Lud-in-the-Mist

by Hope Mirrlees

These are not the normal activities of mortal men. What kind of beings peopled the earth four or five centuries ago, what strange lore they had acquired, and what were their sinister doings, we shall never know. Our ancestors keep their secret well.

“Why is Melancholy like Honey? Because it is very sweet, and it is culled from Flowers.”

And then the disquieting thought would come to him that perhaps after all epitaphs are not altogether to be trusted.

But gradually there had arisen a middle-class. And this class had discovered—as it always does—that trade was seriously hampered by a ruler unchecked by a constitution, and by a ruthless, privileged class.

As for Duke Aubrey, he vanished—some said to Fairyland, where he was living to this day. During those three days of bloodshed all the priests had vanished also. So Dorimare lost simultaneously its Duke and its cult.

But the more they ate the more they wanted, and though they admitted that the fruit produced an agony of mind, they maintained that for one who had experienced this agony life would cease to be life without it.

“I’m not the same as you, father,” he said quietly. And then once more he was shaken by great sobs, and screamed out in a voice of anguish, “I have eaten fairy fruit!”

We are not yet civilised enough for exogamy; and, when anything seriously goes wrong, married couples are apt to lay all the blame at its door.

“Life and death! Life and death! They are the dyes in which I work. Are my hands stained?” And, with his curious dry chuckle, he would hold them out for inspection.

“What was I doing to him? Why, I was giving him medicine. Songs were medicines long before herbs.”

“Now, I have studied somewhat closely the effects of fairy fruit,” the doctor was saying. “These effects we regard as a malady. But, in reality, they are more like a melody—a tune that one can’t get out of one’s head,”

Now, if he is ever to become a useful citizen, though he need not lose his own tune, he must learn to walk in time to other people’s.

“Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief.”