It is both
the blessing and curse of the age of information to have laid bare many of
life’s little secrets. We may stop and
admire the beauty of a rainbow, but we ruminate less on any mystical
significance it might have knowing the scientific principles behind prisms. The Earth is not flat, and indeed we are a
speck of cosmic dust in the larger scheme of things. Science has turned over the stone of
knowledge such that we can see all the little insects of bald fact crawling
beneath. Fewer and fewer are the little
mysteries that give life an edge of the perplexing and peculiar—that entities
beyond humanity’s knowledge are still at play in the world. Enter Hope Mirrlees’ 1926 masterpiece Lud-in-the-Mist. Anything but fairy apologetics (ha!), it sets
a little drop of something ethereal dancing on the fingertip of life—including
its shadow.
Lud-in-the-Mist is the story of the town
of Lud and its jolly, troubled mayor, Nathanial Chanticleer. Though Lud is situated at the confluence of
two rivers, the Dawl, which flows from wholesome English lands, and the Dapple,
which flows from Faerie in the West, the people have evolved to the point all
talk of fairies and elves is like unto heresy.
Even the slightest mention of anything ethereal is probable cause for
scandal. It’s thus when Mayor
Chanticleer’s son admits in public that he ate of fairy fruit, the town goes
into uproar. But when a troupe of young
girls at the local primer evince the same, a plague is proclaimed, and it is up
to the Mayor to get a handle on the situation.
Fluffy white clouds and thunderheads descending on Lud, the sleepy
little English village is never the same.
