[Booktalk] Actual Appendix N: The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

As a break from this series, let’s take a look at an entry that is actually on the appendix N. Lord Dunsany is a turn of the century author of “weird” and fantastic fiction and was much admired by the likes of Lovecraft, Howard, C.A. Smith and Tolkien, among countless others. The King of Elfland’s Daughter is arguably his most famous work.

The King of Elfland’s daughter is Dunstany’s whimsical take on the classic faery tales of olden days. Set somewhere before 1530, a date Dunsany only includes to poke fun at turn of the century neckbeards presumably clamouring for historical realism in faery tales, the tale takes place in the village of Erl, situated close to the borders of the fields we know and Elfland.

“For seven hundred years the chiefs of your race have ruled us well; and their deeds are remembered by the minor minstrels, living on yet in their little tinkling songs. And yet the generations stream away, and there is no new thing.”
“What would you?” said the lord.
“We would be ruled by a magic lord,” they said.
“So be it,” said the lord. “It is five hundred years since my people have spoken thus in parliament, and it shall always be as your parliament saith. You have spoken. So be it.”

The ordeal is taken up by none other then the lord’s son Alveric, who must sojourn beyond the borders of twilight and win the princess Lirazel. Hesitant to confront Elfland’s magical guardians with mortal weaponry, he beseeches the Witch Ziroonderel for a favor. She takes her gathered thunderbolts and forges them into a sword equal to the task.

The witch approached it and pared its edges with a sword that she drew from her thigh. Then she sat down beside it on the earth and sang to it while it cooled. Not like the runes that enraged the flames was the song she sang to the sword: she whose curses had blasted the fire till it shrivelled big logs of oak crooned now a melody like a wind in summer blowing from wild wood gardens that no man tended, down valleys loved once by children, now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets.

A mighty weapon indeed, a single blow of the weapon strips the enchantment of any foe it encounters, more then enough to overcome elfland’s animated oaks or its ageless knights, whose enchanted swords are proof against any mortal blade. Though King of Elfland’s Daughter is no Sword & Sorcery, rather a whimsical tale of fancy, old age, change and mortal folly. The problems of Elfking’s daughter are born from mortal folly and cannot be overcome with force.

I can think of few authors that capture the eerie wonder of Faerie as well as Harry Clarke, though for Dunsany’s Elfland he is perhaps too horrific. There is great peril but little evil in Dunsany’s Elfland.

The Princess Lirazel, with a crown of ice, is carried off to Earth, enchanted by the promise of Alveric. Elfland itself is described in purple, ethereal prose; a place of immense natural beauty, eternal summer and stasis, proof against the ravages of time, inhabited by strange creatures and sometimes visited shortly by some of the inhabitants of the fields we know; the sly fox sometimes strays over the boundary. When Alveric returns to the fields we know, many years have passed.

And all of a sudden he came from the gloom of the wood to the emerald glory of the Elf King’s lawns. Again, we have hints of such things here. Imagine lawns of ours just emerging from night, flashing early lights from their dewdrops when all the stars have gone; bordered with flowers that just begin to appear, their gentle colours all coming back after night; untrodden by any feet except the tiniest and wildest; shut off from the wind and the world by trees in whose fronds is still darkness: picture these waiting for the birds to sing; there is almost a hint there sometimes of the glow of the lawns of Elfland; but then it passes so quickly that we can never be sure. More beautiful than aught our wonder guesses, more than our hearts have hoped, were the dewdrop lights and twilights in which these lawns glowed and shone. And we have another thing by which to hint of them, those seaweeds or sea-mosses that drape Mediterranean rocks and shine out of blue-green water for gazers from dizzy cliffs: more like sea-floors were these lawns than like any land of ours, for the air of Elfland is thus deep and blue.

Against this mortal endeavor stands the King of Elfland. Ageless, Noble, possessed of tremendous foresight and endowed with terrible power. Within elf-land his might is supreme. Three Great Runes he has to work magic beyond the boundary of twilight. Yet there is nothing malicious in him. His only desire is to retrieve his daughter and save her from the ravishes of time. We see this when he sacrifices one of his Great Runes to restore life to one of the princesses guardians. In the end, he gives his last rune for the happiness of his daughter, born of mortal woman, to re-unite her with her husband and son.

The Unicorn hunt is a very prominent pasttime of Orion, son of Alveric and Lirazel

Elfland is a world of pure fantasy. There is no semblance of verisimilitude. It is a place meant to inspire, not truly understood. The closest thing to a society within it is composed of the characters of the various magical creatures and their attitudes. The irreverent and mischievous trolls, the haughty unicorns that stray over the boundary to graze on mortal fields and the malignant but flighty Will-o-the-Wisps. The Troll Lurulu eventually convinces Orion he requires houndmasters to prevent his pack from straying into Elfland, and soon entire tribes of magical creatures are imported into the village of Erl.

Lirazel bears a son to Alveric but can never fully acclimate to the mundane world. She is too strange for mortal realms, laughing at funerals, worshipping the stars for her beauty, and ultimately unable to comprehend the customs of the fields we know. After a quarrel, she opens the scroll bearing the rune sent to her by her father and is spirited off into elfland.

And at that moment a wind came out of the north-west, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced on over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together. With them went Lirazel.

Alveric, undone with grief, attempts to sally once more into Elfland to retrieve her. But the Elf-King withdraws its borders beyond the horizon whenever he draws near. Alveric discovers that the old leatherworker living near the border is unable to see or even acknowledge elfland exists, perhaps a metaphor for the dissipation of wonder with the coming of old age. The theme repeats throughout the book. Alveric gathers an adventuring party of a shepherd, a lovesick man, a madman, a moonstruck boy and a poet and sets out on a decade-long quest to find the borders of elfland. One by one they fall off and return home until only the madman and the moonstruck man remain.

To Alveric lying on furs in his shelter, watching red embers glowing beyond dark shapes of his men, the quest promised well: he would go far North watching every horizon for any sign of Elfland: he would go by the border of the fields we know, and always be near provisions: and if he got no glimpse of the pale-blue mountains he would go on till he found some field from which Elfland had not ebbed, and so come round behind them. And Niv and Zend and Thyl had all sworn to him that evening that before many days were gone they would surely all find Elfland. Upon this thought he slept.

Orion meanwhile is brought up by the Witch Ziroonderel and takes to hunting the beasts of the forest. At first his past-time seems mundane as he hunts the stags of the forest, until eventually he comes upon the unicorn and hunts that too. His forays bring him ever closer to Elfland until he appoints Lurulu the troll for his whip, and has the Will-o-the-Wisps light their path by night so he may hunt the unicorn. It is Orion the younger who brings magic to Erl.

The Wild Hunt by Henry Lievens

Then Niv and Zend dropped their pole in that unearthly twilight, where it lay like the wreckage of some uncharted sea, and suddenly seized their master.

“A land of dreams!” said Niv. “Have I not dreams enough?”

“There is no moon there!” cried Zend.

Alveric struck Zend on the shoulder with his sword, but the sword was disenchanted and blunt and only harmed him slightly. Then the two seized the sword and dragged Alveric back. And the strength of the madman was beyond what one could believe. They dragged him back again to the fields we know, where they two were strange and were jealous of other strangeness, and led him far from the sight of the pale-blue mountains. He had not entered Elfland.

In the end the magic of Elfland spills over the boundaries of twilight and utterly disrupts life in the village of Erl. Impassioned pleas to the witch Ziroonderel are of no avail; magic, once conjured up, cannot be put back. Only the Freer, a figure of almost comical prudishness and sobriety, manages to keep the goblins, trolls and will-o-the-wips at bay with prayers and curses.

“Cursed be toadstool rings and whatever dances within them. And all strange lights, strange songs, strange shadows, or rumours that hint of them, and all doubtful things of the dusk, and the things that ill-instructed children fear, and old wives’ tales and things done o’ midsummer nights; all these be accursed with all that leaneth toward Elfland and all that cometh thence.”

The ending of the story is somewhat sweet, as the Elf-king grants his last Rune so Elfland may spill over the boundaries and return to the village of Eld once more, to re-unite a harrowed and broken Alveric and Orion with the Princess Lirazel. The years fall from them as they re-unite and are carried away to Elf-land.

The prose is flowery, laden with repetition and long paragraphs of simile in evocation of old-folk takes. At times funny, at times sad but at all times whimsical and magical, if anything The Elfking’s Daughter manages to evoke an old sense of wonder and magic in our at times secular and banal age. Magic is mysterious, a source of both wonder and terrible inconvenience. The lack of a firm geography and the inclusion of a map only serves to add to the folkloric atmosphere of the whole piece.

There are some entries in Appendix N that do not hold up very well. This is most certainly not one of them. Highly recommended.

For my postscript I will attempt to assign some manner of level to the characters of this charming folkloric tale, if only to exercise my DnDish muscles. Those of more poetic sensibilities would be welcome to skip this section.

There is very little in the way of fighting in The King of Elfland’s Daughter and the story is the more better for it. That being said, the most powerful figure would be The King of Elfland, whose power is like unto a god within the boundaries of his own realm. He can conjure up a dawn in an effort to assuage his daughter’s sadness, and all creatures of Elfland obey his whims. He would be akin to a 20th level wizard, or max level Elf (spell-casting variant), or a demi-god within his domain, though even he has only limited power over life and death, being restricted to his Three Great Runes.

Below him is the Witch Ziroonderel, who gathers thunderbolts to make the enchanted sword, and whose charms entertain and nourish the child Orion. She is wise and skillfull but ultimately her magic is no match for that of the King. In old D&D, forging magic items is possible only for the most powerful of wizards, 15th level at the least. I say Ziroonderel is much too humble a spellcaster for that august level, far more witch and hedge-wizard then a power who makes the globe tremble with her might. 9th level is more then enough.

Alveric does most of the heavy lifting, fighting enchanted vines and elven knights in his bid for Lirazel. But his power comes mostly from his enchanted sword, as his erstwhile compatriots, the madman Niv and the moonstruck man Zend overpower him with their madman’s strength. He can be argued to be at most a 3rd level fighting man, taking on 4 elven knights with his enchanted blade. His companions are 1st or 0th level fighting men.

Orion, the new lord, is a formidable hunter, chasing down stag, bear and fox. He is the master of a pack of hounds, trolls and even will-o-the wisps and makes prey of Unicorns, and goes toe to toe with one, and is narrowly saved from death by his hounds. This would place him at 3rd level at the highest, and as he is younger then his father, 2nd level suits him well.

Fair Lirazel does not display any great feat of arms but it is noted she knows more of magic then the 100 year-old Ziroonderel. She achieves her aims through grace and pleading, as we would expect from a princess. We shall place her at the equivalent of a 10th level elf if not higher.

Next entry is probably going to be the Well at the World’s End by William Morris. Stay tuned, and great weekend everyone!