This is Dunsany's 4th collection of fantasy short stories and from the books of his that I've read, I think it is his best. The title is apropos as a lot of the stories feel like dreams that Dunsany has put to paper. Some of them are whimsical, some are macabre, some are bizarre, all are engaging in some form or fashion.
Dunsany's lively writing style continues to be a big standout. His quasi-biblical prose carries a hefty gravitas that gives a lot of dramatic weight to these lean stories. He also has a way of structuring sentences that induces them with a poetic rhythm, like each sentence is following a meter. There's a musicality to his prose, to the point where some of these stories read more like prose poems than they do prose fiction.
As with most Dunsany short stories, it's clear he's not trying to maintain the verisimilitude of the world he's created, he's prioritising big emotions over a consistent logic. Earthquakes will talk to humans and abstract concepts like Fate and Time are personified and converse with one another. The stories flow very nicely and I rarely ever was taken out of the world by any decision that Dunsany makes because despite these stories feeling unplanned and improvised, the emotion remains consistent throughout each story. That's the consistent factor that holds the fantastical weirdness together.
That's the most high level overview I can give of the book without discussing individual stories so from here on out I will be talking about the stories that really stood out to me. If you only read one Dunsany book, please make it this one.
Blogdaross: in this story a few inanimate objects tell their life stories. A cork regales his listeners with a tale of how he hath guarded the wine until humans relieved him of his duties and now he is forgotten and discarded. And there be a piece of rope, whose fibres were strained when he helped a man's body rid itself of a soul, for the soul was vexing the man. And the soul cried out that it liked this body and pleaded with the rope to let go of the man but the rope did not listen to the soul. He finished the job the man requested of him and now his fibres are too strained to be much use to anyone. Then there was Blogdaross, a rocking horse of old times, who fondly remembers figures like Alexander the Great and St George and Ulysses, who hath slain great dragons and conquered many kingdoms. And Blogdaross was present for all of these great feats but now lies forgotten along with the rest. But when two young boys come into the attic and begin to play with Blogdaross, Blogdaross thinks that he may yet have more adventures left in him.
Where the Tides Ebb and Flow: A man is murdered by his friends, who bury him in a shallow grave by the river. He sees the decay o time wear on the world and every time someone tries to give him a proper burial, someone else digs him up and returns him to his shallow river grave. He cannot cry for help, for he is dead, his soul trapped in his bone prison because he was not given a proper burial. And when the last human dies, the birds sing to the man who finds he can cry again. The man wakes up from this dream, singing the praises of the natural world.
Idle Days on the Yann: My favourite story in the collection by a wide margain. This was a favourite of Lovecraft and for good reason. Not a lot happens in the story, it recounts the tale of a man entering the dreamlands and finding a boat called Bird on the River. This river being the Yann. He boards the boat and the whole story is describing what he sees, from sleeping cities, to giant ivory gates, to pink crystal cliffs that gleam in the sunlight. It is the most relaxing, chilled out story I've read from Dunsany and a great story to read at the end of the day when one is trying to wind down. It's the longest story in this collection and it deserves to be this long. There is one moment in the story that gets very melodramatic and I find overly silly (the moment where the captain is bartering with a town merchant and after making a slight error in his calculation of money the town merchant goes to kill himself because he's so shamed by his error). However it doesn't even come close to diminishing the power of the whole thing.
Poor Old Bill: An old sea captain and his crew hate each other. The Captain has the power to magically curse his crew, sometimes sending them to the bottom of the sea, sometimes sending them to the moon before bringing them back. However, the Captain cannot curse when he’s drunk. So one night, when he was drunk, the crew sailed to an island, keeping the captain drunk and left him there with a year’s worth of provisions. Poor Old Bill felt it only fair to give him as much food as they had. The crew celebrate by blowing through all of their provisions. The captain, after sobering up, curses the crew so that they may never land at port while he lives. This means the crew cannot restock their provisions. The crew resorts to cannibalism in order to survive and the Captain staggers his rations out so that the curse lasts over a year. Only Poor Old Bill is left when the curse is lifted. But Poor Old Bill never ages and never dies, so the Captain must have put one final curse on him before he left this Earth.
The Beggars: As our narrator doth wander streets in Piccadilly, he seeth men in cloaks of many wonderful colours. These men find joy in all aspects of the street. They bless the streetlamp for providing light, without which there would be many car crashes and many lives lost. They bless the many buildings, which allow our industry and population to be sustained. They bless all passers by for they all have their own virtues and deserve to be blessed. And our narrator is pleased by these blessings, despite this whole thing being a daydream.
The Field: A Londoner comes across a beautiful field in the countryside that nevertheless feels ominous. When he asks a poet why this field feels this way despite nothing happening in all 3 years he’s been observing it, the poet says that this used to be a battlefield.
The Unhappy Body: The soul of a body wishes to regale tales of dreams. Of galleons that sail in the night and tales of far away lands. The body wishes to rest but the soul will not let it. When the body finally rests, the soul leaves it for the dead to pick up in the morning.
