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    Phantastes
    Phantastes
    Phantastes
    Ebook277 pages5 hours

    Phantastes

    By George MacDonald

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    About this ebook

    One of the Original Fairy Tale Classics of Western Literature

    “Alas, how easily things go wrong! / A sigh too much, a kiss too long / And there follows a mist and a weeping rain / And life is never the same again” - George MacDonald, Phantastes

    Imagine turning 21 and being dragged into a fantasy world full of perils and creatures that want to kill you. Imagine overcoming these dangers, going from villain to hero and beyond, loving and being deceived, helping and being helpless. Imagine waking up and everybody saying you’re gone for 21 days, though it felt like 21 years. How would you change your life?
    This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

    Xist Publishing is a digital-first publisher. Xist Publishing creates books for the touchscreen generation and is dedicated to helping everyone develop a lifetime love of reading, no matter what form it takes

      LanguageEnglish
      PublisherXist Publishing
      Release dateJul 30, 2015
      ISBN9781681952116
      Author

      George MacDonald

      George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a popular Scottish lecturer and writer of novels, poetry, and fairy tales. Born in Aberdeenshire, he was briefly a clergyman, then a professor of English literature at Bedford and King's College in London. W. H. Auden called him "one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century."

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      Reviews for Phantastes

      4/5

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      • 4/5
        I picked up this book on the advice of a friend. I knew MacDonald was a major influence on C.S. Lewis, and that is pretty evident as one reads this book. The story is about a man who finds himself in Fairy Land, compelled to journey all the way through it and reach its end. He encounters various strange characters on the way and, of course, has his own set of adventures. Along the way, he learns about himself, his own sin nature, and redemption.The book itself is moderately hard to read, due to MacDonald's constant use of archaic terms and his many forays into rough, albeit enjoyable, poetry. Additionally, discovering themes and undercurrents of the work will require multiple readings--at least if my experience is any judge. But these constraints notwithstanding, I did enjoy reading this book. There were a lot of good vignettes spread throughout, and I enjoyed the rather lighthearted way in which the author writes.As has been the case with several other books I've read that were "endorsed" by C.S. Lewis, if you choose to read this one, know that you may spend a lot of time scratching your head--although that is not necessarily a bad thing!
      • 4/5
        This is a neat little book. It's a bit episodic, and a little flowery, but it's really vivid; there's some terrific imagery in here.

        It's the story of some dude who goes to fairy land and wanders around mooning after some lady. There are giants and goblins. It's considered one of the first fantasy novels, and a big influence on CS Lewis and Tolkien. It makes for a nice bridge between medieval fantasy precursors like Morte D'Arthur and Beowulf* and the later official fantasy genre.

        * what? There are knights and monsters, what did you think fantasy was?

        It changed CS Lewis's life, judging from his fawning introduction, but it didn't change mine. I don't even like fantasy. But it's pretty cool.
      • 5/5
        This book is housed within our adult fiction collection but it's suitable for high school students. Phantastes is a classic story about a young man who enters Fairyland one day and has dreamlike adventures. The story also serves as an allegory for a person's spirtual journey in which we experience trials and tribulations as well as joy.Readalikes: Narnia Chronicles, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairlyand in a Ship of Her Own Making, Manalive
      • 3/5
        no storytelling here, just tale after tale, anecdote after anecdote of adventures, great and small of a lone traveler in Faerie. rich descriptions and wonderful ideas about realms of elves and fairies and goblins and Otherworld entities fill this book.

        i'll let MacDonald himself convey this: "But see the power of this book, that, while recounting what I can recall of its contents, I write as if myself had visited the far-off planet, learned its ways, and apprearances, and conversed with its men and women. And so, while writing, it seemed to me that I had." (from Chapter XII)

        i can certainly see MacDonald's influence in Lewis but, moreso, in Tolkien. some of MacDonald's descriptions of wandering through the Faerie wood sound just like Tolkien describing the animated Old Forest or timeless Lothlorien wherein lived Bombadil and Galadriel. reminiscent of a Midsummer's Night Dream, fantastical events unfold before our protagonist, Anodos, in the woods of Faerie over more than a single night in this book, but still waking in the morning with memory to wonder if it were all just dreaming of love and shadows.
      • 2/5
        This book begins with a great introduction by C.S. Lewis (is that why Amazon has it grouped under Christian fiction?!?). If it weren't for that intro, I'm not sure I would have gotten through it. There's interesting imagery throughout, but the narrator is the supreme king of passive drift. I am now, finally, convinced that passive main characters cripple a story's forward drive.

        There are also a few spots of plot in various short stories embedded in the narrative, so it's not a total loss, and it is an interesting read for its historical influence on the genre. I just found it kind of boring.
      • 4/5
        This was one of C.S. Lewis' favorite books, and it is obvious that Lewis borrowed quite a bit from MacDonald's ideas. I found several passages that were very similar to passages in Lewis' books. There is also a lengthy introduction to the book by Lewis that is well worth reading.This 1850's fantasy novel involves a man whose grandmothers were descended from the fairies. Because of this, he is granted access to a fairy land where he encounters several strange and wonderful creatures--some benevolent and some malevolent. Both he and the reader learn lessons in his journey through this land and back again to his home world. "Yet I know that good is coming to me--that good is always coming; though few have at all times the simplicity and the courage to believe it. What we call evil, is the only and best shape, which, for the person and his condition at the time, could be assumed by the best good."Although I prefer Lewis' books to MacDonald's, I did enjoy this older fantasy tale. Earlier this year I read The Princess and the Goblin by MacDonald and enjoyed it very much. I plan to read the sequel The Princess and Curdie and also another adult tale, Lilith, in 2008.
      • 2/5
        Pretty boring but good poetry and songs. A walk through fairyland with no climax and no excitement. Very wordy.
      • 4/5
        Like the best dreams, is only partially understood, and leaves a beautiful and pleasantly melancholic feeling
      • 5/5
        I love this book. The word police need forget about it. There are just some things (such as that of the soul) that can't be expressed with words...MacDonald seems wordy in his descriptions at times, but this is neccessary as it is the images and events that tell the story. MacDonald uses imagery as his medium to appeal to what is outside of consciousness. Phantastes is the story of the narrators search for the spirit of the earth. CS Lewis would say what one comes to love in Phantastes is goodness, there is no deception. The deception is all the other way round-in that prosaic moralism which confines goodness to the region of Law and Duty-"A Fairy-story is like a vision without rational connections, a harmonious whole of miraculous things and events"-NORVALIS
      • 3/5
        this early book of fantasy begins well, with one of the best descriptions of being in a dream ever written. It falls off towards the end as it morphs into a sermon on the morality of self sacrifice. Nonetheless, the strain begun here runs to Morris, then Eddison and Cabell, and, at last, to Tolkien. A very good read, unless you are a fantasist of violence, complete and total.
      • 4/5
        [Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women] by George MacDonald.“Alas, how easily things go wrongA sigh too much, or a kiss too longAnd there follows a mist and a weeping rainAnd life is never the same again.”A bildungsroman; first published in 1858 it is one of the earliest book length prose fairy stories. Anodos is 21 years old when he sees a fairy figure in a desk that he inherited from his late father, she tells him about fairy land and next morning he awakens in a forest and his adventures and his quest for love lead him into the land of the fairies. This is a Victorian novel which is chock full of repressed sexuality and MacDonald has been careful to remind his readers it is a Romance for Men and Women, although children would come to no harm if they chanced to pick it up. Phantastes has been cited as the first book length fantasy story for adults.When Anodos wakes up in fairy land he is enchanted by the flowers which seem to be home for the fairies, but there is danger in the enchanted land as the fingers of the evil ash and alder trees threaten to destroy him. The episodic story gets going when he discovers the marble statue made by Pygmalion, Anodos sings to the statue of a beautiful woman which promptly comes to life and floats away towards the forest, Anodos is compelled to follow and his pursuit of image leads him onto further adventures. He catches up with her, but after enticing him into a cave and sending him to sleep he awakes to find himself imperilled by the alder tree. He meets kind maternal women who warn him about foolish love and he meets more sinister women one of whom tricks him into opening a door where he finds his own shadow that appears black and evil in the light of the sun. Anodos begins to gain satisfaction from his shadow and when he meets a maiden/woman dancing happy as a child who carries a globe in her hands, she tells Anodos he must not touch her globe, but then says if he does it must be very gently; Anodos does, but the maiden draws away and says he must not touch it again, but:“I put out both my hands and laid hold of it. It began to sound as before. The sound rapidly increased, till it grew a low tempest of harmony, and the globe trembled, and quivered, and throbbed between my hands. I had not the heart to pull it away from the maiden, though I held it in spite of her attempts to take it from me; yes, I shame to say, in spite of her prayers, and, at last, her tears. The music went on growing in, intensity and complication of tones, and the globe vibrated and heaved; till at last it burst in our hands, and a black vapour broke upwards from out of it; then turned, as if blown sideways, and enveloped the maiden, hiding even the shadow in its blackness. She held fast the fragments, which I abandoned, and fled from me into the forest in the direction whence she had come, wailing like a child, and crying, “You have broken my globe; my globe is broken—my globe is broken!”After this encounter, which feels like a rape or defloration, Anodos must journey on through other parts of fairy land, eventually arriving at a fairy palace where he learns more about love and enchantment. He must sacrifice himself for an honourable, more reputable love in the fairy world, and he must be forgiven for his past demeanours, before he can arrive back in the real world. The central story has dreams within dreams and tales within tales as MacDonald weaves his magical allegory, but some parts work better than others. Characterisation is not MacDonalds strongest attribute as the reader does not gain much insight into Anodos, although much of the story is written in the first person. We see him learn from experience, but in a fantasy story it is the world outside of the hero that should hold our interest and this is where MacDonald is at his best. The author was a Christian Minister and a poet and it is his knowledge and love of poetry that seems to be the major influence for his writing in Phantastes. Every chapter starts with a quote; notably from the early English canon; Chaucer, Spenser, Lyly and Sir Philip Sidney, but also from the German Romantics. There are new songs and poems by MacDonald that are a feature of Phantastes woven into the text rather like Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, although in my opinion MacDonald never reaches those heights. MacDonalds book must be admired as an early example of English fantasy literature, which obviously influenced later Victorian authors: Walter De La Mare, Lewis Carroll, J M Barrie, and C S Lewis. Reading today it still contains some striking passages, but its central theme does not hold strongly throughout the story and I am sure that some readers will find the poems and songs a distraction, however I think they add to the enchantment. It does not have the panache, humour or memorable characters which I find in Lewis Carrolls work which is the nearest comparator, but still a worthwhile read and so 3.5 stars.
      • 2/5
        George MacDonald's Phantastes, an early fantasy novel published in 1858, is narrated by a young man, Anodos, who has just come into his inheritance and is transported to Fairy Land on his twenty-first birthday. While there, he meets with many strange beings, temptations, beauties, and poetry, always searching for the elusive woman he knows only as the Marble Lady. Indeed, he rescues her from imprisonment and claims a place in her affections, only to find that she is destined for another, a "nobler man." Much of the story deals with Anodos's various temptations and sins, as he wanders through this strange realm and slowly conquers his own weakness. There are giants, there are dark woods. There are ominous villains and deceptions laid for the pure in heart. There are small cottages buried in the deep forests, havens of safety amidst the wildness. The journey is about two things: the search for the ideal, and the discovery of one's own inner darkness, personified here by the shadow that clings to Anodos. It distorts his relationships and wearies his soul with its constant unwelcome presence. This is high fantasy with so many elements I enjoy; I should LOVE it, but I don't somehow. Every now and then there is a flash of kindred knowing—as when MacDonald speaks of the old woman in the cottage, promising Anodos that even in his worst distress, she knows something "too good to tell" that would reconcile him to it all. But the majority of the tale was so slow moving, so plotlessly weaving, such a mishmash of episodic events. C. S. Lewis famously wrote of Phantastes that it baptized his imagination, and as a tribute he included MacDonald as a character in The Great Divorce. I wish I could appreciate this work as Lewis and so many other readers have, but George MacDonald remains an author I simply can't warm to. Which is odd, because he has influenced several of my favorite authors and seems to have been influenced himself by other writers I enjoy (such as William Morris and Lord Dunsany). It isn't his heretical universalism, as vehemently as I disagree with him on that head. I don't know what it is; we just don't resonate. I feel like reading Dunsany now; I think he achieves what MacDonald only reaches for here.
      • 3/5
        The basic premise of this text is a man, who we has a fairy in his ancestry. This fairy appears before him as he is cleaning out an aged desk, the keys to which he has recieved for his twenty-first birthday. Post this meeting, the narrator [for it is entirely first person] finds himself adventuring through fairy-land. It may sound reminiscent of Spenser's Faerie Queene, as the story takes didactic turns through good and bad choices on the way. He listens to some advice while impulsively disobeying other. On the whole, MacDonald presents us with the possibility of a great adventure but fails to deliver it well through a number of lackings in the writing department. The tale itself has no solid flow to carry the reader, making it more difficult to slip into the fairy realm as presented. With a tendancy to slip into florid prose that stymies the pace of an otherwise solid chapter. By deviating into the long paragraphs and excessive description, MacDonald focuses too much on a static element or moment. Also he is wont to slip into a thoughtful discussion of how something in the 'now' of the story relates to later experiences and his own character developments, further distracting from the story. One more thing. The poetry. I don't know much about poetry, to be extremely honest, but his feels crude. Sort of like weilding a wooden pair of scissors in a Fiskars kind of world. His penchant for slipping into reveries about songs and poems and then 'attempting' to recreate them again for the text provided can be both distracting and aggravating. Overall--Phantastes, not so great. Forgive me for the lack in clarity of thought. 

      Book preview

      Phantastes - George MacDonald

      Questions

      PREFACE

      For offering this new edition of my father's Phantastes, my reasons are three. The first is to rescue the work from an edition illustrated without the author's sanction, and so unsuitably that all lovers of the book must have experienced some real grief in turning its pages. With the copyright I secured also the whole of that edition and turned it into pulp.

      My second reason is to pay a small tribute to my father by way of personal gratitude for this, his first prose work, which was published nearly fifty years ago. Though unknown to many lovers of his greater writings, none of these has exceeded it in imaginative insight and power of expression. To me it rings with the dominant chord of his life's purpose and work.

      My third reason is that wider knowledge and love of the book should be made possible. To this end I have been most happy in the help of my father's old friend, who has illustrated the book. I know of no other living artist who is capable of portraying the spirit of Phantastes; and every reader of this edition will, I believe, feel that the illustrations are a part of the romance, and will gain through them some perception of the brotherhood between George MacDonald and Arthur Hughes.

      GREVILLE MACDONALD.

      September 1905.

          "Phantastes from 'their fount all shapes deriving,

          In new habiliments can quickly dight."

                                  FLETCHER'S Purple Island

          Es lassen sich Erzählungen ohne Zusammenhang, jedoch mit

          Association, wie Träume, denken; Gedichte, die bloss

          wohlklingend und voll schöner Worte sind, aber auch ohne

          allen Sinn und Zusammenhang, höchstens einzelne Strophen

          verständlich, wie Bruchstücke aus den verschiedenartigsten

          Dingen. Diese wahre Poesie kann höchstens einen

          allegorischen Sinn in Grossen, und eine indirecte Wirkung,

          wie Musik, haben. Darum ist die Natur so rein poetisch, wie

          die Stube eines Zauberers, eines Physikers, eine

          Kinderstube, eine Polter- und Vorrathskammer.

          Ein Märchen ist wie ein Traumbild ohne Zusammenhang. Ein

          Ensemble wunderbarer Dinge und Begebenheiten, z. B. eine

          musikalische Phantasie, die harmonischen Folgen einer

          Aeolsharfe, die Natur selbst...

          In einem echten Märchen muss alles wunderbar, geheimnissvoll

          und zusammenhängend sein; alles belebt, jeder auf eine

          andere Art. Die ganze Natur muss wunderlich mit der ganzen

          Geisterwelt gemischt sein; hier tritt die Zeit der Anarchie,

          der Gesetzlosigkeit, Freiheit, der Naturstand der Natur, die

          Zeit von der Welt ein . . . Die Welt des Märchens ist die,

          der Welt der Wahrheit durchaus entgegengesetzte, und eben

          darum ihr so durchaus ähnlich, wie das Chaos der vollendeten

          Schöpfung ähnlich ist.--NOVALIS.

      CHAPTER I

                            "A spirit  .  .  .

                          .  .  .  .  .  .

          The undulating and silent well,

          And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom,

          Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,

          Held commune with him; as if he and it

          Were all that was."

                                  SHELLEY'S Alastor.

      I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-colour, dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of the horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts, which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering consciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal rights, the keys of an old secretary, in which my father had kept his private papers, had been delivered up to me. As soon as I was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate to be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears. Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose personal history was unknown to me, had woven his web of story; how he had found the world, and how the world had left him. Perhaps I was to find only the records of lands and moneys, how gotten and how secured; coming down from strange men, and through troublous times, to me, who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve my speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering around me as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the secretary; and having found the key that fitted the upper portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But the door of a little cupboard in the centre especially attracted my interest, as if there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key I found.

      One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door: it revealed a number of small pigeon-holes. These, however, being but shallow compared with the depth of those around the little cupboard, the outer ones reaching to the back of the desk, I concluded that there must be some accessible space behind; and found, indeed, that they were formed in a separate framework, which admitted of the whole being pulled out in one piece. Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small bars of wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, and trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely projecting point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly and hard with the point of an old tool that was lying near, till at length it yielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up suddenly, disclosed a chamber—empty, except that in one corner lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves, whose long-lived scent had long since departed; and, in another, a small packet of papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose colour had gone with the rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair, and regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged from its depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she had been a small Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her dress was of a kind that could never grow old-fashioned, because it was simply natural: a robe plaited in a band around the neck, and confined by a belt about the waist, descended to her feet. It was only afterwards, however, that I took notice of her dress, although my surprise was by no means of so overpowering a degree as such an apparition might naturally be expected to excite. Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my countenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a voice that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy river banks, and a low wind, even in this deathly room:—

      Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?

      No, said I; and indeed I hardly believe I do now.

      Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish.

      Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech, of which, however, I had no cause to repent—

      How can such a very little creature as you grant or refuse anything?

      Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty years? said she. Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish prejudices.

      So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she stood a tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes. Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white.

      Now, said she, you will believe me.

      Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now perceive, and drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as incomprehensible, I suppose I stretched out my arms towards her, for she drew back a step or two, and said—

      Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides, I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve; and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know.

      But you are not my grandmother, said I.

      How do you know that? she retorted. I dare say you know something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers on either side. Now, to the point. Your little sister was reading a fairy-tale to you last night.

      She was.

      When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, 'Is there a fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, 'I suppose there is, if one could find the way into it.'

      I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem to think.

      Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into Fairy Land to-morrow. Now look in my eyes.

      Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I remembered somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I looked deeper and deeper, till they spread around me like seas, and I sank in their waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found myself at the window, whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and where I stood gazing on a whole heaven of stars, small and sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea, still as death and hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around capes and islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was no sea, but a low bog burnished by the moon. Surely there is such a sea somewhere! said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me replied—

      In Fairy Land, Anodos.

      I turned, but saw no one. I closed the secretary, and went to my own room, and to bed.

      All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon to find the truth of the lady's promise, that this day I should discover the road into Fairy Land.

      CHAPTER II

          "'Where is the stream?' cried he, with tears. 'Seest thou

          its not in blue waves above us?' He looked up, and lo! the

          blue stream was flowing gently over their heads."

          —NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

      While these strange events were passing through my mind, I suddenly, as one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has been moaning by him for hours, or that the storm has been howling about his window all night, became aware of the sound of running water near me; and, looking out of bed, I saw that a large green marble basin, in which I was wont to wash, and which stood on a low pedestal of the same material in a corner of my room, was overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear water was running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding its outlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this carpet, which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed the water's flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed with every motion of the changeful current, as if they were about to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed form, become fluent as the waters.

      My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were elaborately carved in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief part. The nearer end of this table remained just as it had been, but on the further end a singular change had commenced. I happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond it a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what change might follow next, I thought it high time to get up; and, springing from the bed, my bare feet alighted upon a cool green sward; and although I dressed in all haste, I found myself completing my toilet under the boughs of a great tree, whose top waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over leaf and branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like a sinking sea-wave.

      After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and looked around me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all night was one of the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards which the rivulet ran. Faint traces of a footpath, much overgrown with grass and moss, and with here and there a pimpernel even, were discernible along the right bank. This, thought I, must surely be the path into Fairy Land, which the lady of last night promised I should so soon find. I crossed the rivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on its right bank, until it led me, as I expected, into the wood. Here I left it, without any good reason: and with a vague feeling that I ought to have followed its course, I took a more southerly direction.

      CHAPTER III

                  "Man doth usurp all space,

                  Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in

                          the face.

                  Never thine eyes behold a tree;

                  'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,

                  'Tis but a disguised humanity.

                  To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;

                  All that interests a man, is man."

                                              HENRY SUTTON.

      The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free passage to the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I advanced, so that ere long their crowded stems barred the sunlight out, forming as it were a thick grating between me and the East. I seemed to be advancing towards a second midnight. In the midst of the intervening twilight, however, before I entered what appeared to be the darkest portion of the forest, I saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She did not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a bunch of wild flowers which she carried in her hand. I could hardly see her face; for, though she came direct towards me, she never looked up. But when we met, instead of passing, she turned and walked alongside of me for a few yards, still keeping her face downwards, and busied with her flowers. She spoke rapidly, however, all the time, in a low tone, as if talking to herself, but evidently addressing the purport of her words to me.

      She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. Trust the Oak, said she; trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder; for the Ash is an ogre,—you will know him by his thick fingers; and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let her near you at night. All this was uttered without pause or alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me, walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking that it would be time enough to find out her meaning when there was need to make use of her warning, and that the occasion would reveal the admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she carried, that the forest could not be everywhere so dense as it appeared from where I was now walking; and I was right in this conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part, and by-and-by crossed a wide grassy glade, on which were several circles of brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living creature crossed my way. Yet somehow the whole environment seemed only asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, we could, an' if we would. They had all a meaning look about them. Then I remembered that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their sun; and I thought—Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark. But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again anxious, though from another cause. I had eaten nothing that day, and for an hour past had been feeling the want of food. So I grew afraid lest I should find nothing to meet my human necessities in this strange place; but once more I comforted myself with hope and went on.

      Before noon, I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the stems of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. I wondered at finding a human dwelling in this neighbourhood; and yet it did not look altogether human, though sufficiently so to encourage me to expect to find some sort of food. Seeing no door, I went round to the other side, and there I found one, wide open. A woman sat beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner. This was homely and comforting. As I came near, she looked up, and seeing me, showed no surprise, but bent her head again over her work, and said in a low tone:

      Did you see my daughter?

      I believe I did, said I. Can you give me something to eat, for I am very hungry? With pleasure, she replied, in the same tone; but do not say anything more, till you come into the house, for the Ash is watching us.

      Having said this, she rose and led the way into the cottage; which, I now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set closely together, and was furnished with rough chairs and tables, from which even the bark had not been removed. As soon as she had shut the door and set a chair—

      You have fairy blood in you, said she, looking hard at me.

      How do you know that?

      You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so; and I am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance. I think I see it.

      What do you see?

      Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that.

      But how then do you come to live here?

      Because I too have fairy blood in me.

      Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual—I could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work and exposure.

      I should be ill, she continued, if I did not live on the borders of the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the same need; though, from your education and the activity of your mind, you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed too from the fairy race.

      I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.

      Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I was in no humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and herself.

      "What did you

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