Produced by Clay Massei, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1910
Preface
Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean
Blagdaross
The Madness of Andelsprutz
Where the Tides Ebb and Flow
Bethmoora
Idle Days on the Yann
The Sword and the Idol
The Idle City
The Hashish Man
Poor Old Bill
The Beggars
Carcassonne
In Zaccarath
The Field
The Day of the Poll
The Unhappy Body
I hope for this book that it may come into the hands of those that werekind to my others and that it may not disappoint them.
—Lord Dunsany
Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whosesentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to theeast there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is,and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopardlying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by amountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind. Likea great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the distanceand goes down into the distance again, and it is named Poltarnees,Beholder of Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth and bare of soil,and without any speck of moss or herbage, slope up to the very lips of thePolar wind, and there is nothing else there by the noise of his anger.Very peaceful are the Inner Lands, and very fair are their cities, andthere is no war among them, but quiet and ease. And they have no enemy butage, for thirst and fever lie sunning themselves out in the mid-desert,and never prowl into the Inner Lands. And the ghouls and ghosts, whosehighway is the night, are kept in the south by the boundary of magic. Andvery small are all their pleasant cities, and all men are known to oneanother therein, and bless one another by name as they meet in thestreets. And they have a broad, green way in every city that comes in outof some vale or wood or downland, and wanders in and out about the citybetween the houses and across the streets, and the people walk along itnever at all, but every year at her appointed time Spring walks along itfrom the flowery lands, causing the anemone to bloom on the green way andall the early joys of hidden woods, or deep, secluded vales, or triumphantdownlands, whose heads lift up so proudly, far up aloof from cities.
Sometimes waggoners or shepherds walk along this way, they that have comeinto the city from over cloudy ridges, and the townsmen hinder them not,for there is a tread that troubleth the grass and a tread that troublethit not, and each man in his own heart knoweth which tread he hath. And inthe sunlit spaces of the weald and in the wold's dark places, afar fromthe music of cities and from the dance of the cities afar, they make therethe music of the country places and dance the country dance. Amiable, nearand friendly appears to these men the sun, and as he is genial to them andtends their younger vines, so they are kind to the little woodland things