And Dallies About the Mouth of Hell: The Platypus Reads Part LXII

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MMy students and I have reached  "Balin and Balan" in our trek through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King."  In this idle we find a demon knight terrorizing a haunted wood and sallying forth from a cave called "the mouth of hell."  Great stuff for quest literature.  Over the course of the poem it is hinted at that the demon knight may King Pellam's disaffected son, Garlon.  The image and the name stuck in my head for some odd reason.  It was only after something totally unrelated set me to thinking about my childhood that I made the connection.  In the original Final Fantasy, the first quest that the Light Warriors face involves tracking a demon knight to a ruined, cave-like temple.  The knight's name?  Garland.  It's probably a coincidence, but the connection intrigued me; two little bits of my childhood linking up and making a whole.  Even stranger, several of my students have played that game in its re-release and would get the connection if I mentioned it.  Good things get passed on.

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