Dedication

       To you, madonna mia,

      WINIFRED GRACE EDDISON

       and to my mother,

      HELEN LOUISA EDDISON

       and to my friends,

      JOHN AND ALICE REYNOLDS

       and to

      HARRY PIRIE-GORDON

       a fellow explorer in whom (as in Lessingham)

       I find that rare mixture of man of action and

       connoisseur of strangeness and beauty in their

       protean manifestations, who laughs where I laugh

       and likes the salt that I like, and to whom I owe

      my acquaintance (through the Orkneyinga Saga)

       with the earthly ancestress

       of my Lady Rosma Parry

      I dedicate this book.

      E. R. E.

      Proper names the reader will no doubt pronounce as he chooses. But perhaps, to please me, he will keep the i’s short in Zimiamvia and accent the third syllable: accent the second syllable in Zayana, give it a broad a (as in ‘Guiana’), and pronouce the ay in the first syllable – and the ai in Laimak, Kaima, etc., and the ay in Krestenaya – like the ai in ‘aisle’; keep the g soft in Fingiswold: let Memison echo ‘denizen’ except for the m: accent the first syllable in Rerek and make it rhyme with ‘year’: pronounce the first syllable of Reisma ‘rays’; remember that Fiorinda is in origin an Italian name, Amaury, Amalie, and Beroald French, and Antiope, Zenianthe, and a good many others, Greek: last, regard the sz in Meszria as ornamental, and not be deterred from pronouncing it as plain ‘Mezria’.