Under the Spell of Keith Taylor’s Bard Songs by Brian Murphy Tomorrow all will be known, and you’re not aloneSo don’t be afraid of the dark and coldBecause the Bard’s songs will remain ~ “The Bard’s Song,” Blind Guardian A characteristic of good sword-and-sorcery is earthiness; even if not set in some ancient age of our own earth, sword-and-sorcery nevertheless is typically gritty, even grimy, in its realism. Joseph McCullough once described sword-and-sorcery with the terse, pithy, “fantasy with dirt.” That works for me. Over this layer of grit, which serves to ground the reader somewhere recognizable and to spare overly tedious worldbuilding, the skilled sword-and-sorcery writer adds in the fantastic, in small doses. Weird monsters and dark sorcery that feels alien, and dangerous, and when it appears casts its spell upon the reader. Keith Taylor struck this balance with the skill of a well-practiced king’s court lutist in his stories of Felimid Mac Fal, better known as Bard. Taylor wrote several stories of the wandering Bard of Erin, published as Bard I-V. The stories take place amidst the backdrop of early sixth century Britain, shortly after the Battle of Badon, in which the greatest Saxon warhost ever gathered on the isle was beaten by the native Britons and their warleader, Arthur. Ruined Roman villas dot the landscape as fierce Jutes raid and plunder. Felimid is the descendant of Druids and the legendary Tuatha De Danann. But he’s also flawed, and mortal, and three-dimensional, playful and lusty, with a weakness for women. When we meet him in Bard he has succeeded in pissing off the Jutish king Oisc with his sharp tongue, for which he’s bound hand and foot and hoisted over a pit of hungry wolves for the sport of the hall. Felimid can be compared with the likes of Jack Vance’s Cugel the Clever—far less bastardly, but when provoked is quick to defend his honor with a cutting verse, or if need be the edge of his blade. He’s a reluctant hero but a skilled and deadly swordsman, and bears with him on his journeys two artifacts of power—the sword Kincaid, and his harp Golden Singer, with which he can not only spin mesmeric tales, but also cast spells of sleep, and laughter, and sorrow upon its listeners. Kincaid is a magic blade, but its power is quite subtle, almost mundane, though its silver cats’ head pommel and rune-silvered blade comes in handy in what is perhaps Bard’s most well-rendered scene; a desperate chase and battle against a fearsome shape-shifting berserker/werewolf. The last scene in Bard, with Felimid and a small band of warriors desperately digging in the decaying remains of an old Roman villa as the howl of a vengeful werewolf grows ever louder, is taut with suspense and dread.  Kincaid lands Felimid in all manner of scrapes: “His finding of the sword had made all things possible. It promised everything, a matchless treasure, the steel tough and fine beyond belief, the workmanship a marvel. Kings would give gold in sacks for it—or take it from him and slay him for a thief.”  Taylor uses magic just sparingly enough to feel, well, magical. And weird, sometimes horrifying, as when Felimid catches a glimpse of wild spectral horses of the Celtic goddess Epona and their grim riders: “Naked they rode on their naked horses, gaunt and bone-white, their eyes pits of shadow. One spectre’s head was split, blood and brains clotted darkly in the streaming hair. The other had a deep stab wound in its side.” There is some surprising complexity and depth to these stories. For example the man Besdath, though of the native Downsmen, sworn...