digestible prose. Sheila Egoff dismisses most modern retellers, such as Roger Lancelyn
Green in Tales of the Greek Heroes (1958) and Doris Gates in The Warrior Goddess:
Athena (1972) as ‘faceless and styleless’ (Egoff 1981:214). While Green is certainly no
stylist, and he lacks Kingsley’s ‘awesome wonder’, he tells the stories clearly and
dramatically, preserving traditional story lines and making them accessible to young
readers. Through his collections he has provided a basic introduction to a wide range of
traditional literature: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table (1953), Tales of the
Greek Heroes (1958), The Tale of Troy (1958), Myths of the Norsemen (1960), The Luck of
Troy (1961) and Tales of Ancient Egypt (1967).
Current publishing projects to keep the Greek and Roman myths and legends alive for
a contemporary audience have had mixed success. Anthony Horowitz’s retellings for The
Kingfisher Book of Myths and Legends (1985) are workmanlike and make for easy if not
inspired reading. Most disappointing are Geraldine McCaughrean’s versions for The
Orchard Book of Greek Myths (1992). Here the tragedy of Persephone is reduced to
melodrama through banal dialogue and trite narrative. Persephone, captured by Pluto
[Hades] cries out:’ “Who are you? What do you want of me? Oh let me go! Help me,
somebody! Mother, help me!”’; in the Underworld Persephone sobs:’ “I want to go home!
I want my mother!”’; and Demeter calls:’ “Persephone darling! Time to go home!”’
(McCaughrean 1992:16).
Of the recent picture story books based on myths and legends those retold and
illustrated by Warwick Hutton—Theseus and the Minotaur (1989), The Trojan Horse
(1992) and Perseus (1993)—remain faithful to the traditional storyline but are told
simply and directly as adventure stories in language adapted to the ability of newly
independent readers. Hutton’s illustrations are modern interpretations of classical Greek
design.
The source for retellings of the Norse myths is, in the main, two thirteenth-century
Icelandic sagas compiled after Iceland had been Christianised for over one hundred
years: the so-called Elder Edda of thirty-four poems, sometimes referred to as the Iliad
of the North, and the Younger Edda, a prose collection written partly by Snorri Sturluson
who lived between about 1179 and 1241. The dramatic succinctness yet the imaginative
power of these stories has been faithfully retained in Dorothy Hosford’s Thunder of the
Gods (1952) while her earlier Songs of the Volsungs (1949) is a prose adaptation of
William Morris’s verse drama Sigurd the Volsung; his version of the ancient Volsunga
Saga of Sigmund and his son Sigurd. Hosford’s account of the Death of Balder is told
with stark directness and moving simplicity yet with the pathos and intensity of the old
Eddas.
Kevin Crossley-Holland, a later reteller, has by his own admission, not hesitated to
develop hints of action in the Eddas, flesh out dramatic situations and add snatches of
dialogue, to hone some sound or meaning. Hence his Axe-Age, Wolf-Age: A Selection from
the Norse Myths (1985) and Northern Lights: Legends, Sagas and Folk-tales (1987) have a
hard glittering edge as befits the ‘fatalism, courage, loyalty, superstition, cunning,
melancholy, a sense of wonder, curiosity about all that’s new’ which in his foreword to
The Faber Book of Northern Legends (1977) he claims as the ‘most pronounced strain in
the make-up of the Germanic heroic peoples, as revealed through their prose and
poetry’ (Crossley-Holland 1977:20). This author’s sombre yet ringing prose version
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