The King of Elfland’s Daughter

By: Lord Dunsany

Narrated by: John Rayburn

Lord Dunsany himself wrote a preface to this fairy tale. He said, “I hope that no suggestion of any strange land that may be conveyed by the title will scare readers away from this book; for, though some chapters do indeed tell of Elfland, in the greater part of them there is no more to be shown than the face of the fields we know, and ordinary English woods and a common village and valley, a good twenty or twenty-five miles from the border of Elfland.”

The story began when the lord of Erl was told by his people they wanted a magic lord to rule them. That took some doing, but he sent his son, Alveric, to retrieve Lirazel, daughter of the king of Elfland, to be his wife and thus fix the situation. At first, the king was angered and sent guards to kill Alveric, but the young man of Erl fought them off, and Lizarel fell for him and decided to leave with him. Later, under a spell, she decided she wanted to see her old home again. The king, sorry to see his daughter ever being sad, used magic to enlarge Elfland and include the land of Erl.

“Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age, and dreams are forever.” (Walt Disney)

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.” (Albert Einstein)

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” (C. S. Lewis)

From those wonderful viewpoints, everyone in Erl and Elfland survived eternally in the magic realm, as you will now hear.

Public Domain (P)2022 John D. Rayburn