The Marvellous Land of Snergs

By: Edward Wyke-Smith

Narrated by: Peter Joyce

Once upon a... time there was a marvellous land of Snergs. Miss Watkyns, a teacher who loved children, lived there. Just over the river lived Golithos, a not so friendly giant, who also loved children – with a lot of salt! He had a friend called Mother Meldrum, the wickedest witch that ever lived. When Sylvia and Joe run away for a big adventure their lives are in deadly peril when they fall into the clutches of these two evil characters. Thankfully, Gorbo the Snerg and Baldry the court jester are on hand to help – but sometimes hinder – their escape. This is a classic fairy tale written in traditional style but with great gusto, whimsy and a surprising freshness.

It will enchant all children up to the age of 90. J.R.R. Tolkien said of ‘the Snergs’, which later proved inspirational in “Lord of the Rings“, “I should like to record my own and my children’s love of ….the Snergs ….and of Gorbo, the gem of dunderheads, jewel of a companion in an escapade”

©2011 Assembled Stories (P)2005 Assembled Stories

Critic reviews

About Assembled Stories: Over the years the national press have reviewed Assembled Stories titles as "excellent", "remarkable", "entrancing", "superb", "magic for sure", "masterly", "wonderful", "a class act" and "a splendid example of audio at its best".

"Peter Joyce is the most remarkable one-man band in audiobook publishing. Joyce, an experienced actor, reads them all himself." (The Independent)

Peter Pan, Oz, Arthurian Romance, and Fairy Tales

“It is fortunate for children, and for grownups too, if they can manage it, when they do not concern themselves greatly about the future possibilities of a calamity. Sylvia and Joe were of this kind, especially Joe.”

On the coast of an inaccessible enchanted island, the warm-hearted, educated, and upright Miss Watkyns and her fellow women of the Society for the Removal of Superfluous Children (S.R.S.C.) oversee a colony of 478 previously neglected and or abused children now living in cozy one-story houses with fences to keep out the too-affectionate cinnamon bears. About a day and a half walk through dense woods lies the town of the Snergs, a short, broad-shouldered, long-lived, pixie-related people (do NOT call them dwarves) who work in batches for Miss Watkyns and co. in return for presents from the outside world. Down the coast a bit from the S.R.S.C. is a community of cursed, apparently immortal 17th-century Dutch sailors led by Captain Vanderdecken (“vulgarly known as the Flying Dutchman”), who’ve stopped sailing around in their dilapidated ship to live in huts by the shore.

The heroes of the story are two troublemaking children, impulsive Sylvia and disobedient Joe. Sylvia was ignored by her society mother, Joe abused by his circus rider father, so the S.R.S.C. spirited them away. They are chums, sharing everything, including their pet puppy Tiger. The plot gets going when Joe throws a half-brick into the Dutch sailors’ cauldron, splashing six of the men with hot soup, so that although Miss Watkyns won’t let the Dutch keelhaul the boy, she punishes him by locking him in the turret room with bread and water, so he and Sylvia run away with Tiger, aiming to visit the village of the Snergs, where no S.R.S.C. child has ever ventured before.

The kids quickly meet the real hero of the novel, the most foolish and feckless of all the Snergs (and that’s saying something), young Gorbo, only 273 years old. Gorbo tried to be a potter, but because the pots he provided the S.R.S.C. promptly broke, Miss Watkyns told him to “potter off.” Now he’s gormlessly walking around when the runaways run into him. While Sylvia and Joe remain inveterately reckless (“It is indeed terrible to think that all this fuss should be caused by the folly and disobedience of two shrimps like Sylvia and Joe”), Gorbo has potential.

There follows an episodic plot featuring whimsical fantastic things like an uncrossable river, a set of magical doors, a forest of giant fungi, a reformed ogre, an unreformed witch, an intimidating clowder of black cats, an ill-equipped knight errant, a court jester with poor judgment, a tyrannical king of ruthless fame, an expeditionary force of Snergs and Dutchmen, and more. Despite the narrator’s promises, the story doesn’t, finally, prove any useful moral: “For however reprehensible the children were in their disobedience and irresponsibility, it cannot be denied that the general results of their conduct were beneficial.”

Wyke-Smith’s book has vivid, humorous descriptions, like “The rope was more than good enough for Snergs, who can climb like startled cats,” and “In appearance it [the turret room] resembled the more despicable forms of lighthouses, and it was quite useless for anything practical, being so narrow that a grown-up person ascending the stairs had to writhe up like a snake, and the chamber atop being so small that Miss Watkyns had considered the question of turning the whole business into a pigeon-house.”

It has funny dialogue, like:

“And it did not occur to thee, thou farthing rascal, to lead them back to their little home by the sea?”
“N-no, O King, I-I didn’t think.”
“That we believe, thou worse than worm.”

And neat lines, like: “We may be forced to introduce battle, murder and sudden death into these parts.”
(That’s a play on the Oxford Book of Common Prayer’s “From battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.”)

The narrator is hands on, commenting on the action, like this: “Gorbo, that lout, had really done it this time.” Or this: “To those who know from experience, as I confess I do, how painful it is to have one’s sparkling verbal efforts received with cold unappreciative looks or smiles in which pity lurks behind a mere pretense at mirth, will really appreciate how Baldry suffered from this really pointed meanness.”

I hesitate to bring this up, but Wyke-Smith’s treatment of Sylvia may be dated. The girl has more agency than poor puppy Tiger (a prop schlepped around), but she is more easily daunted and discouraged than Joe, already knows how to use her feminine wiles to get what she wants, and perks up when looking at a wedding dress. On the other hand, the witch and Miss Watkyns are the most formidable figures in the novel.

About the audiobook, once every half hour lively orchestra music jounces in to end a scene. More importantly, although Peter Joyce may overdo the base narration by drawing out—almost singing—key vowels in key words, as in “and JOOOE (Joe) was gone” and “the AIIIIIR (air) was full of wooden chips,” he relishes reading the story, doing prime character voices, especially the whiny ogre, the snide witch, and the sweet numbskull Gorbo (I love it when he moans, “Oh, no!”).

Unfortunately, the “unabridged” audiobook CHANGES the original text (at least) whenever the narrator addresses the “reader” and Peter Joyce instead says, the “listener”:

Original: “a narrative which should not be without improving effect on the minds of my younger readers.”

Audiobook: “a story which should not be without improving effect on the minds of my younger listeners.”

In addition to dumbing down the book by replacing “narrative” with “story,” it’s a violation to change the original “reader” to “listener”! It makes me wonder what other changes the audiobook producers made to the original text.

Finally, a fusion of Peter Pan, Oz, Arthurian romance, traditional fairy tales, and Wyke-Smith’s quirky touches, The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1927) is a delightful pleasure. I recommend it to anyone who likes vintage children’s literature. Hey, Tolkien and his kids loved it! The Snergs—no taller than the average table and fond of feasts—influenced Tolkein’s hobbits, and I bet that the genteel, intrusive, tongue-in-cheek narrator influenced Tolkein’s narrator in The Hobbit. Wyke-Smith wrote other books, and I’m sure curious to read them.