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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That was the last ember of red summer burning when they cut them that harvest on Krothering Side. Autumn came, and winter months, and the lengthening days of the returning year. And with the first breath of spring were the harbours filled with ships of war, so many as had never in former days been seen in the land, and in every countryside from the western Isles to Byland, from Shalgreth and Kelialand to the headlands under Rimon Armon, were soldiers gathered with their horses and all instruments of war.
Lord Brandoch Daha rode from the west, the day the Pasque flowers first opened on the bluffs below Erngate End and primroses made sweet the birch-forests in Gashterndale. He set forth betimes, and hard he rode, and he rode into Galing by the Lion Gate about the hour of noon. There was Lord Juss in his private chamber, and greeted him with great joy and love. So Brandoch Daha asked, “What speed?” And Juss answered, “Thirty ships and five afloat in Lookinghaven, whereof all save four be dragons of war. Zigg I expect tomorrow with the Kelialand levies; Spitfire lieth at Owlswick with fifteen hundred men from the southlands; Volle came in but three hours since with four hundred more. In sum, I’ll have four thousand, reckoning ships’ companies and our own bodyguards.”
“Eight ships of war have I,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, “in Stropardon Firth, all busked and boun. Five more at Aurwath, five at Lornagay in Morvey, and three on the Mealand coast at Stackray Oyce, besides four more in the Isles. And I have sixteen hundred spearmen and six hundred horse. All these shall come together to join with thine in Lookinghaven at the snapping of my fingers, give me but seven days’ notice.”
Juss gripped him by the hand. “Bare were my back without thee,” he said.
“In Krothering I’ve shifted not a stone nor swept not a chamber clean,” said Brandoch Daha. “ ’Tis a muck-pit. Every man’s hand I might command I set only to this. And now ’tis ready.” He turned sharp toward Juss and looked at him a minute in silence. Then with a gravity that sat not often on his lips he said, “Let me be urgent with thee once more: strike and delay not. Do him not again that kindness we did him aforetime, fribbling our strength away on the cursed shores of Impland, and by the charmed waters of Ravary, so as he might as secure as sleep send Corsus hither and Corinius to work havoc i’ the land; and so put on us the greatest shame was ever laid on mortal men, and we not bred up to suffer shame.”
“Thou saidst seven days,” said Juss. “Snap thy fingers and call up thy armies. I’ll delay thee not an hour.”
“Ay, but I mean to Carcë,” said he.
“To Carcë, whither else?” said Juss. “But I’ll take my brother Goldry with us.”
“But I mean first to Carcë,” said Brandoch Daha. “Let my opinion sway thee once. Why, a schoolboy should tell thee, clear thy flank and rear ere thou go forward.”
Juss smiled. “I love this new garb of caution, cousin,” said he; “it doth most prettily become thee. I question though whether this be not the true cause: that Corinius took not up thy challenge last summer, but let it lie, and that hath left thee hungry still.”
Brandoch Daha looked him sidelong in the eye, and laughed. “O Juss,” he said, “thou hast touched me near. But ’tis not that. That was in the weird that bright lady laid on me, in the sparrow-hawk castle in Impland forlorn: that he I held most in hate should ruin my fair lordship, and that to my hand should vengeance be denied. That I e’en must brook. O no. Think only, delays are dangerous. Come, be advised. Be not mulish.”
But the Lord Juss’s face was grave. “Urge me no more, dear friend,” said he. “Thou sleep’st soft. But to me, when I am cast in my first sleep, cometh many a time the likeness of Goldry Bluszco, held by a maleficial charm on the mountain top of Zora Rach, that standeth apart, out of the sunlight, out of all sound or warmth of life. Long ago I made vow to turn neither to the right nor to the left, until I set him free.”
“He is thy brother,” said Lord Brandoch Daha. “Also is he mine own familiar friend, whom I love scarce less than thee. But when thou speakest of oaths, remember there’s La Fireez too. What shall he think on us after our oaths to him three years ago, that night in Carcë? Yet this one blow should right him too.”
“He will understand,” said Juss.
“He is to come with Gaslark, and thou told’st me thou dost e’en now expect them,” said Brandoch Daha. “I’ll leave you. I cannot for shame say to him, ‘Patience, friend, truly ’tis not today convenient. Thou shalt be paid in time.’ By heavens, I’d scorn to entreat my mantle-maker so. And this our friend that lost all and languisheth in exile because he saved our lives.”
So saying, he stood up in great discontent and ire as if to leave the chamber. But Juss caught him by the wrist. “Thou dost upbraid me most unjustly, and well thou knowest it in thy heart, and ’tis that makes thee so angry. Hark, the horn soundeth at the gate, and ’tis for Gaslark. I’ll not let thee go.”
“Well,” said Lord Brandoch Daha, “have thy will. Only ask not me to plead thy rotten case to them. If I speak it shall be to shame thee. Now thou’rt warned.”
Now went they into the high presence chamber, where was bright ladies not a few, and captains and noble persons from up and down the land, and stood on the
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