The Hoard of the Gibbelins - Misplaced Pages

Short story by Lord Dunsany

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"The Hoard of the Gibbelins" is a fantasy short story by Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. It was first published in The Sketch in London and in The Book of Wonder in 1912. It was also reprinted in the anthology The Spell of Seven, edited by L. Sprague de Camp.

The story, only 4.5 pages long in paperback, tells of the exploits of Alderic, Knight of the Order of the City, to seek and purloin the fabled hoard of precious gems rumoured to be held in the castle of the Gibbelins. These strange creatures live in a land chained to the Earth across the river ocean, and they have a built a tower at the narrowest point to attract humans, on whom they feed.

Alderic, acting on conflicting advice, captures a dragon and rides upon it to the riverbank. He swims the river, spends the night breaking into the supposed treasure-cellar with a mighty pickaxe, and finds the gems. But the Gibbelins immediately find, capture, and kill him; Dunsany ends the story quite abruptly at this point, saying "the tale is one of those that have not a happy ending".

Influence

Dale Nelson has theorised that "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" was an influence on J. R. R. Tolkien's poem "The Mewlips", collected in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. The Mewlips live outside the "known world" in damp cellars where they count their gold and eat whoever comes searching for it. Similarities of plot and character apart, Nelson describes story and poem as sharing a "charming quality of insincerity", as both warn of imaginary dangers.

References

Nelson, Dale (2004). "Possible Echoes of Blackwood and Dunsany in Tolkien's Fantasy". Tolkien Studies. 1. West Virginia University Press: 177–181.

External links

Project Gutenberg text
The Hoard of the Gibbelins public domain audiobook at LibriVox
The Book of Wonder public domain audiobook at LibriVox

v t e Lord Dunsany
List of works
Original collections	The Gods of Pegāna Time and the Gods The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories A Dreamer's Tales The Book of Wonder Fifty-One Tales The Last Book of Wonder Tales of Three Hemispheres The Travel Tales of Mr. Joseph Jorkens Jorkens Remembers Africa Jorkens Has a Large Whiskey The Fourth Book of Jorkens The Man Who Ate the Phoenix The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories Jorkens Borrows Another Whiskey The Last Book of Jorkens
Posthumous collections	At the Edge of the World Beyond the Fields We Know Over the Hills and Far Away The Ghosts of the Heaviside Layer, and Other Fantasms Time and the Gods The Collected Jorkens In the Land of Time, and Other Fantasy Tales
Drama	Five Plays The Ginger Cat and Other Lost Plays
Novels	Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley The King of Elfland's Daughter The Charwoman's Shadow The Curse of the Wise Woman
Poetry	Fifty Poems Verses Dedicatory
Short stories	"Chu-Bu and Sheemish" "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" "The Hoard of the Gibbelins" "Idle Days on the Yann"
Characters	Joseph Jorkens
Related	Sidney Sime (preferred artist) John Plunkett, 17th Baron of Dunsany (father) Reginald Drax (brother) Dunsany Castle Edward Plunkett, 20th Baron of Dunsany (grandson and literary heir)

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