Tales Before Tolkien (58 page)

(She makes a pass.)

And be as deaf! while I address these maids.

Your ear must not receive what is not for it—

What do you hear?

Nightshade.
(in a cowed voice)
I hear that primal silence before creation!

Quite safely you may speak!

Titania. Yet you hear my question, cunning one!

(She makes a second pass.)

Now she'll not hear!—

(to the three sisters)
Our meeting must break up.

Your parents are alone, though I have soothed them

With a false supposition. Tell them now

The truth of where you've been, and what has happened—

Improbable though it seem, they shall believe it.

Ere Candlemas is come you'll meet your husbands,

Ere Pentecost you'll marry them!

Take you no thought to prepare for your three weddings,

An unexpected letter before long

You'll have. And also I will send to you by night,

In bed, my very most distinguished fairy,

Experienced in human marriages.

With her you shall consult, and do what's right.—

Now you must go. A fairy sleigh is waiting

Outside the cave, with fairy ponies four,

And fairy coachman—Emerald shall ride with you.

Before you know that you have started home,

You will be there!

(making a pass over the Witch)
Now be your ears unseal'd!

(Mother Nightshade puts her hands to her head as if dazed. Sudden loud fairy music sounds, proceeding triumphantly. But in another minute it becomes by transition the different theme of the winding-up song.)

ENSEMBLE.

Rosa, Lila. 'Tis natural that the heart of maiden

Should dream of marriage proud and splendid.

Violetta, Yet when the heart with pride is laden

Emerald. They say its happiness is ended.

Nightshade. Unlike your pride,
hate
isn't senseless

Contrivances it ever knows—

It's not, like happiness, defenceless,

But deathless as the tropic glows!

Titania. The heart of maid was ne'er intended

To dream of aught else but its loving.

Before high love her knee is bended,

Before high love her smiles are moving!

All. Let each one follow what road she may,

It will come somewhere, upon a day!

Rosa, Lila. 'Tis fitting that the heart of woman

Should take a peep where it is going.

Violetta, Yet when its sight becomes not human

Emerald. Sad is the token of blood's unflowing.

Nightshade. Human is
hate,
o'er all the others

From soul to soul it ever calls—

The tide of its blood everything smothers,

In cataracts and fearsome falls!

Titania. The heart of woman is ever growing

Towards the love which is its heaven—

Years shall not stay it, 'tis ever doing

The same thing o'er, from life's morn to even.

All. Let each follow what road she may,

It shall come somewhere, upon a day!

Curtain.

ENDNOTES

* I think I must be indebted to Novalis for these geometrical figures.

* Sir Theophilus Shepstone's.

* The royal salute of the Zulus.

* Guardian Spirit.

* Hebrew, “My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?”

* The Lapp sledge of wicker and skin, capable of holding one man sitting with legs stretched out, and guiding the reindeer with a single thong of rein.

AUTHOR NOTES
AND RECOMMENDED READING

This listing follows similarly from the principles outlined in the introduction, the major point being that only authors born five years or more before Tolkien are included. Authors with an asterisk after their names have work included in this volume.

Andersen, Hans Christian (1805–75)

Danish writer, best known for his fairy tales, originally published in four collections. A fine selection, translated into English by R. P. Keigwin, can be found in
Eighty Fairy Tales
(1982), a volume of the Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library.

Baum, L[yman]. Frank* (1856–1919)

American children's writer and creator of Oz. His fourteen Oz novels tend to overshadow some of his other work of high quality, including the novels
Queen Zixi of Ix
(1905), a traditional fairy tale about a magic wishing cloak, and
The Sea-Fairies
(1911), which takes place in the underwater kingdom of the Mermaids. Baum's
Mother Goose in Prose
(1897) presents some of the stories behind traditional Mother Goose rhymes, while in
The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus
(1902) Baum invented a mythology surrounding Santa Claus, much as Tolkien would do in letters to his own children, collected as
The Father Christmas Letters
(1976, expanded in 1999 as
Letters from Father Christmas
).

Blackwood, Algernon (1869–1951)

British writer of mystical stories, including two classics, “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” Blackwood published many collections, but several early volumes contain his best work:
The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories
(1906);
The Listener and Other Stories
(1907);
John Silence—Physician Extraordinary
(1908);
The Lost Valley and Other Stories
(1910);
Pan's Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories
(1912); and
Incredible Adventures
(1914). A recent and representative selection of Blackwood's best short fiction is
Ancient Sorceries and Other Weird Tales
(2002), edited by S. T. Joshi.

Buchan, John* (1875–1940)

Scottish writer and politician, best remembered for his suspense novel,
The Thirty-nine Steps
(1915), later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Some of Buchan's fantasy and supernatural stories were collected in
The Watcher by the Threshold and Other Stories
(1902),
The Moon Endureth: Tales and Fancies
(1912), and
The Runagates Club
(1928). Of his many novels, the most interesting are
Witch Wood
(1927), set in seventeenth-century Scotland and concerning an ancient and magical forest, and
The Gap in the Curtain
(1932), which deals with fate, free will, and J. W. Dunne's theories of time travel (the latter being as well an interest of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis).

Cabell, James Branch* (1879–1958)

American writer, best remembered for his novel
Jurgen
(1919), which became a cause célèbre when it was put on trial for obscenity.
Jurgen
is the slightly bawdy tale of a poet/pawnbroker in Cabell's fantastic medieval French province of Poictesme, a place about which Cabell would write many volumes, later collected in the eighteen-volume set
The Biography of Manuel
(1927–30).

Carroll, Lewis (1832–98)
[pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson]

British writer and mathematician, author of the children's classics
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
(1865) and its sequel
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
(1871). Tolkien did not consider the Alice books to be fairy tales because of their dream frames and dream transitions, yet he considered them successful stories. Tolkien was also fond of
Sylvie and Bruno
(1889) and its sequel,
Sylvie and Bruno Concluded
(1893). Christopher Tolkien has written that his father knew these works well and occasionally recited verses from the books.

Coleridge, Sara (1802–52)

British writer and editor, daughter of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Her novel
Phantasmion
(1837), about the travels of a prince in Faerie, was the first fairy-tale novel written in English.

Coppard, A[lfred]. E[dgar]. (1878–1957)

British writer, who specialized in the short story, many of which fancifully describe rural England. While Coppard published numerous collections, his own selection of his best work,
The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard
(1947), was very successful, and it provides a good introduction to the author's writings.

Crockett, S[amuel]. R[utherford]. (1859–1914)

Scottish writer. His thirteenth novel (out of fifty),
The Black Douglas
(1899), was read by Tolkien in his youth. In a letter Tolkien remarked that the episode of the wargs in
The Hobbit
was in part derived from
The Black Douglas,
calling the book “probably his best romance and anyway one that deeply impressed me in school-days, though I have never looked at it again.” An excerpt from one chapter (“The Battle of the Were-Wolves”), showing Tolkien's indebtedness, can be found in note 10 to chapter 6 of the revised edition of
The Annotated Hobbit.

de la Mare, Walter (1873–1956)

British writer and poet. De la Mare's
The Three Mulla-Mulgars
(1910) is a children's fantasy about three royal monkeys on a quest, which some have considered a precursor to certain elements of
The Hobbit.
De la Mare's strengths are most evident in his short stories, many of which contain fantastic or supernatural elements. A series of three volumes will collect his entire short fiction,
Short Stories 1895–1926
(1996),
Short Stories 1927–1956
(2001), and
Short Stories for Children
(forthcoming).

Dunsany, Lord* (1878–1957)

Anglo-Irish writer, dramatist, and poet. Several of Dunsany's earliest collections of short stories contain the very best fantasy stories in the English language. These collections include
The Gods of Pegana
(1905),
Time and the Gods
(1906),
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
(1908),
A Dreamer's Tales and Other Stories
(1910),
The Book of Wonder
(1912),
Fifty-one Tales
(1915),
Tales of Wonder
(1916; U.S. title
The Last Book of Wonder
), and
Tales of Three Hemispheres
(1919). Of Dunsany's novels, the best are
The King of Elfland's Daughter
(1924),
The Blessing of Pan
(1926), and
The Curse of the Wise Woman
(1933). The recent British omnibus in the Fantasy Masterworks series
Time and the Gods
(2000) contains six of the aforementioned collections. Another sampler of Dunsany is
In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Stories
(forthcoming), edited by S. T. Joshi.

Eddison, E[ric]. R[ucker]. (1882–1945)

British writer and civil servant. Eddison's first novel,
The Worm Ouroboros
(1922), is perhaps his best book, a fully imagined secondary world described in an ornate and dense prose. His later books make up the Zimiamvian series,
Mistress of Mistresses
(1935),
A Fish Dinner in Memison
(1941), and
The Mezentian Gate
(1958). These are much more ambitious and difficult than Eddison's first book and only partially successful. Yet they remain Eddison's major works. Eddison's second novel,
Stybiorn the Strong
(1926), is an excellent historical work whose subject matter is similar to that of an Icelandic saga. In 1930, Eddison translated
Egil's Saga,
one of the major Icelandic sagas. In 1957, Tolkien wrote of Eddison as “the greatest and most convincing writer of invented worlds that I have read.”

Forster, E[dward]. M[organ]. (1879–1970)

British writer, predominately of realistic fiction, including
Howard's End
(1910) and
A Passage to India
(1924). Forster's short stories include a large number of excellent fantasies, collected in
The Celestial Omnibus and Other Stories
(1911) and
The Eternal Moment
(1928).

Garnett, Richard* (1835–1906)

British writer and librarian, prolific scholar, and biographer.
The Twilight of the Gods and Other Tales
(1888, sixteen tales; expanded 1903, twenty-eight tales) contains Garnett's only fiction.

Grahame, Kenneth (1859–1932)

British writer and banker, author of the classic children's book
The Wind in the Willows
(1908), which Tolkien called an “excellent book.” Grahame's other books, including
The Golden Age
(1895) and
Dream Days
(1898), are explorations of Edwardian childhood. The latter includes Grahame's famous fairy story “The Reluctant Dragon.”

Haggard, H[enry]. Rider* (1856–1925)

British writer and civil servant. Haggard was a very prolific novelist and one of the most successful writers of his time. He spent much of his early life in South Africa, and a number of his writings have African settings. His two most famous novels were
King Solomon's Mines
(1885) and
She
(1886), each of which has been filmed several times. Another of Haggard's novels that interested Tolkien is
Eric Brighteyes
(1891), written in the style of an Icelandic saga. In a lecture, he referred to it as being “as good as most sagas and as heroic.”

Hodgson, William Hope* (1877–1918)

British writer. As a youth, Hodgson went to sea and found the sailor's life to be one of misery. Much of Hodgson's fiction is supernatural and shows an obsession with the sea, as in
The Boats of the “Glen Carrig”
(1907),
The Ghost Pirates
(1909), and the collection
Men of the Deep Waters
(1914). His best book, however, is
The House on the Borderland
(1908), about a remote house haunted by hog-like creatures from another dimension.

Hoffmann, E[rnst]. T[heodor]. A[madeus]. (1776–1822)

German writer and music composer. Hoffmann wrote a large number of literary fairy tales, some of which have been made into ballets and operas. Good selections are found in
The Best Tales of Hoffmann
(1967), edited by E. F. Bleiler, and
Tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann
(1972), edited and translated by Leonard J. Kent and Elizabeth C. Knight.

Housman, Clemence* (1861–1955)

British writer and wood engraver. Clemence Housman published only three novels, each of which is a Christian fantasy.
The Were-Wolf
(1895) is a minor classic of werewolf literature, while her final novel,
The Life of Sir Aglovale de Galis
(1905), remains her supreme achievement. It is a remarkable psychological reconstruction of the life of Aglovale, a minor rogue knight in Sir Thomas Malory's
Le Morte d'Arthur.
Out of print and largely unavailable for many years, it was reprinted by Green Knight Publishing in 2000.

Housman, Laurence (1865–1959)

British writer and dramatist. Laurence Housman was by far the most prolific of the three writing Housmans, who include his sister Clemence and his brother A. E. Housman, the poet. Laurence's original fairy tales were collected in several volumes, some of which contain wood engravings by his sister, including
A Farm in Fairyland
(1894),
The House of Joy
(1895),
All Fellows
(1896),
Gods and Their Makers
(1897),
The Field of Clover
(1898),
The Blue Moon
(1904), and
The Cloak of Friendship
(1905).
A Doorway in Fairyland
(1922),
Moonshine and Clover
(1922), and
The Kind and the Foolish
(1952) are reprint collections.

Kipling, Rudyard (1865–1936)

British writer and poet. Kipling's fantasies for children, including
The Jungle Book
(1894),
The Second Jungle Book
(1896), and
Just So Stories for Little Children
(1902), are rightly acclaimed as classics. Also of interest to Tolkien readers would be
Puck of Pook's Hill
(1906) and
Rewards and Fairies
(1910), which involve mythological characters and the history of England.

Knatchbull-Hugessen, E[dward]. H[ugessen].* (1829–93)

British writer and politician. Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Lord Brabourne) wrote fourteen books of fairy tales, beginning with
Stories for My Children
(1869). Another tale out of this collection can be seen to have resonances in Tolkien. The story “Ernest” presents a slight analogue to Bilbo's speech with Smaug in
The Hobbit
(see note 5 to chapter 12 of the revised edition of
The Annotated Hobbit
). “Ernest” has recently been reprinted in
Alternative Alices: Visions and Revisions of Lewis Carroll's Alice Books
(1997), edited by Carolyn Sigler.

Lang, Andrew* (1844–1912)

Scottish writer and editor. Lang is perhaps best remembered for editing (with significant assistance from his wife) twelve volumes of colored fairy-tale books, ranging from
The Blue Fairy Book
(1889) through
The Lilac Fairy Book
(1910). The series was immensely popular. Lang also wrote some original fairy stories, including
Prince Prigio
(1889), which Tolkien found “unsatisfactory in many ways” but which he felt had some admirable qualities.

Lindsay, David* (1876–1945)

British writer. Lindsay's major works are all attempts to combine philosophy with various types of the novel. His most imaginative work,
A Voyage to Arcturus
(1920), uses Wellsian space travel to another planet as a template for a spiritual quest. Lindsay's other novels are more conventional but still powerful.
The Haunted Woman
(1922) is a kind of haunted house story, where some people are at times able to see and enter a staircase leading up to a nonexistent part of the house.
Devil's Tor
(1932) concerns the worship of the Great Mother and the reunion of a magical talisman associated with her worship that was broken in ancient times.