[HPforGrownups] The rebirth of Lord Voldemort---a thought I had

[Alina]

No: HPFGUIDX 105324

> I was reading along (hard to keep up; my 'puter's acting oddly, and
running
> rather slowly) and I came to a post mentioning how Lord V. was reborn from
a
> huge cauldron.
>
> It suddenly struck me that this is something I'd seen before.  In Lloyd
> Alexander's "Prydain" young-adult fantasy novels, one of the magical items
> to be found is the Black Crochan (a "Crochan" is a cauldron), which is
used
> to make the "Cauldron-Born" undead warriors that serve the evil Death-Lord
> Arawn.  Like a lot of other things in this series, this comes from real
> mythology---in the earliest versions of the King Arthur story, it was a
> cauldron, not the Holy Grail, that the knights went in search of.
>
> I doubt that cauldrons of that size are in common use in the WW---could
the
> cauldron itself be a significant object?  In Alexander's books, the
rightful
> owners comment that after Arawn's had his paws on it, it's ruint and fit
> only to make more Cauldron-Born, and the good guys have to destroy it---at
> the cost of a life.
>
> I wonder when/if we'll see that cauldron again?


I also saw the parallel between LV's rebirth and the legend, however, I
think rather it being a reference to Lloy'd Alexander's work, JKR is using
the ancient Welsh myth, one of the Mabinogion collection, that Lloyd
Alexander himself based his whole Prydain series on. There are plenty of
reference to real life mythology in JKR's works, starting with chars named
after gods and goddesses. I thought her use of the Cauldron was a very
clever reference to a legend and quite enjoyed it.

Alina.