The King of Elfland's Daughter

If you’re interested in character development or a fast-moving, action-packed plot, Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter will probably disappoint you. On the other hand, if you remain curious about the origins of the fantasy genre beyond Tolkien but were put off by the recurrent battles of Eddison’s Zimiamvian series, then this might be more to your taste.
Yet be forewarned: there is bloodshed here, too. In addition to numerous stags, even unicorns. When I shared this information with a fantasy fan, he gasped, “not unicorns!” But it turns out that the unicorns, because of their stuck-up ways, aren’t beloved of their fellow creatures of Elfland, so the aptly-named Orion has little difficulty recruiting a troll to show more help hunt them.
Orion is the offspring of an earthling, Alveric, prince of Erl, and Lirazel (to whom the book’s title refers). Alveric enters Elfland, which turns out to be just through the hedge at the edge of Erl, to get her as his bride.
The idea was not his to begin with, though. It arose when Erl’s parliament petitioned Alveric’s father, the king of Erl, to liven up Erl with some magic. Alveric’s consent comes readily enough, nor does Lirazel hesitate to take his hand and scamper earthward through the hedge. That surprised me.
This lack of resistance gave me the feeling in the book’s first part that not much was happening. But, of course, Alveric can’t just stroll through the hedge. To hack through the life-threatening ivy that clads the giant oaks beyond, he needs a sword forged from thunderbolts by a helpful witch.
When Lirazel bears their son, Orion, the same witch is deemed the only suitable nurse.
Orion’s dual heritage gradually reveals itself. At first, Erl’s parliament (twelve village elders who do their planning in the evening while imbibing generous bowls of mead) are pleased their desire has come to fruition but then regret it. So in one way, the story illustrates the old adage, be careful what you wish for. Indeed, Lord Dunsany’s portrayal for this group’s ability to get it wrong suggests that he shares fellow fantasist Eddison’s disdain for democracy. We’re overdue for a creative fantasist to imagine a well-working democracy; I think we could use it now.
The book also illustrates a second adage, the one about the grass always greener and so on. This is the aspect of the book I most enjoyed. It’s no surprise that Elfland exerts a pull on some earthlings. It is lit by neither sun nor moon but bathed in perpetual twilight by the king’s effulgence. He has mastered time so that it moves so slowly that seemingly nothing changes (a point stylistically underlined by the author’s generous repetition of descriptive details as motifs whenever he writes about Elfland). The twist is that earth also fascinates some of Elfland’s creatures. Each day is announced by a glorious dawn and seen off by a radiant sunset. Spring seems to pass in a heartbeat. To Lirazel, as well as to Lurulu, the adventurous troll, earth’s transience is part of its beauty.
Is there a way to satisfy this mutual attraction? In Erl, Lirazel had missed her homeland; but then, after she yields to her father’s magical blandishment to return, she longs for her son (and her husband, too—at least a bit). This adds a mood previously unknown in Elfland: Sadness. The only way for her father to assuage it is to risk Elfland’s future survival. show less

Lord Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, first published in 1924, is widely acknowledged as a classic work of fantasy fiction. This is Dunsany's second novel and probably the most famous among his large body of work. It tells how the parliament of Erl asks its lord Alveric to bring magic to their isolated valley. Alveric crosses over into Elfland and wins the King of Elfland's daughter, but Lirazel is restless in the mortal world. Eventually her father's powerful rune compels her to leave her husband and son Orion for the ageless calm of Elfland. Alveric sets out on a hopeless quest to bring her back, while Orion grows up and becomes a hunter. Everything seems ordinary until Orion begins to hear the horns of Elfland, and hunts his show more first unicorn. And Lirazel languishes amidst the astonishing beauty of her father's realm, sighing for earthly things.

Oh, Dunsany's writing... I can't get over it, and apparently it has taken many other readers the same way. It is full of phrases to savor like the lines of a poem, and almost demands to be read slowly. Its archaic touch is courtesy of Dunsany's abiding love for the language of the King James Bible and his admiration of an earlier fantasy author, William Morris. His graceful style has had a powerful influence on the authors who followed; I saw elements and ideas picked up by Patricia McKillip, J. R. R. Tolkien, and possibly C. S. Lewis, to name a few. I can't describe his distinctive voice adequately; you simply must read it for yourself.

At the core of Dunsany's imagination is the idea that Elfland, or magic/enchantment, is a place bordering our ordinary everyday world ("the fields we know")—and it is far from benign. Its strangeness is not welcoming and its creatures operate under a completely different set of ideas about the world. Sometimes these differences lead to hilarity (like when we get a glimpse of the trolls' perceptions of the human world) and other times the differences are tragic (as when Alveric, angry, is unable to understand his wife's attempts to worship the Christom God by practicing worshiping the stars first). I've only found this sense of profound, unbridgeable otherness in a few other authors (one of whom is Peter S. Beagle, who cites Dunsany as a strong influence).

There is tension that eventually breaks into antagonism between Christianity and Elfland; "For between Elfland and Heaven there is no path, no flight, no way; and neither sends ambassador to the other" (219). The Freer (Christian priest) curses Elfland and all its inhabitants, which carves out a little island of unenchanted ground for him when Erl is taken into Elfland. He isn't a sympathetic figure in his harsh denunciations of magic, but Dunsany calls him "the good man," and the ordinary people who once defied his dictums by longing for magic come to regret it. Christianity isn't benign... but neither is Elfland. Over and over again we are reminded that elvish creatures are "beyond the hope of blessedness" in the Christian Heaven, which, left undescribed, seems pale and unreal next to the lush enchanted lands. I don't like the dichotomy, that the two realms are innately opposed to one another. Interestingly, Dunsany's descriptions of Elfland remind me strongly of Lewis' New Narnia—which of course is his conception of the New Heavens and the New Earth described in the Bible.

I don't usually care for Neil Gaiman, but he writes a nice introduction to this novel. He's right about taking the time to savor it; usually I read at a breakneck speed but something about this book forced me to slow down. This story is a distinctive experience; I will seek out more of Dunsany's strange wine. show less

I've read that Edward Plunkett, Lord Dunsany, wrote with a quill, filling page after page just letting the words flow. That is how The King of Elfland's Daughter reads, a tone poem of fantasy, magic, and words. The story meanders on a river of prose, some of it somewhat archaic but always beautiful.
This is high fantasy at its best. An earthling prince falls in love with an Elf princess and brings her away from her kingdom. They have a son, part magic and part human. But life in fantasies is never smooth.
This is a small book but took me some time to read, partly because I often stopped to savor the prose.
"And her voice had the music that, of earthly things, was most like ice in thousands of broken pieces rocked by a wind of Spring upon show more lakes in some northern country."
Dunsany was hailed as the "Kings of Dreams". I think this passage from this book illustrates his writing best:
"And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills." show less

Poetical? Yes. In a class with Tolkein? Uhm, no. Admired by Neil Gaiman? Apparently, yes. Admired by me? No. This story is light on character development, light on plot, pretty much humorless, with poor parenting choices, and loads of slaughtered beasts, including a ghastly unicorn hunt which nearly made me put the book down (yep, definitely judging here - I would make a terrible anthropologist). It reminds me of the Bible. No, seriously. For the aforementioned reasons but also, I'd say 90% of the sentences and paragraphs begin with "And," as in "And then when ..." "And the next day ..." "And there was ..." followed by phrases like "thus (such and such...)" and "for (such and such)." Some examples:

"And Alveric would not speak the words show more ... for no man, he foolishly thought, should compromise in matters touching on heathenesse."

"And to the land thus expectant, thus watchful ..."

The young person in this story is abandoned by both of his parents and goes feral, becoming a bloodthirsty hunter of, it seems, anything that wasn't his pack of hunting dogs. He killed animals, wore animals, ate animals, and dreamed of killing more animals. Special guy.

Luckily, it's short. But really, this could be a 20 page picture book for tykes and I'd get the very same message. Come to that, I don't have a clue what the message might be. Scratch that idea. show less

A beautifully-written, Edwardian faerie story for adults - not that there's any "adult" content, and were it published today, it would probably be classed as YA (despite some rather unpleasant hunting). However, it only gets 3*, as a reflection of my enjoyment of it; I prefer things a little darker, even though the moral is perhaps "Be careful what you wish for".

Plot
It is essentially a tale of young love across a cultural chasm (human Alveric and elfin Lirazel), the quest of Orion (not the Greek god), and features a witch, a faerie, elves, trolls, a magical sword, runes, unicorns and many other staples of the genre.

Language
It is written in a florid style, lauding the beauty and harmony of the natural world ("the autumn-smitten show more garden"), and suggesting the ephemeral, not-quite-there nature of Elfland (the other side of "the rampart of twilight").

The poetic feel is emphasised by some recurring phrases, in particular the contrast between "the fields that we know" (the normal, non-magical world) and places "that may not be told of but in song" (Elfland).

Furthermore, the word "glamour" is often used in its archaic sense, to mean casting enchantment over something. I'm less sure what to make of the two references to the King of Elfland's tower having "brazen steps"!

Then, about half way through, the magic is suddenly broken when the author addresses the reader directly with comments about real history. It jarred.

Elfland - (how) can we know it?
I liked the ideas of how Elfland is occasionally but unconsciously perceivable by mortals:
"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."

Artists of all kinds are most receptive and "have had many a glimpse of that country, so that sometimes in pictures we see a glamour too wonderful for our fields; it is a memory of theirs that intruded from some old glimpse." Similarly, Elfland's "flowers and lawns, seen only by the furthest travelling fancies of poets in deepest sleep".

As well as being geographically abstract, Elfland exists, to some extent, outside time: time there passes V E R Y slowly in comparison with here. This is understandably disconcerting for the few who travel between the two realms. Coming to the fields that we know, "even the shadows of houses moved" as part of a "vortex of restlessness"

Quotes

• "So strong lay the enchantment... that not only did beasts and men guess each other's meaning well, but there seemed to be an understanding even, that reached from men to trees and from trees to men."

• "a hare, who was lying in a comfortable arrangement of grass, in which he had intended to pass the time till he should have things to see to."

• "The glamour that brightens much of our lives, especially in the early years, comes from rumours that reach us from Elfland" and "all manner of little memories".

• "In a forest wherein it quieted the trembling of myriads of petals of roses, it stilled the pools where the great lilies towered, till they and their reflections slept on in one gorgeous dream. And there below motionless fronds of dream-gripped trees, on the still water dreaming of the still air, where the huge lily-leaves floated green in the calm, was the troll Lurulu, sitting on a leaf."

• "Little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills."

• Spring is "a mild benediction that blessed the very air and sought out all living things."

• "The hall that was built of moonlight, dreams, music and mirage."

• And a dash of humour when a troll tells others about the world of men, "They listened spell-bound... and then, when he told of hats, there ran through the forest a wave of little yelps of laughter".

See also

Dunsany went darker - and better - in the short story, The Bureau d'Echange de Maux, which I reviewed HERE. show less

Brilliant novel if you can get through the lack of much conflict and if you can get into the prose which is fairly whimsical and airy. The setting and the way that the events of the world relate to each other are so unique and interesting. Causality is super strange and beautiful and, possibly because it was written before too many modern fantasy conventions had had time to develop, nothing that you think is bound to happen ever does. I loved it.

This book is perhaps the origin of modern fantasy literature, without which the genre might not exist. You get to see what Spenser would have been in the era of the novel. Tolkien and Le Guin and McKillip and Moorcock and so forth are all peeking up at you from this 1924 classic. The King of Elfland's Daughter casts a spell. I felt like everything else I'd read was burgers and fries. I thought I loved fantasy novels...but I'd never tasted salt. Not every reader will want to read an entire chapter about a troll looking out the window on a single day. Not every reader will embrace descriptive repetitiveness as a worthy stylistic choice. But I loved these things. The conclusion of the goals of the Council of Erl, which ends with a speech show more by Ziroonderel, is magnificent. Some threads only come to a head in the final page of the book, where we are asked to believe that everything just sort of works out. So that's not ideal. But the grim resignation of Alveric, the yearning of Orion...the author wanted to explore how this felt and played out in the human heart and not resolve. But this book is not about plot. This book is about Ziroonderel sweeping the earth with her broom, about fancies that fly into our consciousness, about Lirazel praying to the reflection of the stars, about Lurulu leading the will-o-wisps to dry land like the killdeer leads away the fox. It is a book of momentary wisdom on the bridge between the left and right sides of the brain, about asserting our will over nature and all the wonder and calamity that can result. show less