The Book of Brave Old Ballads

These are the stories England told itself before novels existed. Collected in the Victorian era but sung in taverns and village greens for centuries before that, these ballads pulse with a wild energy no careful printing could tame. Robin Hood awakens in the greenwood with vengeance in his dream, his longbow drawn against the Sheriff's man Guy of Gisborne. The Childe of Elle rides to win his bride through perils that would break a lesser knight. Sir Lancelot du Lake earns his legend in sudden violence and tournaments of dazzling cruelty. Each poem is a blade: short, sharp, built to cut straight to the heart of a tale. The humor is earthy and sharp. The love is fierce and sudden. The deaths come without warning. These are not gentle stories. They are the raw material of myth, still rough-hewn, still breathing. For readers who want their adventure unfiltered, their poetry with dirt under its fingernails, their heroes bloodied but unbeaten.