CATEGORY: METZGER
PHOTO: THE LADY OF THE LAKE

Eric loved to listen to stories.  I could read almost anything to him as long as I changed the words to those he could understand, or stopped and explained what the story meant as I went along.  When the weather permitted, I spent most days working in the garden.  In the afternoon about three o’clock, I would come in, fill the bathtub with hot water, put in some bubble bath, and get in the tub.  Eric would come in with his little stool and sit down beside the tub and I would read to him while I soaked.  When he was five years old I read all of THE LADY OF THE LAKE to him using the copious notes and definitions provided with the text as substitution and explanation aids.

In this book-long epic poem by Sir Walter Scott (I still know the first two or three pages by heart), the main masculine character is James Fitz James, a nobleman who gets lost while hunting deer in the highlands of Scotland.  He is rescued by Ellen, a lovely young woman, who takes him in her small boat across a lake to her rustic, but spacious and comfortable, island home.  There he is greeted as a guest by Ellen’s aunt.  They provide him with food, a bed and a guide to take him safely back to his home in Sterling Town, the seat of Lowland government.  They do this even though the Lowlands and the Highlands are traditional enemies.

Before Fitz James leaves Ellen, he gives her a ring, which he claims was a gift to him from the king of Scotland, who’s life he had saved, and the ring is forfeit for any request its bearer may wish of the king.  He tells her that he is bequeathing this forfeit to her.  Ellen is in love with Malcolm Graham, a young man whose land holdings are halfway between the Highlands and the Lowlands and who is both friend and suspected enemy to both sides.  The king arrests Malcolm and imprisons him in Sterling Castle.  Ellen makes the long journey on foot to present the ring to the king to secure Malcolm’s freedom.  When Ellen enters Sterling, with the help of guards, she meets Fitz James and tells him that she has come to see the king to ask for Malcolm’s release.  He says he will take her to the king.  When they enter the royal hall, Ellen notices that all those in the hall remove their hats except Fitz James, followed by the words: “For Ellen’s Lord is Scotland’s King.”

There are other story lines running through this poem, and many more characters.  And, of course it is all written in verse.  I read only a few pages every day, but Eric listened with rapt attention and never forgot what I had read before.  After I read the above mentioned line, his eyes became huge, and he almost shouted, “Do you mean he was the KING all the TIME??!!!”  I said, “Yes, he was the king all the time.”  If I hadn’t been soaking wet and naked, I would have jumped out of the tub and hugged him.

After that I started to read him Winston Churchill’s first volume of a five volume set about the Second World War, but I couldn’t understand many of the words myself, and it was too much trouble to get out of the tub and look them up in the dictionary, so I reverted to reading easier books.

Jari, two years younger than Eric, learned to read when she was five and was so proficient that SHE started reading to Eric.  From then on they became a reading/listening duo and I hardly ever read to Eric again.