Tag Archives: The Dragon of Og

Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden

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Five for Sorrow Ten for Joy by Rumer Godden was first published in 1979 and it’s one of her three books centred around a Roman Catholic convent, not the most exciting of settings you would think, but this is a really good read.

Elizabeth is a young and rather naive army driver who is in Paris for the first time, just as the city has been liberated by the allies in World War 2. She’s allowed to join in the wild celebrations and is picked up by Patrice, an older man. He’s obviously well-off and influential, he manages to get Elizabeth who is now known as Lise released from the army and Lise throws caution to the wind and begins to live with Patrice in his luxurious flat. Too late Lise eventually realises that she’s actually living in a brothel and many of the ‘girls’ have been living with Patrice previously, it’s only a matter of time before Lise is also cast aside and put to work in the brothel.

I really enjoyed this one, I suppose it’s meant to be an eye-opener regarding convents and nuns, as in this book nuns who visit female prisoners sometimes inspire a vocation in women who have presumably led a sinful life, although in truth many have been more sinned against than anything else. They’re welcomed into that religious world to begin a long journey towards acceptance as a nun, if they continue to feel that need.

I am not sure how realistic that is because the one young woman that I knew who became a nun was accepted immediately. She had been the ‘naughty’ one of a large Catholic family, drinking smoking and partying wildly, and when her father died very suddenly she felt so conscience stricken that after a few weeks she walked to the nearby Carmelite Monastery – and that was that!

Anyway, Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy was an entertaining read. Rumer Godden seems to have found plenty of material in the Catholic religion after her conversion to it as she wrote two others with convent settings I believe. By the time she wrote this one she had moved to the Scottish borders to be near her daughter, and she lived in Dumfries and Galloway until her death? Can I count her as a Scottish author – hmm – maybe not. She did immerse herself in Scottish culture though and even wrote at least one children’s book in Scots dialect. It’s called The Dragon of Og and you can read my thoughts on that one here.

The Dragon of Og by Rumer Godden

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The Dragon of Og cover

I read The Dragon of Og by Rumer Godden ages ago but I’m so behind with some book thoughts that I’m only getting around to it now. It was published in 1981, it’s only the second or third children’s book by Godden that I’ve read and I must admit that it was the book cover that attracted me to it although I’m quite a fan of her books for adults. Pauline Baynes illustrated the book in colour and black and white and the cover. I’ve always liked her designs, she designed C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books in the 1960s.

Anyway, I was particularly delighted when I started to read this one as the setting is the Scottish Borders at a time when the castles were made of wood. The Castle of Tundergarth stands high on a hill overlooking broad meadows and forests through which flows the Water of Milk which isn’t as benign as it sounds as beneath its pools lies a deep cave where a dragon lives.

This isn’t an ordinary dragon though, he’s a lonely soul as his mother left him at the cave as a youngster and he has no friends, and no idea of what it means to be a dragon. The young wife of the new laird befriends him, but the laird isn’t pleased with that as Og the Dragon occasionally eats one of his bullocks and the laird is determined that Og must die. Matilda and the local villagers are up in arms about that. The story is based on an old legend of the Scottish Lowlands.

What amazed me about this book is that Godden writes quite a lot of the dialogue in Scots, using a fair few Scots words and ways of speech. She even uses correctly amn’t I instead of the less grammatical English aren’t I. That is a big bugbear of mine as editors often wrongly anglicise it and even directors have Scottish actors saying it the English way when they definitely shouldn’t be as they are speaking Scots.

I always thought of Rumer Godden as being one of those very English women – in the way that a woman who had grown up in the Indian Raj always was. But after a teeny bit of research I discovered that in her old age she moved to the Scottish Lowlands to be close to her daughter. She certainly soaked up all of the atmosphere of the area, she must have enjoyed living here I think.