Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees (first published under the author’s name in 1926, now available in trade paperback from Wildside Press for $8.99, 217 pages) is a sleepy, old school British fairytale, a proto-fantasy novel whose publication pre-dates The Hobbit by over a decade. Neil Gaiman in The View from the Cheap Seats cites it and Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter among the books that most influenced his own writing in general and his best selling novel Stardust in particular.
The titular Lud-in-the-Mist is the name of the city in which almost all of the action of the novel takes place. It is a fantasy, agrarian, seaside, late 18thCentury-like community located between the rivers Dapple and Dawl and on the border of the forbidden Fairyland from which, once entered, one does not ever return. The Luddites of this world do not eschew technology as did the Luddites of our world, but they do eschew the consumption of “fairy fruit” which hallucinogen was the vice of the aristocratic class before the revolution which overthrew them. However, as with illegal drugs in our world, there is a black market for this forbidden fruit in Lud-in-the-Mist as well as unscrupulous characters, particularly the aptly if obviously named “Willy Wisp,” that enjoy wreaking havoc by slipping some of the mind-altering substance into unsuspecting people’s food.
The novel may be read as a straightforward fantasy/fairytale which, as one might predict, provides an excuse for the protagonist, the somewhat inept but loveable Master Nathaniel Chanticleer, to venture (albeit painfully slowly by today’s standards) into the mysterious Fairyland on a quest. Woven into the story is the investigation of a “cold case” murder that occurred about two generations prior. The novel may also be read as a satirical commentary on the arbitrary and artificial aspects of the British legal system.
Every fairytale has a moral, and this one is no exception. The moral of the story of Lud-in-the-Mist is provided directly by the omniscient narrator (the author) as,
“The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning!”
Add “consumers of the media” to “readers of books” and one has a lesson that is just as relevant and valuable today as it was when Lud-in-the-Mist was published almost a century ago.
