In the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

, a childe or child [Old English Cild > "Young Lord"] was the son of a nobleman who had not yet attained knighthood, or had not yet won his spurs. As a rank in chivalry, it was used as a title, e.g. Child Horn in King Horn

King Horn

King Horn is a Middle English chivalric romance dating back to the middle of the thirteenth century. It survives in three manuscripts: MS. Harleian 2253 at the British Museum, London; MS. Laud. Misc 108 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and MS. Gg. iv. 27. 2 at the Cambridge University Library. It...

, as a male progressed through the positions of squire and then knight.

The term is now obsolete, but is still well known from poetry, such as Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

's Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" is a poem by English author Robert Browning, written in 1855 and first published that same year in the collection entitled Men and Women. The title, which forms the last words of the poem, is a line from William Shakespeare's play King Lear...

and Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...

.

Cultural references

The term is used to apply to an expected next stage in human evolution in the Childe Cycle

Childe Cycle

The Childe Cycle is an unfinished series of science fiction novels by Gordon R. Dickson. The name Childe Cycle is an allusion to Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, a poem by Robert Browning, which provided considerable inspiration for elements in Dickson's magnum opus.The series is sometimes...

novels by Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon R. Dickson

Gordon Rupert Dickson was an American science fiction author.- Biography :Dickson was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1923. After the death of his father, he moved with his mother to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1937...

.

Childe in Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

's The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower (series)

The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror and western. It describes a "Gunslinger" and his quest toward a tower, the nature of which is both physical and metaphorical. King...

is, in Roland Deschain

Roland Deschain

Roland Deschain of Gilead is a fictional character, the protagonist and antihero of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series. He is the son of Steven and Gabrielle Deschain and is descended from a long line of "gunslingers", peacekeepers and diplomats of Roland's society...

's own words, "...a term that describes a knight - or a gunslinger - on a quest. A formal term, and ancient. We never used it among ourselves...for it means holy, chosen by ka

Ka

-Language:* Ka * Ka * Georgian language, ISO 639-1 code ka* A glyph in the Brahmic family of scripts-Media and entertainment:* Ka * Kà, a Cirque du Soleil show* Mister Mosquito, a video game, known in Japan as Ka...

. We never liked to think of ourselves in such terms, and I haven't thought of myself so in many years." (p. 859, The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower, Pocket Books, 2006 ed.)

The term also exists, albeit with a different meaning, in the roleplaying system Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampire: The Masquerade is a role-playing game. Created by Mark Rein·Hagen, it was the first of White Wolf Game Studio's World of Darkness role-playing games, based on the Storyteller System and centered around vampires in a modern gothic-punk world....

and various spin-offs. It signifies the "offspring" of a vampire

Vampire

Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

, while the creating vampire is called "Sire".