It’s a travesty, really, how much it leaves out! But at the same time, it’s also kind of an appetizer of sorts that might draw people in. The way Sigurd kills Fafnir is especially interesting, because it has echoes in the Silmarillion and an encounter between Turin and dragon named Glaurung.

I am just reading the Caxton version of Malory’s stuff now - still near the beginning of the second volume, which is to say: about halfway through. I can’t help but envision the Monty Python crew as the main cast of characters, and that probably helps with getting through some of it that might otherwise seem too dry or repetitive. They take their chivalric pomp intensely seriously!

This is very exciting!

Just had a chance to open the book back up, and from the note on the text by Christopher Tolkien, corrigan is a Breton word for fairy. From the introduction by Verlyn Flieger, she expands a bit more to say:

In the Lay she represents a particular subset of this type [of Celtic seductive otherworldly female figures] called a corrigan, malevolent, sometimes seductive, whose dangerous attraction embodies both the lure and terror, the ‘fear of the beautiful fay’…

That’s a great question, and one I should have probably anticipated, so apologies! In the book, the editor (Verlyn Flieger) gives the context there. I don’t have the book in front of me right now, so I’ll have to paraphrase, but if I’m appealing to brevity of words: it’s a witch.

More specifically, it’s a fey creature that usually lives in a magical part of the woods and lures men to her. Her intent varies, it’s usually one of either a) trying to get the man to leave a recently-wedded wife in order to marry the corrigan, or b) trying to get a recently-married man to promise a future child or children. She can shape-change from an ugly form into a more beautiful one to help trick her victim.