk's – complete with sword and armor over the fireplace. Those fortunate enough to have encountered such real-life, old-school conservatives will find nothing implausible about this learned, earthy-yet-eccentric gentleman who combines enthusiasms for pipes and motorcycles with a deep knowledge of ancient lore. True diversity is found not in tiresome innovation for innovation’s sake, but in the comradeship of those guardians of what T.S. Eliot called “the permanent things.” The treasures of the novel are themselves symbols of those permanent things.
And to the tradition of guarding the permanent things Gregg adds the point that they are not only treasures to be protected, but that they themselves lend us strength in our hour of need and are implements for securing the safety of the human race:
As the centuries passed, word of its [the Lia Fail’s] whereabouts eventually found its way to the great enemies of the Sporrai, those who would turn the world upside down by making right wrong and wrong right.
Forming an alliance with Viking marauders, the enemy invaded Ireland in the first years of the fifth century. In a cataclysmic battle on the shores of eastern Ireland, the Sporrai and other Irish monks faced the Vikings with an enemy of light at their head. Lia Fail helped keep the Vikings at bay for many days.
On a more fundamental level, it should be pointed out that The Sporran is not escapist in any sense. For example, the world of Harry Potter, boy magician, truly is “the world of Harry Potter” – that is, it is another reality, in much the same way that Hollywood or academia is another reality. The happy alternative universe of Hogwarts is simultaneously liberated from conventions and “bourgeois sensibilities” while lacquered with a veneer of Western European folklore so as to keep it interesting.
The adventures of Jacob — who is not a magician, one may note — take place in the real world — albeit a real world made fresh by a few strokes of what Kirk calls “the sword of imagination.” Gregg’s substantive knowledge of and loyalty to his Celtic inheritance tells throughout his narrative – from the campus of St. Andrews to Edinburgh Castle to Feddinch House.
This should come as no surprise to those familiar with Dr. Gregg's work as a nonfiction writer — as one of the foremost biographers and scholars of George Washington's life and impact, the question of how characters and plot tie into historical and cultural context seems second nature to him. Gregg is one of those for whom history is above all a story — as much about heroism and villainy and moral dilemmas as the most fantastic of myths.
Hence unlike Rowling, Gregg has a real commitment to the heritage from which he draws his symbols of adventure and pageantry. Though elaborating on them, he faithfully uses symbols — such as the Lia Fail, the story of St. Andrew, the sporran, and even golf — in the same cultural and historical contexts from which they are drawn, rather than merely uprooting them and then pasting them atop a postmodern spirit of endless, restless revolution against “the dead white male patriarchy.”
It is passion for Western tradition and myth that informs The Sporran. This devotion is specifically embodied by the story's hero — whose motivation is not a desire to escape from the normal but rather a love for it, a love which obligates him to defend the normal.
In G.K. Chesterton’s surreal adventure The Man Who Was Thursday, the protagonist defies the overwhelming, anarchic, and satanic forces for the sake of the ordinary, modest, human joys of life — the memory of high-spirited sailors singing and drinking, the memory of a pretty girl’s bright red hair.
Likewise, when Jacob agrees to accept the mysterious quest set before him by his mentor professor von Niblick, he does so not as an angst-ridden rebel with a liberator-complex but as a bearer of the flame of historical pietas, of tangible, flesh-and-blood commitments — exemplified in the old-fashioned past-time of fishing:
Without saying a word, Jacob got up and walked to the turn in the river where he could watch his father fishing. His father’s pole was bent forward as he fought a heavy fish that was pulling hard with the current.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mr. Boyd saw his son around the bend and flashed a big, proud smile.
Jacob waved, whispered “I love you,” under his breath, and returned to where von Niblick was seated.
“What am I to do?”
Thus, in a curiously uplifting irony, the greatest strength of this children's fantasy novel is, in fact, a pervading sense of realism – a sense of the commitment that binds real families, communities, and peoples together.
The Sporran is available on Amazon.com.
jdsalyer59@yahoo.com
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Hello Jerry. I'm not a fan of fantasy, but good review.
Comment by Dan Phillips | April 18, 2008