I am not sure this post belongs here, if not please move.
Years ago I was listening to the Public Radio Station sponsored by the University of Norte Dame. It was a Saturday morning and one of the Brothers of the Holy Cross was reading a children’s story.
As best as I could make out there was a wicked old man and a young hero type. The young hero was trapped in a catacomb or held in a dungeon. There was a third character and this is the only clue I recall. The third character’s name was something like: the toad-el. Now I only heard the word and may have it spelled wrong. Both the wicked old man and the young hero used a [the] in front of the rest as if this creature was a thing.
So If any one remembers anything like that, I’d be obliged. This has bugged me for over 15 years!
Oh of course, I have done web searches without any useful results.
I’ll bet the book you’re looking for is THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS by James Thurber. I love that book. It’s a fanciful fairy tale about a duke who is so cold he freezes all the clocks in his castle. The prince who is trying to win the hand of the duke’s daughter, Saralinda, has various adventures in which he is helped by the Golux.
In the end, the duke is captured by the mysterious creature that has been lurking in his dungeon waiting for its chance. It’s called the Todal. According to Thurber, “The Todal looks like a blob of glup. It makes a sound like rabbits screaming, and smells of old unopened rooms.”
It’s available in a gorgeous edition illustrated by Marc Simont.
I see that I’ve been beaten to it, but only because I wasn’t sure if it was “The White Deer” or “The Thirteen Clocks”.
As you can tell from the following paragraph, Thurber was enjoying himself when he wrote this one:
"The brambles and the thorns grew thick and
thicker in a ticking thicket of bickering crickets.
Farther along and stronger, bonged the gongs of
a throng of frogs, green and vivid on their lily
pads. From the sky came the crying of flies, and
the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping
knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and
slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whisper-
ing sinful secrets. "