Almost done The Wind in the Willows and so far my favorite chapter has been chapter 7, titled The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Such an evocotive title. Now, for those of you who are Pink Floyd fans you will immediately recognize the chapter title as the title of Pink Floyd’s first album from October 1967. Knowing that the book was published 59 years earlier naturally I did some research and learned that Floyd indeed got their title from the book. This is one of those random bits of pop culture info that I seem to live for (who knows why). Here is a quote from Wikipedia that tells the story of the album naming as well as provides us with another example of Grahame’s fantastic prose:

 

The album’s title comes from the title of Chapter Seven, "THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN," of Kenneth Grahame‘s The Wind in the Willows, where Rat and Mole, while searching for Portly, the lost son of Otter, are drawn to a place where the ‘Piper’ is playing on his reed flute.

"`This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. `Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’"