Book review: The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin Jr.

Spoilers throughout.

Walter Wangerin's profound fantasy concerns a time when the sun turned around the earth and the animals could speak, when Chauntecleer the Rooster ruled over a more or less peaceful kingdom. What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth... and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free.

Animal books were one of my first loves. If there is any book about anthropomorphic animals that talk or fight battles reminiscent of Good vs. Evil, I am immediately sold. This one is probably the most obvious Christian not-an-allegory since The Chronicles of Narnia, what with the evil serpent and his offspring being successfully fought by faith, etc. 

What I was surprised to learn, however, is that TBotDC draws from the fable of Chanticleer and the Fox (the version found in "The Nun's Priest's Tale" from the Canterbury Tales) and the mythological basilisk. I have a book of Aesop's fables, so I'm sure I already read Chanticleer and the Fox, plus Chanticleer is an old name for a rooster that pops up in various older works. Chanticleer's wife is Pertelote, in both "The Nun's Priest's Tale" and this book. That's pretty much were the similarities end; there was a fox in TBotDC but he was friends with Chanticleer and his family. 

When it comes to the basilisk, however, everything I know about that mythological creature comes from Harry Potter. The main thing that sets the basilisk apart is the fact that it turns anything it looks at into stone, Medusa-like. However, this never happens in TBotDC. The basilisks in that book don't seem to have that power at all, otherwise the battle would have been over pretty quickly. The Encyclopedia Mythica says that the non-antiquity basilisk is part snake, part rooster, was hatched by a toad from the egg of a black rooster (Senex wasn't black, that I remember) and is also called cockatrice. This, in a nutshell, is the villain of TBotDC (apart from the Wyrm, but Cockatrice is clearly the Wyrm's son).

See? I'm pretty well-versed in mythology and fairytales, and I'd never heard of this. Also, in this picture (found on the basilisk Wikipedia page) is a weasel covered in what looks like rue, the one plant basilisks would not touch. According to this fascinating article, the smell of a weasel was the only thing that could kill a basilisk, and weasels ate rue to make themselves imperious to basilisk venom. The weasel character is the most voracious and successful killer of basilisks in the book, and the animals all rub rue all over themselves in order to be able to fight the basilisks. Read all about rue and its historic uses here.

The Smithsonian article more closely matches Cockatrice's origin: "An aged cock, which had lost its virility, would sometimes lay a small, abnormal egg" to be hatched by a toad in a dunghill (I think Cockatrice's egg was hatched in the coop). The Wyrm persuades Senex to have his own son by laying an egg, aka turn his back on the natural order of things, like the snake in Genesis. The basilisk is also said to have a horrible smell that kills anything near it. In the book, Cockatrice's smell permeates the land, and while it doesn't kill anyone, it's horrible for everyone who lives there. 

Pliny the Elder echoes the end of TBotDC: "The animal is thrown into the hole of the basilisk, which is easily known from the soil around it being infected. The weasel destroys the basilisk by its odour, but dies itself in this struggle of nature against its own self." This is basically what happens, except instead of the weasel, it is the dog Mundi Canus who throws himself down into the pit to stab the Wyrm in the eye with a horn from the Dun Cow. Just as in the fable when Chanticleer gets the Fox to open his mouth and let him go by accident through pride, Mundi Canus gets the Wyrm to show his eye to be stabbed by taunting it into pride. I thought the dog  died from the struggle, but Amazon informed me that there are two more books in the series, and Mundi Canus comes back in the second book, which my library has! That makes sense; while TBotDC's ending was definitely a denouement, I felt like the evil had not been completely vanquished. 

the inside front cover of TBotDC

On the Dun Cow: it seems to be only Chanticleer who sees her and has visions from her. I thought her to be a representation of God, but Wikipedia calls her "one of God's messengers", which would make her an angel. Just now I was reminded of another book, possibly one by Lloyd Alexander, where one of the protagonists goes to a Great Cow and is nourished back to health with its milk. There are cow deities, so lots of precedence for the Dun Cow. I don't think the Dun Cow showed up enough to warrant the book being named after her, though. 

There was a lot of sadness and horror in this book, but I really liked it. If you hate heavy-handed Christian allegories/parallels in fantasy fiction, this book is not for you. If you like books about anthropomorphic animals battling evil, mythological creatures and mythology, or Christian fantasy, I would definitely recommend this book.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: end of July
From: the thrift store
Format: paperback
Status: keeping, but it's not a set in stone thing