By the way, if you're thinking Papergreat has been too consistently unserious with all the ghosts and ghouls this month, please know that writing this blog, especially in this moment, represents my brief opportunity to take a timeout from the real world, which has real ghouls and ghastliness, a few times each week. It's my escapism, my stress-release valve, and it's typically unserious on purpose. It's a momentary respite from life in a nation where being transgender, undocumented, non-Caucasian or, in my case, a journalist puts an immense societal target on you.1 And heaven help you if you're more than one of those things at once. I cannot even imagine.
Deep breath.
So .... Triad!
I'm betting that a whole bunch of you already know the historic significance of this seemingly random 51-year-old novel, which was one of only two published by Mary Bartlet Leader (1918-2004).
That significance, in a nutshell: Around Halloween 1974, 26-year-old Stephanie Lynn Nicks read Triad and was struck, in particular, by one aspect of the haunting novel. Two months later, she and her then-boyfriend, Lindsey, joined a struggling band called Fleetwood Mac, which was seeking a spark. It got one! The band's next album, released the following summer, featured a hit single that new addition Stevie Nicks had written in a whirlwind, inspired by a certain uncommon name in Mary Leader's novel.
At Fleetwood Mac concerts, Lindsey Buckingham's guitar opens that song.
Then Nicks stepped to the microphone and announces, "This is a song about an old Welsh witch."
Then she begins: Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night...
Plotwise, there's almost nothing in common with the novel and the song lyrics. But that name, Rhiannon, and the supernatural elements within Triad, hung in Nicks' subconscious for weeks after she read it, waiting for the songwriter to put them to paper.
Piecing together some different interviews Nicks did in the mid-1970s, she explained, "I read the name ... [in] a novel and really liked it and thought, 'That's really a beautiful name.' Sat down, tap, tap, tap ... about 10 minutes later wrote Rhiannon." And this: "So I wrote this song and made her into what I thought was an old Welsh witch. And then I had just, just found out — because somebody from Phoenix found a whole trilogy of books written in 1972 on Welsh mythology — that Rhiannon was a Welsh witch. ... Which is pretty weird because I never saw that. And yet the song is exactly about that. So it is ... just about a very mystical woman that finds it very, very hard to be tied down in any kind of way — and she's uplifting all through the song."
The "trilogy" mentioned is actually a series of four novels by Evangeline Walton (1907-1996)2. The novels — The Island of the Mighty, The Children of Llyr, The Song of Rhiannon and Prince of Annwn — are based on the Welsh legends known as the Mabinogion.
The best article I've read that gives the full history of "Rhiannon" was written by Bill DeMain and published in September 2023 on Louder. I think, as we all do with big events in our past, that Nicks has spent the decades recrafting the telling of the origin story, compared to what she might have said during interviews in the 1970s. Of Triad, she tells DeMain, "It was just a stupid little paperback that I found somewhere at somebody’s house, lying on the couch."3 The article is a great read, with allusions to bibliomancy4, birdsongs (very crucial for "Rhiannon"), and how Fleetwood Mac bandmates took the "skeleton" of her lyrics and built a fully-alive song around it. Nicks also discusses a "trippy" time visiting Evangeline Walton at her Rhiannon-themed home in Tucson, Arizona.
* * *
Let's circle back to Mary Leader's book, Triad, and its beautiful cover for the hardcover publication.
On Newspapers.com, I found a terrific article in the April 30, 1973, edition of the Herald-Times-Reporter of Manitowoc-Two Rivers, Wisconsin. (One of the two photos with the article is shown above.) Leader was a guest speaker at a library to discuss her book, and the article has details I haven't found anywhere else about Triad.
For one thing, that wasn't the original title! Leader had titled it The Elephant's Tail. But famed dust jacket designer Paul Bacon couldn't do anything with that, Leader said. So she suggested changing the title to Triad, which Bacon could work with. (Would Nicks have picked up a book titled The Elephant's Tail?)
The novel had an interesting genesis, according to the article, which was written by Herald-Times-Reporter News Editor Marjorie Miley:
"Mrs. Leader didn't start out to write a novel. She was working on her thesis for a master's degree in English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. A course in Arthurian romance further developed her longtime interest in Celtic mythology. 'Celtic myths are fully as fascinating as Greek myths,' she stresses."Mrs. Leader had added a creative writing course to her schedule thinking she was better suited for fiction than scholarly writings."About this time in the pursuit of her degree, (which incidentally was granted) she was relaxing by watching a television show. 'It was one of those doctor things where someone has a psychological problem. I started doing some constructive dreaming (as opposed to dozing off) and the idea for Triad came to me ... The concept of the triple goddess. But my story would be a modern story.'"
In a 2017 review of Triad on Goodreads 2017, Julie wrote: "Even if it hadn’t experienced a kind of cult status, this story really is a rare gem. It’s not a very long book, but it’s filled with vivid imageries and is very well versed in Welsh mythologies. It is a very effective story, even for a jaded reader like me. I can imagine the impact it would have on readers in 1973. Once I started reading it, I found myself hypnotized by it. This is a moody, dark, atmospheric supernatural tale, that certainly stands the test of time."
Another Goodreads reviewer, Justin Glanville, makes mention of the novel's final sentence: "But one thing I do know — Rhiannon and I will meet again and again until someday, at some turn of the spiral, we will come together in our last struggle and I will win."
Sound familiar?
Will you ever win? is an oft-repeated verse in Nicks' "Rhiannon."
Witches — mythological, literary and musical — work in mysterious ways.
Footnotes
1. For example: At a presidential campaign rally two days ago, about an hour's drive from my house, the candidate said of journalists: “They are just bad people. And until we get a fair and free press in this country, they’re just bad people. ... They’re the enemy of the people. ... They are the enemy.” The crowd cheered American journalists being called "the enemy of the people."
2. Walton was featured in a 2017 Papergreat post about her novel Witch House.
3. And in other interviews over the years, Nicks has said she bought Triad in an airport, to read on a flight.
4. Since it's sitting right here, I practiced some bibliomancy with Triad. Letting fate choose a random page, I closed my eyes and placed my finger on a passage. It reads: "Before we go into that, I must tell you that you are probably basically a good person, conscientious to a fault, or you wouldn't suffer so much remorse."
