The Children's Crusade

 

I've mentioned several times how my writing was inspired in my college years by wandering through the Oklahoma State University's Edmond Lowe Library and delving into its hundreds of volumes on mythology, folklore, ancient and medieval history, cryptozoology, biography, and everything else under the sun.  A large part of the "mythos" that evolved sprang from the idea of a parallel world touching occasionally upon our own, into which earth people -- Amelia Earhart and the Roanoke colonists, among others -- have occasionally stumbled.

The Children's Crusade of the Thirteenth Century was to have a major influence on the Other World -- the hundreds of misplaced earth children were to found several countries therein.  Naturally, George Zabriskie Gray's 1870 book The Children's Crusade -- the first major work on the subject -- was of immeasurable help here.

After college (and after being laid off from my first major job), thoughts of writing stories and novels set in a fantasy world began to fade.  The nasty ol' real world kept impinging on my life and creativity.  I just sort of puttered along, not really trying to further my writing career.

One Saturday I visited the Tulsa Fairgrounds, which used to house the state's biggest flea market in the enormous IPE Building (now called the SageNet Center).  I wandered down aisle after aisle of tables full of pottery, toy cars, oil paintings, old tools and the usual flea market detritus.  I took little interest in anything, because money was tight at the time (when isn't it?).

One table featured books, so many some had to be pinned in plastic baggies to a huge vertical pegboard.  I glanced up at the pegboard and spotted, hanging over the rest like a Christmas angel, a small, reddish-brown hardback with gilded gold highlights on the front cover.  The Children's Crusade:  An Episode of the Thirteenth Century, proclaimed the title.

I asked to examine it.  Yes, it was the book by George Zabriskie Gray, an original edition published in 1870.  Someone named E. G. Patterson purchased it in 1886, as his ancient pencilings informed me.  It was in amazing shape for a century-plus-old book, and the bookseller wanted a measly ten dollars for it.  Of course it became mine!

Since that day The Children's Crusade has been one of my favorite possessions, and along with Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould, No Longer on the Map by Raymond H. Ramsey, and Aristeas of Proconnesus by J.D.P. Bolton, it has been one of the major foundations of my story-universe.

Well.  Having written that after a very creatively-dry six months, I guess I'd better dig out my Children's Crusade novel and finish it!