The Hoard of the Gibbelins
"The Hoard of the Gibbelins" is a fantasy short story by Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. It was first published in The Sketch in London and in The Book of Wonder in 1912. It was also reprinted in the anthology The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp.
The story, only 4.5 pages long in paperback, tells of the exploits of Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City, to seek and purloin the fabled hoard of precious gems rumoured to be held in the castle of the Gibbelins. These strange creatures live in a land chained to the Earth across the river ocean, and they have a built a tower at the narrowest point to attract humans, on whom they feed.
Alderic, acting on conflicting advice, captures a dragon and rides upon it to the riverbank. He swims the river, spends the night breaking into the supposed treasure-cellar with a mighty pickaxe, and finds the gems. But the Gibbelins immediately find, capture, and kill him; Dunsany ends the story quite abruptly at this point, saying "the tale is one of those that have not a happy ending".
Influence
Dale Nelson has theorised that "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" was an influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's poem "The Mewlips", collected in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. The Mewlips live outside the "known world" in damp cellars where they count their gold and eat whoever comes searching for it. Similarities of plot and character apart, Nelson describes story and poem as sharing a "charming quality of insincerity", as both warn of imaginary dangers.[1]
References
- ^ Nelson, Dale (2004). "Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien's Fantasy". Tolkien Studies. 1. West Virginia University Press: 177–181.
External links
- Project Gutenberg text
- The Hoard of the Gibbelins public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- The Book of Wonder public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- v
- t
- e
collections
- The Gods of Pegāna
- Time and the Gods
- The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
- A Dreamer's Tales
- The Book of Wonder
- Fifty-One Tales
- The Last Book of Wonder
- Tales of Three Hemispheres
- The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens
- Jorkens Remembers Africa
- Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey
- The Fourth Book of Jorkens
- The Man Who Ate the Phoenix
- The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories
- Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey
- The Last Book of Jorkens
collections
- At the Edge of the World
- Beyond the Fields We Know
- Over the Hills and Far Away
- The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer, and Other Fantasms
- Time and the Gods
- The Collected Jorkens
- In the Land of Time, and Other Fantasy Tales
- Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley
- The King of Elfland's Daughter
- The Charwoman's Shadow
- The Curse of the Wise Woman
- "Chu-Bu and Sheemish"
- "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth"
- "The Hoard of the Gibbelins"
- "Idle Days on the Yann"
- Sidney Sime (preferred artist)
- John Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (father)
- Reginald Drax (brother)
- Dunsany Castle
- Edward Plunkett, 20th Baron of Dunsany (grandson and literary heir)
This article about a fantasy short story (or stories) published in the 1910s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e