Faery Epic*

Cabbages and Thunderbolts; Trolls, Unicorns, Twilight

The Story. It all began because The Parliament of Erl was to some extent imaginative. In their ruddy jackets of leather, the twelve members appeared before their stately lord where he sat in a carven chair in his long red room. They desired to be ruled by a magic lord. And though he feared them foolish, he agreed, and sent forth Alvaric, who was his son, to find and wed the King of Elfland's Daughter.

Alvaric came to Witch Ziroonderel, his father's friend. Out of 17 thunderbolts which he dug up at her bidding from the soft earth under her cabbages, she fashioned him a sword and enchanted it with runes and bade him be off. So Alvaric set his face toward the Elfin Mountains, whose changeless peaks were the color of forget-me-nots, and in due time passed the frontier of twilight that bordered the fields men knew and was the rampart of Elfland.

Time was not in Elfland, nor dawn nor sunset nor any change at all. The deep 'blue of summer gloaming, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening, the night-blue deeps of twilit lakes--these were hints of Elfland's color, as the rarest of earthly smells and shapes and sounds were hints of Elfland's other beauties.

Alvaric strode among them with his sword and was not welcomed, being an intruder. From great oaks the coiling ivy rushed down at him and, when he lopped the tendrils the trees themselves moved upon him in a foremost phalanx, forcing him to blaze his trail to the lawns of the palace of Elfland. There he slew the palace guard--four splendid knight whose thick and curious elfin blood was awesome to behold. And Lirazel, the Elf King's daughter, stood among the bluebells and gazed am wondered and loved and went away with Alvaric to the Vale of Erl in the fields men knew.

Their son was Orion. Lirazel had wanted to call him "an elvish name full of wonder and made of syllables like birds' cries at night." But Alvaric was ten years older when he returned from Elfland and took seriously the admonition of the Freer of 'Orion," Christom. He only compromised on "Orion," a name of the heathenesse and, with time, grew more set in his mind against all things elvish.

So Lirazel, who understood nothing of men and Earth, read a rune that had come to her by a troll from her father. And she was blown away by the northwest wind into Elfland again, leaving Orion with Witch Ziroonderel to nurse him. When Alvaric asked the witch, "Whither," she shook her head all mournfully, saying: "The way of the leaves. The way of all beauty."

A moonstruck man, a poet, a mad man, a lovesick lad and a shepherd boy well used to lonely spaces set out with Alvaric then on his second quest, which was a weary one. Elfland had ebbed away, its King being fearful of Alvaric's enchanted sword. But Alvaric could not rest for love of Lirazel, and through long years that crazed company wandered the world's ends.

Orion grew up to be the lord of Erl and a great hunter. His hall was filled with stags' heads. Then, one evening, he unleashed his thin black hounds at the very edge of Elfland and cut off a white unicorn from its faery retreat. That was a brave chase and when Orion brought home the head, the Parliament of Erl began to feel their lord was indeed a magic lord. When he employed the trolls for whips and the will-o'-the-wisp marsh-folk to help him hunt unicorns by night, they knew his magic beyond a doubt. In fact, there was so much magic loose in Erl that a reactionary movement began to set in.

But at that point, the Princess Lirazel, hungry once more for the pleasures of Earth, prevailed upon her father to employ his last rune in pushing forward Elfland's frontier so as to include the Vale of Erl. Just as Alvaric returned, sore and weary from his travels, a shining line was seen gliding over the fields and houses, making all that it passed young and calm forever.

The Significance. The book is a faery epic, astonishingly perfect. Its creatures will be recognized by Arthur Rackham and others who have traced the fairy folk. Its uncertain twilights are those that Yeats and Fiona Macleod and James Stephens have peered through. James Branch Cabell, who well knows the uses of buttered willow withes, will understand its magic. It must have been written "at an hour when hawkmoths first pass from bell to bell." Its meaning and its melody are "like the notes of a band of violins, all played by masters chosen from many ages, hidden on Midsummer's night in a wood, with a strange moon shining, the air full of madness and mystery; and, lurking close but invisible, things beyond the mystery of man."

The Author. Edward John Moreton Dra'x Plunkett Lord Dunsany, 18th Baron, is descended from an ancient Irish line whose title was conferred in 1439. He has filled his 46 years with a true Hibernian's two diversions--fighting and dreaming. He found the former with the Coldstream in Africa, and with the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers more recently.

Lord Dunsany jocosely boasts himself the most ill-dressed man in all County Meath. He shambles about the Irish countryside, an excessively tall, loose-jointed, rawboned figure, with a heron-like stoop and enormous cranium. He has the simple, eager nature of a child, always ready to converse with voluble intimacy with any casual acquaintance or to fly up in unaccountable excitement over the most trifling pleasure or displeasure. His fairy stories, written rather for grown-ups than for children, have all the imaginative charm of Grimm or Anderson and in addition show the versatility and richness of a more cultured mind.

*THE KING OF ELFLAND'S DAUGHTER Lord Dunsany--Putnam ($2.00).