What is a Crown?
A crown is a circle shaped head piece, an ancient symbol of authority and often royalty. Leaf circles (olive in Greece for Olympic Games) and partial circles/wreaths (laurel in Roman empire) signify triumphs. Today the film industry uses this symbol to honor winners of its festivals. Governments often designate as “Poet Laureates” those expected to excel at prose and verse for the benefit of their citizens.
Our main character, Glory, does not want to wear her royal crown because she has done nothing to be worthy of it; instead, she substitutes a flower crown that could be worn by anyone.
The paintings of flower crowns, displayed inside the book’s covers, are taken from illustrations throughout the book. Can you find them all?
What is a Quilt?
A quilt is a type of blanket made from the scraps of cloth left behind after making clothes. The pieces might be randomly sewed together or recut to create repeating patterns. The quilt on Glory’s bed was of the random type, to the point of looking sloppy; however, strange scratchy lines and a multitude of shapes became clues to revealing cleverly hidden messages.
What is a Cobbler?
A cobbler is someone who mends shoes, though some make new ones as well. You may be surprised that cobblers have their own patron saints. They are Crispin and Crispinian, Roman brothers who lived during the third century. They traveled from place to place, mending shoes and preaching about Jesus Christ.
High up in Glory’s castle was the cobblery where Timothy repaired shoes. He also made new ones. Shoes play a small but important part in this tale. Illustrations of shoes are also inside the book’s covers. Can you find them somewhere in the book?
What is a Celtic Knot?
A Celtic knot is not made of a rope or shoelaces. It is an ancient line design made on a flat surface; paper, metal, stone, etc. It is an interwoven line that has no ends, symbolizing eternity. Knots can be one simple line or extremely complex with many lines intertwined with each other.
The Celtic peoples, who live today primarily in the Ireland, Wales and Scotland, created and developed this type of decoration which dates back to 1200 BC.
You will notice that each chapter title page in the is book has a Celtic knot design; a visual puzzle, made of words from the Bible relating to the subject of each chapter. The secret to untangling a knot is when lines intersect (cross over each other) they always go alternately over and then under the lines they cross. When the first chapter’s knot was made I did not know this rule. See if you can untangle them.
What is Ogham?
Ogham is an ancient written language used by the Celts. It is read vertically from the bottom to the top. If you imagine marks on a vertical stone, the writing starts at the bottom, crosses the stone’s top and continues down the other side. The words were written on a line or on a stone’s corner edge. Many are still visible today on ancient stones. The Ogham alphabet consists of groups of lines from one to five, set across a vertical stem line, where each group represents a different letter. The language was mostly replaced by latin around the 10th century.
In this story one of the main characters, Delta, teaches herself how to read the ancient language. You can try to translate some of it as well, found on pages 100-101, 136 and 176 where I tried to translate some English words into Ogham. Here is a key to help you.
Here are a few images from The Crown, the Quilt, and the Cobbler.
And check out the videos on my Instagram page!
