Volume 7 Number 3 Article 14

10-15-1980

The Novels of Lord Dunsany

Darrell Schweitzer

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Recommended Citation Schweitzer, Darrell (1980) "The Novels of Lord Dunsany," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 7 : No. 3 , Article 14. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol7/iss3/14

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Abstract Critical interpretation of Dunsany’s novels, in chronological order, excerpted from the author’s book, Pathways to Elfland.

Excerpt from: Schweitzer, Darrel. Pathways to Elfland: The ritingsW of Lord Dunsany. Philadelphia: Owlswick Press, 1989.

Additional Keywords Dunsany, Lord. Novels—Critical interpretation

This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol7/iss3/14 THE NOVELS OF LROD DUNSANY DARRELL SCHWEITZER

An excerpt from the f orthcoming “book, PATHWAYS TO ELFLAND, in fact in a short story may be fairly intense, as in a play, whereas there is room far a certain amount of rambling in a novel. In the early 1920's Lord Dunsany, until then primarily (While the Sirens Slept, p. 38) a short-story writer and playwright, became dissatisfied with the meagre recognition he was receiving. So he turned to The trouble, then, is in Dunsany's conception of what novels, hoping to do better. In doing so, he encountered a novel is. A novel also needs compactness. Its greater the usual problems' of a short story writer trying to write length demands that there be more substance than there is in novels. It took him a while to learn that a novel is not a short story, not that the same amount be spread out thin. the same as a short story, only longer. Dunsany later stated that he saw novels as being about 70,000 words long. Obviously he wrote to that length, then A case in point is his first, The Chronicles of stopped, without paying much heed to the internal needs of Rodriguez (1922), which suffers for want of any overall plot the material at hand. Content should dictate length, not structure. It is little more than a chain of separate the other way around. Even writing as beautiful as events strung together on the slightest excuse. But, as Dunsany's can tire the reader after a while. The book might be expected from Dunsany, it has its strengths. would have benefitted from judicious trimming.

The Chronicles introduce the typical protagonist of The same is true of his second novel, The King of Dunsany's novels, the naive young man who knows very little Elfland's Daughter (1924), which is s till his most famous about the real world but has a head fu ll of romantic notions. one. It would have been a masterpiece at half the length. Just as typically, the world fa ils to meet his expectations More u n if ie d than R odriguez, i t s t i l l b ogs down in an e x c e s s at first, but ultim ately events somehow manage to fa ll into of the inconsequential. place so that he isn 't too disappointed. One very definite advance in Daughter is an ability to Our hero is a Spaniard, Don Rodriguez, "son of the make the best of the thematic material. Don Rodriguez only, Lord of the Valleys of Argento Harez, whose heights see not occasionally touches on what it is actually about, without Va lladolid," who is bequeathed a sword and a mandolin by his exploring the differences between romantic preconceptions dying father and commanded to seek glory, romance, and adven­ and the real world in any depth. But in his second novel, ture. His brother, a b it of a dullard, gets the family Dunsany produced a fu ll treatment of his major subject, estates. In the space of twelve chapters, Rodriguez manages which might be dubbed The Loss of Elfland. to acquire a castle, a beautiful wife, and a Sancho Panza- like sidekick. He even rights a few wrongs, as a noble F irst, what does he mean by "Elfland"? It is more knight of romance should, even though sometimes he succeeds than just a country inhabited by elves. It is a timeless through sheer luck or the incompetence of his opponents. realm beyond "the frontier of tw ilight." One can see that frontier in the east sometimes in the glow of dawn, or more The story is Dunsany's version of Don Quixote. save often in the deeping shadows of evening. Elfland is filled that Dunsany has neither the heart nor the inclination to with unearthly beauty, "which may only be told of in song," burlesque romantic fiction with the ferocity of Cervantes. a ll created out of the mind of the Elfking, who is thus He is fully aware that life isn 't the way Rodriguez thinks more a god than a monarch, and on whose mental calm the it is, but seems to be gently saying, "Well wouldn't it be peace of his domain depends. At one point the place is com­ nice?" As a result, things end happily, even if the author pared to a deep, dim pool, in which fishes lie still. A must result to blatant string-pulling to make them do so. disturbance sends ripples throughout a ll the land, When our hero has captured a knight who turns out to be a fake, and thus has no castle with which to ransom him self, Elfland is both a place and a state of existence. It rather than leave Rodriguez forlorn, Dunsany brings in a d o esn ' t conform to mundane r u le s o f geography or a n y th in g bunch of outlaws, who seem to be strays from the Robin Hood else. ' If the King chooses, he can withdraw it so far from cycle, to build him a castle at the last minute. Thus, when mortal lands that the intervening stretch "would weary a a ll possibilities have been exhausted, and dreams seem comet," and then let it flow back like "the tide over fla t dashed, all is set right, just for sentimental reasons. It s a n d ." may very well be the whole point of the book that a deus ex machi na i s r e q u ir e d . It is also a liberalized, multiplex metaphor for the imagination, for the lost innocence of childhood, for every­ Some of the individual episodes are very good. There thing which lies beyond our grasp. At one point Alveric, is a v isit to a sinister inn where one pulls a rope for the the hero, while wandering through the wasteland le ft after doorbell and hears a scream, the rope being attached to a the King has pulled his borders back far from Earth, finds hook embedded in some unfortunate. After putting an end to an old toy which had been broken and discarded many years the host's poor hospitality, Rodriguez and his companion before. He also hears faint bits of old songs lingering in come upon a p r o fe s so r o f m agic, who sen d s t h e ir s p i r i t s to the air. When he grows, older and settles down with ah the surface of the sun in a stunning burst of imagery. The ordinary wife and thinks only of making a living, he ceases magician's house is fascinating. Unfortunately the whole to dream and thus loses the vision of Elfland. He can no sequence has nothing whatever to do with the overall story. longer see the Elfin Mountains when he looks eastward at dawn or sunset. All that is for youth, he says. Many of the episodes could almost stand as short stories, which suggests that Dunsany was not completely at ease with the idea of writing a novel. He remarked that he Since most of Dunsany's novels following this one deal preferred short stories: with the progressive loss of the vision, obviously the idea meant something to him. An autobiographical interpretation ...it appears to me that in a page of a short is certainly possible. He was forty-six when he wrote story there must be more art than in a page The King of Elfland's Daughter, which is not exactly young. of a novel, just as in a square inch of an The war was between him and that fir st, exuberantly imagin­ ivory carving there is more art than in a ative phase of his career. His enchanted dreams were square inch of a wall of a palace: everything slipping away, but, brilliantly, rather than write weaker 39 and weaker sto rie s, h e tu rn e d th is v e ry to be self-consciously poetical is at fault. :T alking t h r o u g h loss into his sub- ject his nose," to borrow a phrase from the late Jam es B lish, he strives for archaicism and inversion, and m a t t e r . In The King of Elfland's D a u g h t e r , d r e a m s u l t i m a t e l y gives us thisL trium ph. A lverie, prince of the earthly kingdom of Erl, js ...there was Guhis, who first thought o f it, sent into Elfland to make off with th e lad y o f th e title. after speaking with his wife, an upland farm er of closer U nfortunately, once he m arries her, he succum bs to conven­ pastures near Erl... (p. 37) G uhic m arried a lady farm er of tional and unromantic view s, insisting that L irazel, the the uplands? E lvish princess, become a proper C hristian and cease worship ping stars, flow ers, etc. She conforms for a w hile, bears M o re likely w hat D unsany m eant w as, "There w as G uhic, him a son, but is unhappy.. Kean w hile, her father has a n u p l a n d farm er of clover pastures near E rl, w ho had first w ritten a pow erful rune of a parchm ent, which he sends to t h o u g h t of it, after speaking w ith his w ife." Still, m uch of her. When she reads i t , she loses touch: w ith a il mundane the novel shows Dunsany in top form . T h e s ty le things and blows aw ay w ith the autumn leaves, back into Elfland. For years A lverie searches, but the lo st love can- is a lot better in places w here he isn't ram bling, w here som e not be regained, literally because the King has withdrawn im aginative concept is being presented or som e- t h i n g i s his b o rd e rs , happening. The first ninety pages m etaphorically because A lveric has grow n o l d e r o r s o , t h e fruitless search of A lveric, and the final com ing of and duller. H e travels about w ith a com pany of luna- E l f la n d into E rl are brilliant sequences. It w as on the strength of tics, w ho actually hold him back for fear that E lfland these, no doubt, that the novel has endured, w hen others w h i c h w o u l d drow n all their ow n fancies. A ll seem s hopeless, are actually better put together are out of print and f o r g o t t e n . b u t L izarel m isses A lveric, and persuades her father Tw o years later cam e The Charw om an s Shadow , w hich s h o w e d t o u s e h i s last great rune, w hich causes E lfland to flow another significant o v e r E r l , enchanting everything and closing it off from tim e, except for a sm all space arund a chapel w here a friar and several stodgy citizens, w ho can;t approve of advance in novelistic technique. T he K ing of Elfland's pagan things, m ay live out their last days. D unsany alw ays D aughter surpassed D on R odriguez in th at it h ad a portrayed clergym en favorable in his novels, so he dealt coherent plot under all the padding. T he C hairw om an's w ith the friar gently. B esides, som e readers doubtless found Shadow w ent a step further by dispensing w ith the padding. It it shocking the pagan- ism and m agin w in out. w as the first D unsany novel to really be a novel, rather then A gain, there is no such thing as E lf- land, but is once m erely a prose narrative stretched to 70,000 w ords by any m eans available. It is m arginally a sequal to D on m ore saying, "W ouldn't it be nice?" In conception the novel Rodriguez. The set- ting is the sam e im aginary is certainly m agnificent, but there are just too m any unicorn-hunting scenes, and quite a few m ore nature "G olden A ge" of Spain, only several generations later. descriptions than any but the m ost patient reader can stand. A descendant of one of the characters in the earlier Some of these are beautiful, but book plays a m inor role. T he blithe m utilation of the Spanish language continues; this tim e the hero's nam e is t h e y pale from repetition. T he prose os often very Ram on A lonzo M atthew -M ark-Luke-John of the T ow er deft, as m ight be expected. W e are told of a w itch and R ocky Forest. R am on is sent by his father to learn w ho lives in a cottage "on the high land, near the thunder, magic at the house of a magician. There he is w hich used to roll in sum m er am ong th e h ills," and there are m any other exam ples of descrip- t i o n s tricked out os his shadow (w hich the m agician cuts off at the w hich are both im aginative and precise. T he previously heels w ith a special knife), only to find that w ithout it he is m entioned "space w hich w ould w eary a com et" is an outcast from the rest of m ankind. Everybody know s excellent. Other writers might have taken paragraphs to thar som eone w ithout a shadow is tainted by the black arts. In once scene R am on is sitting am ong ordinary folk, and convey the sam e sense of infinite w aste. B u t t h e r e the sun goes dow n. T heir shadow s lengthen, but are tim es w hen the language becom es affected a n d his, being an im itation given him by the m agician, doesn't. precious. D unsany described it as "close to poetry" a s h e In the m agician's house he m eets an old charw om an, ever got, w hich w as not a good thing com ing from him , s i n c e whose shadow has similarly his poetry w as the least im pressive area of his w r i t i n g . Sometimes he is a been stolen. W hen he recovers it, her youth is restored. trifle too vague to be e ffe c tiv e : A nd the w ild things T he w riting in Shadow is an im provem ent over that in that Earth has guessed at and the things hidden even The King of Elfland's Daughter. from legend were m oved to sing age-old songs that their m em ories had forgotten. A nd fabulous things o f t h e W hen D unsany describes som ething, he m akes it air w ere lured dow n out of greta heights. A nd real. B eautiful things are beautiful. T he m ysterious is em otions unknown and unthought of troubles the calm m ysterious, but underneath the m ystery there is m ore of Elfland. (pp. 217-18) In other words I'm going to tell than pile of adjectives. T he prose is less flow ery and you about something there is m ore dialogue. T he strengths of he book are very great. The m agician, his practice, and his so am azing, so beautiful that earthly concepts don't apply, som ething beyond your w ildest dream s and im aginings, of dw elling are all presented in a w ealth of detail, resulting w hich no ancient bard ever sang, som ething you never in one of the m ost delightful treat- m ents of m agic in all r e a d about .... and so on for a page or tw o, all of literature. T he old fellow is as m uch of a villain as the w h ic h prom ises a great deal and delivers nothing. T he book has, but there are sym pathetic glim pses of him as a a b o v e passage contains nothing concrete or visual. confused fum bler w ho can;t find things in his laboratory W e c a n n o t hear "age-old songs," not can w e see the under all the stuffed crocodiles. H e is a w him sical, "fabulous things of the air" w ithout m ore inform ation. and yet hum an creation, w ho surely has descen- d a n t s W e are m erely told they are age-old and fabulous, in the w orks of later w riters like T .H . W hite and John and are expected to take D unsany's w ord for it. B ellairs. A nem one, the charw om an, is believable in T his sort of w riting is sim ply not as adept as that of "T he h e r a g e and her plight, and also in her restores youth. Fotress U nvanishable" or m any of the other early short T his too is an adm irable accom plishm ent, since restored stories, w hich prom ise w onders and then produce m aidens tend to turn cardboard in m ost fantasy novels. them w hile rem aining m asterpieces of com pres- s i o n . The only serious problem is that R am on A lonzo is too A t its w orst, the prose of D aughter is m urky and b l o a t e d m uch of a typical N aive Y oung M an and never .Occasionally, quite a three-dim ensional character. H e i s a g o o d tw o-dim ensional im itation w ho behaves like a hum an as strange as it m ay seem for D unsany, t h e r e being, but lacks em otional depth. he is currently service- are even clum sy constructions. Perhaps the attem pt able w hile the other characters, the beautiful w riting, and 40 the endlessly inventive plot m aintain the reader's interest, Dunsany was w riting about som ething he knew and appreciated. but he is no more than that. Thus, even when a scene did little to advance the p lot, he could make the wordage worthwhile for its own sake. There H appily, there are no long hunting scenes or other is little which is vague or which promises in vain. The irrelevant episodes. The book is certainly Dunsany's best Irish countryside (around M eath, where Dunsany C astle is) pure fantasy novel, and his second best a ll told, surpassed comes across so vividly the reader is a ll but transported only by. The Curse of the Wise Woman, about which more la te r. t h e r e : ... and for a w hile we walked in silence Them atically, The Charwoman's Shadow is p art of the over the rushes. The moss lay gray a ll progression away from the vision of E lfland. The book is around us, crisp as a dry sponge, while brimming w ith magic, and pagan things are treated sympathet­ we stepped on the heather and the rushes, ically when in conflict w ith the (equally sym pathetic) the heather a ll covered with dead grey buds, C hristian clergy, but magic does not flow over the Earth the rushes a pale sandy color. I had. this tim e. I t withdraws. In order to escape damnation, the never walked the bog in the Spring before, m agician flees- to the Land Beyond the M oon's R ising, whence and was surprised a t the greyness of it. he and a ll the follow ers of the Old Way can never return. But some bright mosses remained, scarlet B ereft of enchantm ent, the Golden Age of Spain ends. and b rillian t green; and a ll along the edge of the bog under the h ills lay a ribbon Magic also keeps its distance in The B lessing of Pan of gorse, and the field s flashed bright (1928), but so does, unfortunately, much of Dunsany's story­ above it, so that the bog lay like a dull telling ab ility . While there is more and better handled stone set in gold, w ith a row of em eralds dialogue in th is book, and (for the firs t time in a Dunsany around the golden ring. A snipe got up novel) fam iliar lands are described effectively, it is not brown, and turned, and flashed white in an advance over its predecessor because in ju st as many ways turning. A curlew rose and sped away it is in ferio r to The Charwoman's Shadow. The padding is down the sky w ith sw ift beats of his long back. In fact the novel is mostly padding. One suspects wings and loud outcry, giving the news, that its natural length Is on the order of 20,000 words, a "Man. Man," to a ll whose peace was en­ novella at best. dangered by our approach, and a skylark shot up and sang, and stayed above us The p lo t has to do w ith m ysterious and enchanting music singing. The pools that in the w inter lay which w afts down from the K entish h ills a t evening, causing between the islands of the heather, and otherwise respectable people to want to go up there and join that M artin used to te ll me were bottom less, in wild revels. The protagonist, a tim id, incompetent, but were most of them grey slim e now, topped basically nice vicar w rites to his bishop, reporting an out­ with a crust that looked as it it alm ost break of paganism. The bishop in sists he has been working might bear one. too hard. Nothing is done. U ltim ately paganism wins, and (pp. 212-13) the vicar finds him self up in the h ills offering sacrifice to Pan. The local source of m iracles, the tomb of St. Beyond th is looms Tir-nan-O g, the Land of Youth of Ethebruds, loses Its power to cure w arts. C eltic lore, We never actually see it, and no one ever gets there, unlike the villagers in The Blessing of Pan, who at The problem is th at Dunsany takes much too long to least reach the h ills from which the music comes. E lfland reach th is conclusion, and in the meantime he offers nothing has retreated to the very periphery of the novel. There is wondrous, just-m ore vague hints of beauties beyond the h ills, no outright fantasy elem ent, save for the ambiguous curses like the previously quoted passage from The King of E lfland's of a local witch that may or may not be responsible for Daughter, only in plainer language. There is little that is stopping the depredations of a peat company in ten t on ruin­ concrete. Pan never makes an appearance to liven things up, ing the bog. But in any case, between the fin est m agical even at the end. The plot is too sim ple, lacking complica­ cursing and conjuring scenes Dunsany ever wrote and the tion. It may be logical that nothing is done, but it is vision of Tir-nan-Og, the book has the feel of the purest d ifficu lt to te ll an Interesting story about nothing. fantasy. There is also enough of a plot to keep it going, involving the Troubles In Ireland, although apparently The previous novels had been met w ith basically good, shifted back to the tim e of Dunsany's youth in the late 19th if slightly patronizing critical reception. The reviews of Century; a lonely boy growing up by him self on an estate by th is one w eren't as good, even from critic s who w eren't the bog; and the attem pt to drive off the exploiters. There shocked at the ending. It isn 't hard to see why. is also a gamekeeper who thinks he has lo st his soul by yearning for Tir-nan-Og, and his plight is genuinely touch­ It is therefore a b it of a surprise that his best- ing. The characterization of the protagonist, who te lls received novel, which many consider his fin est, came next. the story in the firs t person, is very good. There are some However, there was a hiatus of several years, during which autobiographical elem ents, a rare thing for Dunsany. Dunsany wrote many of the early Jorkens sto ries, contributed lots of bad verse to newspapers, and travelled through India. C ritical acclaim seems to have bordered on the ecstatic, Perhaps because it had a longer period of gestation, The and the readers liked the book w ell enough to have kept it Curse of the Wise Woman is more substantial. in print until the early 1950's. It is s till in the 'books by' lists in Dunsany's la st volumes. It was reprinted again It was w ritten, accordingly to Lady Dunsany, in "three in 1972. Probably its lack of greater staying power stems and a half breathless months" in 1933, and published that from the fact that it is so unlike the sort of fantasy for year. This time Dunsany showed a fu ll command of style and which he is best remembered, and also because it is so un­ structure, and for the firs t time his characters came com-, like his other Irish novels. None of the others are nearly pletely alive. For the first time he used Irish life as his a s g o o d . source m aterial. Twenty years earlier Yeats had a ll but kicked him out of the self-styled Irish Renaissance for failing to do so. Dunsany's reply then was that if someone Obviously the success of Wise Woman spurred Dunsany on. were to found a society for medieval Italian poets, they There were three novels in 1936, Rory and Bran, My Talks obviously couldn't include Dante, who d id n 't w rite about W ith Dean Spanley, and Up In the H ills. Italy, but a different place entirely. Now he produced a full-fledged Irish novel to the astonishm ent of those who Rory and Bran is about Ireland again, w ith magic around said he couldn't do it. the edges, but this time the magic is clearly a delusion in the mind of an allegedly 19-year-old youth who frequently Everything done wrong in The King of E lfland's Daughter seems more like 12. This bookish lad, w ithout a practical and The B lessing of Pan is done properly. There are lopg thought In his head, is sent by his father to take cattle to nature descriptions, and even a fox hunt which runs fop three m arket. Like Jack of beanstalk fame, he Is prom ptly hood­ chapters, but it a ll comes off splendidly, perhaps because winked out of them, but saved again and again by Bran, who 41 is obviously sm arter. Bran is a dog. The main problem w ith over U lster and those who d id n 't. To be caught w ith a gun, the book is th at nowhere does Dunsany come out and state much less to run a private army, could be a capital offense. this. He later claim ed that it was perfectly obvious to him, (Y et Dunsany continued w ith his shooting during th is period, so there was no need to explain, but one suspects deliberate risking grave legal problems if found out.) Thus M ickey's am biguity. Bran drinks out of puddles, but so does Rory, so "war" would be no laughing m atter in real life , even though th at's hardly a clue. Whenever Bran utters a sound, the a ll concerned could, appreciate it in fiction. The sugges­ verb used is one which could denote eith er human or animal tion that the fighting was a bunch of country boys having noises. Bran is never described as barking, wagging his fun released a lo t of tension. The novel was w ell received ta il, scratching his fleas, or doing anything else overtly and no one objected to it. canine. The resu lt is a blindfold-the-reader story, wherein an essential fact is w ithheld which would be perfectly It doesn't however, hold up as w ell to the modem obvious if the reader were able to see the scene. Seeing the reader, particularly the non-Irish reader. C ertainly the scene is very much what fiction is about. Storytelling is a w riting is first rate, and much of the humor is s till visual a rt in the m ind's eye. With a deliberate deception effective, but in the afterm ath of World War II and de­ like this the reader gets to the end and discovers he hasn't tailed press coverage of Vietnam, it is d ifficu lt to regard really read the book, and now must go back and re-im agine it war as fun and games, w ith no hard feelings involved, even the way everything really happened. He has been lied to and if the author is clearly being facetious. Beyond th at, there cheated, as surely as the science fictio n reader who dis­ is the problem of sheer im plausibility. Up in the H ills is covers at the end of the story that the hero is really a fantastic in the w orst sense of the word, unbelievable giant lobster and the invading m onsters are Earthmen. rather than im aginative in such a way that belief can be suspended. There is a "battle" in which everybody is In Rory and Bran it is possible to read the whole book shooting live ammunition a t close range, and no one is' w ithout catching on. Amory quotes one review er who remarked scratched on either side. There is none of the terror of that the character "is rather quiet for an Irishm an." This real combat. Another tim e, when Mickey has been condemned can only be distracting because the plot does not hinge on to die and made to dig his own grave, he is able to tunnel the fact that Bran is a dog. The best way to read the novel into a conveniently-placed underground riv er, jump in , and is forewarned. swim away before his captors notice. When Patsy has Mickey at p isto l point, the la tte r escapes by pretending to precede Again the nature descriptions are very good and the the gunman out of a room, opening the door, then jumping atmosphere is m aintained w ell. We see more of the Irish behind a couch faster than the eye can follow . Try it some­ countryside than in The Curse of the Wise Woman because the tim e. The reader is le ft w ith a sigh of "Come on now!" hero must trav el, and we meet more people as Rory and Bran Only once does reality intrude, when Patsy Hefferman is shot wander hither and yon with a band of tinkers. (Tinkers are by government soldiers, but otherwise the tale is contrived Irish gypsies, who, at least at the tim e, rode about in and antiseptic from sta rt to finish. The w orst contrivance wagons and made meager livings repairing pots and doing odd is at the end. Mickey and a friend are trying to escape jobs.) S ignificantly, Dunsany makes it abundantly obvious into U lster. A squad of soldiers is waiting at the border. that there are no legendary heroes among the clouds atop "What do we do now, G eneral?" M ickey's comrade asks. In the the m ountains, and th at the supposedly prophetic talism an, next chapter they are safely in London. We are never told the Stone of the Sea, is really a piece of ocean-smoothed what they did. Obviously Dunsany didn't know how to conclude glass. The vision of Elf land is fading fast. the story, so he ju st stopped.

Dunsany's thesis is that simple people are better off My Talks With Dean Spanley is the major novel of the with their beliefs and kept in their place. An ardent Irish "Great Canine Period," to use Amory's phrase again. It's nationalist (then or now) might object that th is.is patroni­ about a clergyman who was a dog in a previous incarnation, sing, but Dunsany also believed that it was the duty of the and is capable of remembering experiences when prim ed w ith nobility to look after the w elfare of the common people, so a rare wine the narrator gets from a M aharaja he knows. more than sim ple social snobbery is involved. And the (Not unlikely in Dunsany's social circles.) The narrator reader might object that Rory is too out of touch with keeps inviting Dean Spanley (who was a spaniel) to dinner, reality to be anywhere short of a looney-bin, Dunsany was getting him drunk, and his recollections make up the bulk of nearly fifty when he wrote Rory and Bran. Perhaps he had the book. That's a ll there is to it, and it would be a forgotten what it was like to be 19, which may explain frightfully thin thread to hang even a short novel on inaccuracies of observation w ithout excusing them. The re­ (fortunately this one is far less than the usual 70,000 sult is a pleasant book, but not a very convincing one. words) were the w riting not so good. If you wonder how Dunsany got away w ith so feeble a prem ise, the only answer Up In the H ills contains not a single hint of anything is he did it superbly. He was a great lover of dogs, owned m agical. It is a frequently comical novel about boys having many, and knew their ways w ell. He wrote about them as con­ a good time in Ireland during the Troubles, and may best be vincingly as any tw o-legged author ever could. Thus, there described as Huckleberry Finn meets the Sinn Fein. But may not be much to the book, but it is enormously readable, quite unlike a Mark Twain story, when the boy hero bumps even for people who d o n 't dote on the beasts the way Dunsany head-on into reality , it is reality which gives way. did. But the ending is another let-down, even if it has to be. Dunsany wrote him self into a com er. The Dean is about The novel begins w ith a splendid prom ise. A newly to reveal the ultim ate secrets of doggiedom, things which no independent A frican nation, wishing to show itse lf the equal human can possibly know, and which no human author can pro­ of all the European countries which send archeological duce. Therefore he can either fake it and ruin the versim - expeditions to A frica; sends its own scien tists to dig up ilitu d e of what has gone before, or make excuses and duck an ancient Irish settlem ent. The archeologists are a b it the question. Dunsany chose the la tter course by having green to European civilizatio n , and comic encounters resu lt, his character take no chances and getting the Dean drunker often at the expense of the Irish. than usual. To be sociable, everyone else present has a few extra glasses too. A las, a ll anyone can remember is a Had Dunsany follow ed th is through, he m ight have had a feeling of drowsiness and how warm the room was. first-rate novel, but instead he merely uses it as an open­ ing device. The locals are so upset about the disturbing of One curious aside: The American edition was published dead men’s bones th at a ll the w itches in the neighborhood by Putnam 's in a series W ith such title s as Schooldays With (w itchcraft being a superstition, not a power) start hurling K ipling, A H istory of the United States Navy, and The Six curses at a great rate, with no visible effect save that it Wives of Henry V III. A pparently it was being marketed as g e t s 17-year-old Mickey Connor out of town and into the non-fiction! h ills because he doesn't want to get h it by a stray spell. While up there, he and some friends stage a "friendly" war To Be Continued w ith a local private army headed by Patsy Hefferman. This is actually serious business, since during the "Troubles," NIEKAS is back! Ed M eskys requests that subscribers shortly after the Irish Free State was established, there and other interested persons contact him at RFD 1, was a c iv il war between those who accepted the compromise Box 63, Center H arbor, N.H. 03226. 42