Trot (Oz)
| Mayre Griffiths | |
|---|---|
| Oz character | |
|
Trot Griffiths as depicted by John R. Neill in The Scarecrow of Oz (1915) | |
| First appearance | The Sea Fairies (1911) |
| Created by | L. Frank Baum |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Trot |
| Aliases | Mayre Griffith (in Sky Island) |
| Species | human |
| Gender | female |
| Title | Princess of the Ozure Isles; Commodore (informal); Queen of Sky Island |
| Family | Charlie Griffiths (father), Mrs Griffiths (mother), Cap'n Bill Weedles (godfather) |
| Nationality | United States |
Trot is a fictional character in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz.[1]
Trot is introduced in the novel, The Sea Fairies (1911) and first appears in an Oz book in The Scarecrow of Oz (1915). Trot is a little girl with big solemn eyes and an earnest, simple manner. Her real name is Mayre Griffiths. It was said that she had been marked on the forehead at birth by fairies with their invisible mystic signs. Her father, Captain Charlie Griffiths, is almost always out to sea. She and Cap'n Bill, for whom Charlie was once first mate, are the closest of friends, and they live at her mother's boarding house on the California coast. They get trapped by way of a whirlpool that deposits them in a cavern deep under the sea, and meet a strange flying creature called the Ork, which carries them to Jinxland, a country on the other side of the Deadly Desert. Trot and Cap'n Bill have many wonderful adventures in the Land of Oz including getting their feet "rooted" while searching for a gift for Princess Ozma's birthday. Trot is one of Dorothy Gale and Princess Ozma's best friends.
She is also the main child protagonist of Ruth Plumly Thompson's Kabumpo in Oz and The Giant Horse of Oz.
In Kabumpo in Oz, her doll, Peg Amy, turns out to be the enchanted form of the Princess of Sun-Top Mountain. Peg Amy marries Prince Pompadore of Pumperdink, and in The Purple Prince of Oz, they are shown with a daughter, Princess Pajonia of Pumperdink.
In The Giant Horse of Oz, she is made a princess of the Ozure Isles as thanks for her help in restoring the Munchkin queen Orin to her royal husband and son. In this book, it is stated that Trot arrived in Oz and stopped aging at ten, the same age as Prince Philador of the Ozure Isles. Based on L. Frank Baum's statement that Trot is one year younger than Dorothy Gale and that Dorothy is one year younger than Betsy Bobbin, we get the other characters' ages through backward reasoning, but since this information is derived from two different authors, it is canon, but not necessarily true to Baum's intentions.
Eric Shanower and Glenn Ingersoll wrote a novella titled Trot of Oz, published in Oz-story Magazine in 2000.[2] Trot also has a key role in Rachel Cosgrove Payes's The Wicked Witch of Oz.
