A Dreamers Tales

A Dreamer's Tales

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Title: A Dreamer's Tales
Author: Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
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year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on June 17, 2003]

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A DREAMER'S TALES

LORD DUNSANY
1910

CONTENTS
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

PREFACE
I hope for this book that it may come into the hands of those that were
kind to my others and that it may not disappoint them.
--Lord Dunsany

POLTARNEES, BEHOLDER OF OCEAN
Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose
sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the
east 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 leopard lying
in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by a
mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind.
Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the
distance and 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 the Polar 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, and there is no war among them, but quiet and ease. And they
have no enemy but age, for thirst and fever lie sunning themselves out
in the mid-desert, and never prowl into the Inner Lands. And the ghouls
and ghosts, whose highway is the night, are kept in the south by the
boundary of magic. And very small are all their pleasant cities, and all
men are known to one another therein, and bless one another by name
as they meet in the streets. And they have a broad, green way in every
city that comes in out of some vale or wood or downland, and wanders
in and out about the city between the houses and across the streets, and
the people walk along it never at all, but every year at her appointed
time Spring walks along it from the flowery lands, causing the
anemone to bloom on the green way and all the early joys of hidden
woods, or deep, secluded vales, or triumphant downlands, whose heads
lift up so proudly, far up aloof from cities.
Sometimes waggoners or shepherds walk along this way, they that have
come into 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
troubleth it not, and each man in his own heart knoweth which tread he
hath. And in the sunlit spaces of the weald and in the wold's dark places,

afar from the music of cities and from the dance of the cities afar, they
make there the music of the country places and dance the country dance.
Amiable, near and friendly appears to these men the sun, and as he is
genial to them and