Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- How Perceforest earned his name
- The Perilous Temple
- The Adventures of Claudius and Estonné
- The Wonders at Gadifer's Coronation
- King Gadifer's Wound
- Zephir the Trickster
- Troylus in love
- A New Order of Chivalry – the ‘Franc Palais’
- The God of the Sheer Mountain
- The Fish-Knights
- The Sleeping Beauty
- The Marvellous Child
- The Death of Caesar
- The Adventure of the Red Sword
Zephir the Trickster
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- How Perceforest earned his name
- The Perilous Temple
- The Adventures of Claudius and Estonné
- The Wonders at Gadifer's Coronation
- King Gadifer's Wound
- Zephir the Trickster
- Troylus in love
- A New Order of Chivalry – the ‘Franc Palais’
- The God of the Sheer Mountain
- The Fish-Knights
- The Sleeping Beauty
- The Marvellous Child
- The Death of Caesar
- The Adventure of the Red Sword
Summary
A key figure in Perceforest, and a most surprising one, is a creature called Zephir. He's a fallen angel, cast out of Paradise along with Lucifer, yet he looks after the interests of several admirable knights and indeed of Britain as a whole. And he's a Puck-like trickster (and, like Puck, unable to tolerate daylight), delighting in playing the most cruel (if often hilarious) tricks on people – and all his powers, he says, ‘come from God’. He first appears to Estonné in the ‘Selve Carbonneuse’ – the area of the Low Countries later known as Brabant and Hainault – where Estonné, assisting Count Le Tor in a campaign on Alexander's behalf, is trying to find a way to take a castle that's resisting a lengthy siege.
Estonné and Narcis rode on until, a little after sundown, they came within a league of Branius's castle. They began to climb a mountain towards a great forest, and it grew so dark that only a glimmer of moonlight lit their way. And then, as they rode, they were astonished to see their helmets and the ears of their horses covered in will o' the wisps – a countless number, flickering all around them so that their path was all aglow. Estonné was amazed. The will o' the wisps kept following them, jostling and swarming like a cloud of gnats, and Estonné said:
‘What are these things that are plaguing us?’
‘Sir,’ Narcis replied, ‘in this land they're called will o' the wisps, because they look like wisps of flame; they're often seen in these parts.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Perceforest ReaderSelected Episodes from Perceforest: The Prehistory of Arthur's Britain, pp. 31 - 38Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012