The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison (nonfiction book recommendations TXT) 📕
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The Worm Ouroboros is considered to be one of the foundational texts of the high fantasy genre, influencing later authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Ursula K. Leguin, and James Branch Cabell. It is most frequently compared to The Lord of the Rings in its epic scope set against a medieval, magic-laced backdrop—a world called “Middle Earth” by Eddison, thirty-two years before Tolkien’s—and in its almost mythical portrayal of larger-than-life heroes and villains.
The plot begins simply enough: The Lords of Demonland, a group of heroic warriors enjoying a strained peace, are called upon by an emissary of the warlock king of Witchland, Gorice XI. The emissary demands that Demonland submit to the King of Witchland—but the proud Demons refuse, setting off an epic war that spans their entire world. The heroic struggles of the Demons and their allies against the Witches reflect the circular nature of human history: the snake eating its own tail of the title.
The novel is written in a purposefully archaic, almost Jacobean style. The rich, surprising vocabulary and unusual spelling are testaments to Eddison’s expertise at reading and translating medieval-era texts. To this day, it remains perhaps unique in fantasy literature in the accuracy and precision of its highly affected prose style, perhaps matched only by the out-of-time strangeness of the prose in Hodgson’s The Night Land. But where critics often find The Night Land’s prose obtuse and difficult, they have nothing but praise for Eddison’s beautiful, quotable style.
Eddison had already imagined the story and its heroes as a child, and drawings he made as a youth of events in the book are preserved in the Bodleian library. While the novel is without a doubt the work of a mature and skilled writer, and while some of the events and characters are portrayed differently in the novel than they were in his youthful sketches, the names of many of the characters and places remain unchanged. Some of his contemporaries, like Tolkien, wondered about the strange naming style; others criticized it as taking away from the more serious subject matter.
The Worm Ouroboros remains one of the most influential works in the high fantasy genre to this day, and traces of the foundation it laid can be still be found in genre books a century after its publication.
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- Author: E. R. Eddison
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Then befell great manslaying between the sea-cliffs and the sea. The Demons, taken at that advantage, were like a man tripped in mid-stride by a rope across the way. By the sore onset of the Witches they were driven down into the shallows of the sea, and the spume of the sea was red with blood. And the Lord Corinius, now that he had done with feigned retreat, fared through the battle like a stream of unquenchable wildfire, that none might sustain his strokes that were about him.
Now was Spitfire’s horse slain under him with a spear-thrust, as riding fetlock-deep in the yielding sand he rallied his men to fling back Heming. But Bremery of Shaws brought him another horse, and so mightily went he forth against the Witches that the sons of Corund were fain to give back before his onslaught, and that wing of the Witchland army was pressed back against the broken ground below the Heugh. Yet was that of little avail, for Corinius brake through from the north, thrusting the Demons with great slaughter back from the sea, so that they were penned betwixt him and Heming. Therewith Spitfire turned with some picked companies against Corinius; and well it seemed for awhile that a great force of the Witches must be whelmed or drowned in the salt waves. And Corinius himself stood now in great peril of his life, for his horse was bogued in the soft sands and might not win free for all his plunging.
In that nick of time came Spitfire through the stour, with a band of Demons about him, slaying as he came. He shouted with a terrible voice, “O Corinius, hateful to me and mine as are the gates of Hell, now will I kill thee, and thy dead carcase shall fatten the sweet meads of Owlswick.”
Corinius answered him, “Bloody Spitfire, last of three whelps, for thy brothers are by now dead and rotten, I shall give thee a choke-pear.”
Therewith Spitfire shot a twirl-spear at him. It missed the man but smote the great horse in the shoulder so that he plunged and fell in a heap, hurt to the death. But the Lord Corinius lighting nimbly on his feet caught Spitfire’s horse by the bridle rein and smote it on the muzzle, even as he rode at him, so that the horse reared up and swerved. Spitfire made a great blow at him with an axe, but it came slantwise on the helmet ridge and glented aside in air. Then Corinius thrust up under Spitfire’s shield with his sword, and the point entered the big muscle of the arm near the armpit, and glancing against the bone tore up through the muscles of the shoulder. And that was a great wound.
Nevertheless Spitfire slacked not from the fight, but smote at him again, thinking to have hewn off his arm the hand whereof still clutched the bridle-rein. Corinius caught the axe on his shield, but his fingers loosed the rein, and almost he fell to earth under that mighty stroke, and the good bronze shield was dented and battered in.
Now with the loosing of the reins was Spitfire’s horse plunged forward, carrying him past Corinius toward the sea. But he turned and hailed him, crying, “Get thee an horse. For I count it unworthy to fight with thee bearing this advantage over thee, I a-horseback and thou on foot.”
Corinius cried out and answered, “Come down from thine horse then, and meet me foot to foot. And know it, my pretty throstle-cock, that I am king in Demonland, which dignity I hold of the King of Kings, Gorice of Witchland, mine only overlord. Meet it is that I show thee in combat singular, that vauntest thyself greatest among the rebels yet left alive in this my kingdom, how much greater is my might than thine.”
“These be great and thumping words,” said Spitfire. “I shall thrust them down thy throat again.”
Therewith he made as if to light down from his horse; but as he strove to light down, a mist went before his eyes and he reeled in his saddle. His men rushed in betwixt him and Corinius, and the captain of his bodyguard bare him up, saying, “You are hurt, my lord. You must not fight no more with Corinius, for your highness is unmeet for fighting and may not stand alone.”
So they that were about him bare up great Spitfire. And the mellay that was stayed while those lords dealt together in single combat brake forth afresh in that place. But all the while had furious war swung and ravened below Thremnir’s Heugh, and wondrous was the valour of the Demons; for many hundred were slain or wounded to the death, and but a small force were they that yet remained to bear up the battle against the Witches.
Now those that were with Spitfire departed with him in the secretest manner that they could out of the fight, wrapping about him a watchet-coloured cloak to hide his shining armour. They stanched the blood that ran from the great wound in his shoulder and bound it up carefully, and carried him a-horseback by Volle’s command into Tremmerdale by secret mountain paths up to a desolate corrie east of Sterry Gap, under the great scree-shoot that flanks the precipices of the south summit of Dina. A long time he lay there senseless, like to one dead. For many hurts had he taken in the unequal fight, and greatly was he bruised and battered, but worst of all was the sore hurt Corinius gave him ere they parted betwixt the limits of land and sea.
And when night was fallen and all the ways were darkened, came the Lord Volle with a few companions utterly wearied to that lonely corrie. The night was still and cloudless, and the maiden moon walked high heaven, blackening the shadows of the great peaks that were like sharks’ teeth against the night. Spitfire lay on a
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