I Love Tam Lin

"I would that there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest: for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting."

Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale, Act III, Scene iii, lines 59-62.

This is a quote that I disovered in Pamela Dean's version of the ballad of Tam Lin.
Favorite.Book.Ever.

I am not sure how many times I have read it, or more accurately, picked it up and thumbed through to favorite parts. It's like sitting down with a box of chocolates. The above link has all of the fantastic literary references that Dean uses throughout the novel. A line that gives me chills every time I read it is when the Queen of Hell confronts Tam Lin (or Thomas, in this version) after Janet has pulled him off the horse and covered him while he shape-shifts:

" 'Oh had I known," she said in her own voice, but with a wild note and a wilder accent, Scottish flavored with Welsh or French or something nobody knew; she said this much straight to Janet, and then jerked her head to address Thomas. 'Tam Lin' she said , 'what this night I did see," and she looked back at Janet, 'I had looked him the eye, and turned him to a tree.' "