The Fox, the Deer, and the Dream: Erin Morgenstern on The King of Elfland’s Daughter

The King of Elfland’s Daughter is considered a founding text of the fantasy genre and has inspired everyone from Ursula K Le Guin to J. R. R. Tolkien.

When it came to publishing Dunsany’s timeless tale we knew we needed an introducer who truly understood the importance and impact this story has had on Fantasy writing as a whole. We couldn’t imagine a better contributor than award-winning author and artist Erin Morgenstern. Her debut, The Night Circus, was named as one of the 100 best fantasy books of all time and her connection with The King of Elfland’s Daughter is a deeply personal one, as you’ll find out in her introduction…

I wish I could tell you about the copy of The King of Elfland’s Daughter that I found in a used bookstore when I was in high school. It was an edition from 1969 and its time-crackled cover depicted a unicorn surrounded by a hunter and his dogs in saturated, splendid colours against a stark black background. The story felt like that, too, equal parts vibrant and deep.

I wish I could tell you about the copy of The King of Elfland’s Daughter that I carried around in college. That one was crisp and new in 1999 with a Waterhouse painting on the cover and dozens of phrases that had caught my fancy highlighted with blossom-coloured ink. Some apple-haunted hill . . . The birdless dawn . . . Little forsaken things.

I wish I could tell you about the second edition of The King of Elfland’s Daughter that I hunted like a treasure. It was published in 1924, the same year as the first edition, and has an understated blue cloth cover and the peculiar scent of very old books that is its own sort of magic.

I cannot tell you about any of these well-loved books because I have only read The King of Elfland’s Daughter in this ‘fleeing hour called Now’, and I am more than a little annoyed that I missed it for so many years. It has always been there, since long before I was born, yet somehow I never spotted it. A mermaid in a sea of 
stories, always just out of sight.

I had heard of The King of Elfland’s Daughter, the way one hears of old tales or old songs in fragments and whispers, but for a long time I was not listening closely enough.

It is so easy to be preoccupied with the new, to grasp things in the freshness of the moment and let them go as the next shiny new thing arrives to take their place. In an effort to read more older fantasy and fairy tales I procured The King of Elfland’s Daughter and it sat unread atop a stack of books as time insisted on passing for approximately two years.

Then I was asked to write this introduction and there it was, waiting.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is precisely the sort of book I love. This is the type of story-treasure I always seek and rarely find. I wish I had found it sooner, yet I read it at the right time, in the right place. This story found me as spring tumbled into summer around my house, which happens to be in the middle of the woods.

The day I started reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter for the first time a fox took a nap in my yard. I glanced out my window to see an unfamiliar reddish rock, and as I looked closer the rock lifted its head and yawned and then returned to its napping amongst the dandelions. This book feels like that.

When I started reading I think I expected a fairy tale. The King of Elfland’s Daughter is a fairy tale, but that is a vastly simplified way to describe a story with so much depth and breadth and wonder layered within its pages.

This book feels like a discovery laced with surprise. A fox in a place where a stone was expected.

We begin in familiar story territory here. This tale rings recognisable chords. Here there is a young man on a quest. There is a princess and a sword. These are songs we’ve heard before. But this sword is witch-forged from fallen thunderbolts and this story cuts through the familiarity and presses onward, beyond the point where another tale might find its ending. We follow further and we find a child named after a cluster of splendid stars and a border-crossing troll marvelling at time and a healthy disrespect for unicorns. Here there is a witch, sweeping the world with her broom. We know this is a wizard because of his mystical air and his hat.

I had never read this book before, I know that. I would remember so perfect a witch name as Ziroonderel. But it felt familiar, like a song half remembered from a faded dream. I suspect the truth is that I have read stories written by authors who had already read this particular one and earlier tales that preceded it. I have heard echoes of Elfland in imaginary spaces both newer and older.

I would need a song like the ones that might tell of a certain Elfland palace to describe this book in a way that would do it any sort of justice. It is captivating in its richness and complexity, mesmerising in its thoughtfulness and its language. A tale more vivid than any number of similar stories that came before or after. Here is the difference between a fox-shaped rock and an actual fox in all its fabulousness. And even a book that is a hundred years old can still feel like a discovery.

The day I started reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter for the second time a deer wandered through my yard, not far from the spot where the fox had been dreaming, nibbling at overgrown bushes and clover.

In certain seasons hunting is permitted nearby, and I wish I could communicate to the deer the difference between here and there but of course I cannot. A deer does not know when it crosses a border of safety any more than a unicorn does, distracted by delicious lilies.

I watched the deer as it grazed its way past my window, thinking about invisible borders and hunters.

Dunsany’s Elfland is not a far-flung place. It is not discovered via rabbit hole or other hidden portal but simply by walking long enough in the proper direction. And when one reaches Elfland, what separates here from there is nothing more than a border made of the ‘blended twilights of old lost summer evenings’.

We spend most of this story in the ordinary world, even as Elfland begins to bleed into it. Dunsany tells us as much in his brief preface: this is, for the most part, the world we know. But it is more than that, while still keeping its feet on the ground and its sheep in their fields. There is another place, close enough to touch, simmering nearby like a particularly calm storm.

These worlds brush shoulders with each other, they overlap. Creatures and characters from one world wander into the other and back again. This is my favourite sort of fantasy world, one that is nearby and can be found by anyone if it is sought. A pocket of magic to slip into that could be found around the next corner or by opening the right door. The wonder of an elsewhere anchored to the familiarity and the realities of the everyday.

The entwining of these worlds and all the complications that arise from that entanglement is where we find the shape of this story. And what separates Erl from Elfland is not even a set geographical line; its moving twilight border is delineated by time.

If Erin's introduction has captivated you as much as it did us, there's so much more to discover! Embark on a magical adventure and dive into the full introduction by grabbing your copy of The King of Elfland's Daughter. But don't delay – there are only 100 copies left, and they're disappearing fast!