Lin Carter’s Grail Undwin Stories

Lin Carter’s Grail Undwin stories appeared in three paperbacks between 1978-1980. According to Lin:

…The author writes that she lives in an old stone house in Cornwall which has belonged to her family since the days of Queen Anne. When her husband was killed in the Battle of Britain, she was left with three small children to support. At first she published some of the bedtime stories she had been making up to entertain the youngsters; later, she began writing full-length children’s books (under a pen name, or names, I believe).

In later volumes he added:

How Ms. Undwin can pack so much emotion into a story as lean and sinewy and unpadded as this bewilders me. And in that respect, if in no other, she reminds me of the late Leigh Brackett.

That’s high praise for the obscure Ms. Undwin. There is only one problem. The whole thing was a fake. Grail Undwin did not exist. Her tale was part of the fabric of the story. Lin Carter invented her and the three stories he supposedly got in one bunch in the mail for the Years’ Best Fantasy series.

Let’s take a quick peek at that pseudonym. “Grail” is an obvious link to Arthurian legend. It speaks to those old tales of yore. “Undwin” is very close to “Unwin”, the original hard cover publisher of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. So essentially her name was “Arthurian Tolkien”.

And I have to wonder about his motives here. Was he trying to set the scene in the reader’s mind by housing these tales in an English garden? Was he having a laugh at the people who bought his annual collections? Or was he simply trying to make more money. He had another story in all three volumes under his own name. As editor he could keep more of the advance. I’m not sure.

The stories themselves are a mix of Celtic and Arthurian myths with a good dash of Poul Anderson fantasy. (As with all Carter works, you have to ask who was he trying to write like?) The nod to Leigh Brackett in the last volume is a little odd. These stories are in no way like Brackett’s Chanderlesque space fantasies. These tales mention the world of Faerie, resting next to the world of mortals. Carter speaks of the elves of Wales, Scotland and Avalon, telling tales of some of their inhabitants.

“A Farmer on the Clyde” (Years’ Best Fantasy 4, 1978) features Fuatha “The Shaggy One”, earl of Celidon. This ruler becomes obsessed with becoming a king. We learn his history, how he bravely fought the Fomorians for his realm. On a ride with a Kelpie, he comes across a mortal man, one who tried to free his people but now sits in secret solitude. He is Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland. Fuatha realizes from looking into Charlie’s eyes that he does not need to be a king at all.

“Rhian and Garanhir” (Years’ Best Fantasy 5, 1979) is the tale of Garanhir, a mercenary knight who falls in love with Rhian at a tourney. He never speaks to her of his love since she is high-born and he is not. She weds Cathlar. As the couple ride away, she glances back at Garanhir, making him believe that she loves him. In truth, she knows nothing of him. The bards pen great songs to their love. He dies with her name on his lips.

“Zurvan’s Saint” (Years’ Best Fantasy 6, 1980) is my favorite of the three. A Catholic priest, Eochan, goes to the land of Faerie to convert the elves. This fails since they do not possess souls. He is stuck in the enchanted realm, living on an island as a hermit. Over time his Christianity morphs into a worship of Zurvan, not really a deity so much as a condition of eternal life. When he dies, Eochan is made into a saint despite not being sure who he really worshiped.

Conclusion

From these plots and ideas, you can see this was not your usual Lin Carter daring-do fest. There are no fight scenes, just studies in character with plenty of irony. Which suggests another possibility for his reason for writing under a pen name. These were experiments in style and theme that most readers would not associate with thud-and-blunder-Thongor-author Lin Carter. By taking on the persona of Grail Undwin, he may have been trying to see if he could in fact write something else, something different.

Did he succeed? Yes and no. These tales do not revolve around plot. So in that way, yes, he succeeded. And no, because the over-all effect is highly reminiscent of Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword (and sequels). Lin was quite familiar with these, having republished that novel as part of the Ballantine Fantasy Series, and its sequels (later published as The Merman’s Children) in his Flashing Swords anthologies. These mostly feel like Lin Carter playing in Anderson’s backyard.