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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).