Fifty-One Tales · Chapters
Chapters explained
Chapter companions for Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany.
Chapter 1
The Assignation
The poet creates enduring songs for Fame, but she prefers the ephemeral garlands of the crowd. When he rebukes her, she promises to meet him in a graveyard in a hundred years.
Chapter 2
Charon
Charon, the ferryman of the dead, rows endlessly across the grey river, burdened by an eternal weariness. The dead come in unprecedented numbers, then suddenly stop. A single, last man arrives, and after being ferried to Dis, he reveals he is the last of humanity, a revelation that moves Charon to an unprecedented emotional response.
Chapter 3
The Death of Pan
Travellers from London enter Arcady and lament the death of Pan, finding him stiff and still. As they stand mournfully by his body, Arcadian maidens arrive and laugh at the sight, causing Pan to leap up and pursue them, filling Arcady with sounds of pursuit.
Chapter 4
The Sphinx at Giza
The narrator observes the Sphinx's painted face and her flirtation with Time, hoping she will lure his secret from him so that humanity can blind and enslave Time, preventing him from destroying beautiful things. The chapter explores the futile human desire to control time and the fear that Time's ultimate anguish might bring down the House of Man.
Chapter 5
The Hen
A hen, inspired by the swallows' annual migration south, attempts her own journey but only reaches the garden at the end of the road. Upon returning, she describes her limited travels as a grand adventure, and the poultry prefer her account over the swallows' tales of the sea.
Chapter 6
Wind and Fog
The North Wind boasts of his power over ships and the sea, but the silent fog responds by listing the countless vessels he has destroyed, revealing a more insidious and pervasive form of destruction.
Chapter 7
The Raft-Builders
The chapter reflects on the futility of writing and human ambition, comparing authors to sailors hastily building rafts on doomed ships. It suggests that most works are forgotten, with only a few names and phrases surviving Oblivion's sea, while time consumes even the greatest civilizations like Babylon and Nineveh.
Chapter 8
The Workman
The narrator witnesses a workman fall from a great height, futilely attempting to carve his name into the scaffolding before his death. Later, the workman's ghost appears, laughing at the narrator's own serious work, mocking the transience of life and civilization.
Chapter 9
The Guest
A young man dines alone in a London restaurant, carrying on a one-sided conversation with an empty chair, which he treats as his guest. He speaks of mutual acquaintances, including King Seti and Helen of Troy, and hints at a failed romance. After drinking his coffee, he collapses and dies, revealing that his unseen guest was Death.
Chapter 10
Death and Odysseus
Death, mocked by Love in the Olympian courts, resolves to frighten Odysseus. He travels to Ithaca and finds the old hero warming his hands by the fire. Despite Death's attempts to intimidate him, Odysseus remains unperturbed, addressing Death as an old servant and recalling their shared history at Troy. Ultimately, Odysseus leans on Death's shoulder and they depart together.
Chapter 11
Death and the Orange
Two dark young men dine with a woman in a foreign southern land; a small orange with an evil laughter in its heart rolls off her plate, sparking a quarrel beneath the table. Death, seated nearby with an old man, rises to listen.
Chapter 12
The Prayer of the Flowers
The flowers lament to Pan from the edge of a Midland city, where industrial progress has replaced the woods and fields, and they feel forgotten and lonely. Pan's voice from Arcady reassures them that these changes are temporary.
Chapter 13
Time and the Tradesman
Time encounters a tradesman artificially aging furniture in an antique shop, then punishes him by physically aging the man himself before departing to attend to a weary city.
Chapter 14
The Little City
The narrator, traveling on a train, glimpses a small city in a valley. The golden smoke and patchwork fields evoke a timeless, almost paradisiacal scene, but the sight of ancient, indifferent mountains prompts a meditation on the transience of human civilization.
Chapter 15
The Unpasturable Fields
The mountains boast of their permanence and endurance against Time, but the clouds counter that they themselves are the realm where Pegasus prances and browses on song, suggesting a different kind of imperishability through myth and imagination.
Chapter 16
The Worm and the Angel
A worm emerging from the tombs encounters an angel, and together they observe the entirety of human civilization—kings, kingdoms, youth, age, war, and peace. The worm claims all as his food, but the angel recites a Homeric line by the sea, challenging the worm's power. The worm, having failed for three thousand years to destroy that line, pales in anger.
Chapter 17
The Songless Country
A poet visits a country without songs and offers to create simple, aimless songs for its weary people, but they reject his offer, citing the demands of modern commerce, leading the poet to lament their damnation.
Chapter 18
The Latest Thing
A poet observes an unclean-feeder greedily scavenging from the polluted river of Time, ignoring the beauty around him, while the poet looks toward the distant sea and the hills of Fate, aware of the river's eventual flood.
Chapter 19
The Demagogue and the Demimonde
A demagogue and a demimondaine arrive together at the gate of Paradise. The Saint questions them: the demagogue claims to have stood for popular principles, while the demimondaine admits she wanted money. The Saint lets the demimondaine in, though reluctantly, but denies the demagogue entry, citing lack of interest in his political questions, and shuts the golden door.
Chapter 20
The Giant Poppy
The narrator dreams of returning to familiar hills, once home to woods, fairies, and distant views of Ilion and Roncesvalles, but finds only a giant poppy that hums 'Remember not.' A poet dressed as a shepherd sits by the poppy, playing an ancient tune to slow its growth, explaining that the poppy is killing gods and fairies, and that his brotherhood's piping prevents humanity from being lost. He claims they have saved Agamemnon.
Chapter 21
Roses
The narrator reflects on a roadside where wild roses bloom with strange abundance, their deep pink blush a remnant of a village that existed two hundred rose-generations ago. The roses, having left the wilderness for human dwellings, now carry the memory of that lost village. The narrator hopes that when London is gone and fields return, they will find something beautiful to remember the city by, because it was loved.
Chapter 22
The Man with the Golden Earrings
The narrator encounters a mysterious sailor at the docks who claims to be the last surviving pirate, condemned to immortality for his sins on the Spanish seas.
Chapter 23
The Dream of King Karna-Vootra
King Karna-Vootra recounts a dream in which he implores the queenly Vava-Nyria to walk with him through beautiful lands, only to realize she is dead and his youth is gone.
Chapter 24
The Storm
A small, alien ship named the Petite Espérance is scorned by onlookers who believe it is lost in a storm. Years later, it returns as a magnificent galleon laden with treasure, revealing that it could not sink because it carried the gods.
Chapter 25
A Mistaken Identity
Fame encounters Notoriety in a city at evening, where Notoriety is mistaken for Fame by worshippers. When Notoriety claims to be Fame, Fame quietly departs, and Notoriety leads her followers to the Pit.
Chapter 26
The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise
A retelling of the classic fable in which the Hare, overconfident and distracted, repeatedly stops during a race against the Tortoise, who wins through persistence. The story ends with a forest fire and the Tortoise being sent as a messenger, subverting the expected moral.
Chapter 27
Alone the Immortals
The narrator, seeking to mourn the dead years in a distant valley, finds instead the immortal years themselves—colossi that tower over time and creation, and returns comforted.
Chapter 28
A Moral Little Tale
A Puritan who opposes dancing and mirth is visited by the Devil in a dream, who reveals that God created love and joy, and that the Puritan's efforts have actually served Hell. The Puritan realizes his mistake but is dragged into Hell, condemned to know that his followers will continue his misguided work.
Chapter 29
The Return of Song
In a vision, the narrator ascends to a Valhalla where the gods observe the end of a world. Swans return from the dead world, singing, and a humble god explains that worlds are mortal but song is immortal. Larks then descend to herald a new world.
Chapter 30
Spring in Town
Winter is depicted as a deposed king lingering at a street corner, until Spring arrives and commands him to leave. He retreats northward, regaining his majesty as he returns to his icy home. Spring then takes over the town, awakening trees, flowers, and the spirits of children and young men, transforming the urban landscape with life and joy.
Chapter 31
How the Enemy Came to Thlūnrāna
A man from a black-thatched cottage enters the dreaded lamaserai of Thlūnrāna on the night of its prophesied doom. He passes through veiled chambers and silent magicians, draws aside the curtain of the inner mystery, and laughs—fulfilling the prophecy that laughter, a divine force dwelling with men, would destroy the fortress of wizardry.
Chapter 32
A Losing Game
In a tavern, Man meets Death and tries to cheer his gloomy adversary, but Death remains morose and weeps, leaving Man to wonder whether Death weeps from pity, regret, or the knowledge that he will never again have such sport.
Chapter 33
Taking Up Picadilly
The narrator encounters workmen digging up Picadilly in June, only to discover that beneath the surface lies a dark void filled with southern stars. The workmen reveal they are not what they seem, suggesting a surreal or mythological dimension to their task.
Chapter 34
After the Fire
After a cosmic catastrophe destroys the world, alien creatures sift through the ruins and debate what was most significant about humanity. They consider the mammoth and man's temples, but ultimately discover that the greatest thing of all was the dreams of man.
Chapter 35
The City
The narrator's fancy takes him to a desert city at evening, where he observes poets and artists stealing away just before a doom falls upon the city. The remaining inhabitants, glad to be rid of them, continue their commerce. A thousand years later, nothing remains of the city.
Chapter 36
The Food of Death
Death falls ill but is revived by consuming the adulterated and artificial foods of modern civilization, including alum-whitened bread, tinned meats, cheap tea, imitation champagne, and patent medicines. Restored to strength, Death resumes his rampage through the cities.
Chapter 37
The Lonely Idol
The narrator finds an old, forgotten idol and, moved by pity, prays to it, lamenting the passage of time, the loss of beauty, and the inevitability of death, and imploring the idol to oppose Time.
Chapter 38
The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)
A wealthy woman in a modern steel-built city, possessing all material luxuries, desires a live sphinx. After an exhaustive search, her agents find a sphinx in a desert who had once devoured the gods of a ruined temple. They chain her and bring her to the city. The woman rejoices in her ownership, but the sphinx stares into her eyes, asks a riddle, and when the woman cannot answer, she dies. The sphinx falls silent, her next move unknown.
Chapter 39
The Reward
The narrator wanders from a factory city to the edge of Hell, where an angel is building a new, worse Hell using modern materials and methods. The angel explains that the punishment is for those who sold a harmful new yeast, and despite the narrator's attempts to argue for mercy and justification, the angel remains resolute, citing the suffering of children as his motivation.
Chapter 40
The Trouble in Leafy Green Street
A woman, seeking relief from rainy-day melancholy, buys a grey stone idol called the God of Rainy Cheerfulness from an old man in Moleshill Street. Despite warnings about idolatry, she prays to it on the next wet day, thereby invoking a doom upon herself in Leafy Green Street.
Chapter 41
The Mist
The mist rises over the Downs, weeping as it fills the high places and hollows. The narrator consults a prophet who explains that the mist is composed of souls who never saw the Downs in life and now mourn their loss in death.
Chapter 42
Furrow-Maker
Two birds, one in black and one in brown, discuss the fate of Man, whom they call 'furrow-maker.' They debate whether Man's turn to cities and industry will lead to his death, with the black bird insisting that Man will survive his folly and the brown bird doubting it. The chapter ends with Man's internal resolve to make one more invention before returning to the woods.
Chapter 43
Lobster Salad
The narrator describes a harrowing dream in which they climb the perilous outer wall of the Palace of Colquonhombros, pursued by sable apes with tigerish teeth. With their strength failing and the apes closing in, they remember a pin left on a chest of drawers in another world, reach for it through an effort of will, and stab themselves in the arm to wake from the dream.
Chapter 44
The Return of the Exiles
The narrator encounters two old, servile men—one with a hammer, one with a spear—who ask the way to Stonehenge. At the stone circle, a group of twenty men await, and the two old men are revealed as ancient figures who once received human sacrifices. They lament the change to a goat sacrifice, and the narrator, feeling uneasy, departs as they apologize for returning after three thousand years.
Chapter 45
Nature and Time
A triumphant spirit strides through Coventry on a winter's night, followed by a ragged, weeping spirit who laments the loss of nature to the growing cities. She accuses him of forgetting her, but he retorts by listing fallen ancient cities as proof of his faithfulness, promising that fields and grass will return soon.
Chapter 46
The Song of the Blackbird
A poet overhears a blackbird's claim of having created a new song inspired by a beautiful she-blackbird, only to be told by an old wanderer that the song is ancient and was sung when he was young.
Chapter 47
The Messengers
The Muses repeatedly send messengers to the Golden Town with divine messages, but the townspeople stone each messenger and later inscribe the message on gold for their temples. The narrator resists the Muses' call, arguing that the Golden Town has decayed into a place of commerce and lost beauty, yet the Muses persist.
Chapter 48
The Three Tall Sons
Man's ultimate city, the pinnacle of civilization, turns away a poor old woman—Nature herself—who comes begging at its gates. She returns with her three tall sons, War, Famine, and Plague, who enter the city unnoticed while Man remains absorbed in his problems and oblivious to their approach.
Chapter 49
Compromise
A city built in glory over an earthquake's lair is initially ignored by the earthquake, who fears its inhabitants might be gods. When the citizens later send offerings to appease him, he realizes they are not divine and prepares to destroy them.
Chapter 50
What We Have Come To
An advertiser weeps upon seeing cathedral spires, lamenting that they are not an advertisement for Beefo, highlighting the commodification of the sacred.
Chapter 51
The Tomb of Pan
The enlightened people build a grand marble tomb for Pan, whom they believe dead, to memorialize and avoid his worship. Some mourn, others revile him, but the builders complete the monument. At evening, Pan himself emerges from the forest, sees the tomb, and laughs.
Chapter 52
The Poet Speaks with Earth
The narrator returns from roaming among the stars to find Mother Earth sitting in space, murmuring about her children. When the narrator boasts of human achievements like machinery, politics, science, and inventions, Earth remembers none of them—only poets and heroes, muttering poems and crooning of ancient wars. The narrator pleads for Earth to remember them as well.
Chapter 53
Endnotes
The chapter consists solely of editorial notes indicating that the preceding story was omitted from both the original British and American editions.
