The Blessing of Pan

by Lord Dunsany

"The Blessing of Pan portrays English rural life under a sign of paganism, after the fashion of writers like T.F. Powys." -- The Encyclopedia of Fantasy

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Irish Literature

277 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, eighteenth baron of Dunsany, was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work in fantasy published under the name Lord Dunsany. More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes hundreds of short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, he lived much of his life at perhaps Ireland's longest-inhabited home, Dunsany Castle near Tara, received an honourary doctorate from Trinity College, and died in Dublin.

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published in 1927, this is a highly unusual tale of fantasy. Set in rural England, a quaint village where all is as it should be ... except that, of course, it isn't. The sound of a flute is heard, the village priest worries, people stir ... Told beautifully, this story is about a village's return to paganism - a trip way back to a time when we were still following our instincts. It took me a while to get into the language, but once I did, I was captivated. Go out on a limb, maybe even light a joint, take yourself to a different place and read this truly unusual novel.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a chronicle of the reversion to paganism and worship of the ancient god Pan in a small out-of-the-way English village. Already a bastion against the onset of industrialisation that is transforming the rest of the country, a place that has changed little in the last century, if there is anywhere that might reject modern trends completely, this is it; the village of Wolding.

But not if one man has his way. The vicar of Wolding senses the changes coming and knows that it is young Tommy Duffin who sneaks out at night and plays his reed pipes upon the hill, a melody that turns people's thoughts away from the things that they should be on, away from the things that they should hold dear. But the vicar seems to be powerless to do anything to stop it. Whichever quarter he turns to for help fails him. But what can he do alone to stem this tide? Gradually, one by one, the people of the village go over to the other side.

This book explores the tensions between the old and the new, tradition and change, the things we know and the things we don't, between the generations and between mankind's ways of dominating or living in harmony with nature.

Once again I am astounded by the elegant writing of Lord Dunsany. There's something about his way of putting things, his turn of phrase that I find aesthetically pleasing. I know I keep giving each of Dunsany's books five stars but they all deserve it (so far).

[Eleanor Toland · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Blessing Pan is one of those ambiguously fantastic novels in which it's never quite clear whether the magic is taking place in reality or in the minds of the characters. Elderick Anwrel, a nineteenth-century Anglican priest, finds that his parishioners have started to worship Pan, Greek god of shepherds. His struggle to win them back to the fold forms an epic novel of spiritual warfare.

Lord Dunsany's writing is dense and rich, and readers used to contemporary fantasy may find The Blessing of Pan very slow-paced. The 'action' is definitely more metaphysical and mental than physical- Anwrel's struggle with Pan takes place mainly in agonised conversations and soul-searching. But it's definitely a very rewarding book to the persevering reader.

An ambivalent, thought-provoking story about the needs of community versus individual conscience, industrialisation versus the wilderness and faith versus cynicism.

[Steven Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gracefully satirical, gently humorous. A pleasant book for those who listened to the piper at the gates of dawn as children reading Wind in the Willows, but fear they have strayed far from the river as adults.

[Δημήτριος Καραγιάννης · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a very original, pagan plot, which, however, fails to attain the heights for which it showed promise in the early pages. Still, it is a tale definitely above average, and quite bold considering the era.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Blessing of Pan, published in 1928, is Lord Dunsany's first novel that is not pure fantasy. Nevertheless, it recalls the magical thinking of some of his early fantasy short stories—and likewise is set in Kent, in South East England, his childhood home.

After thousands of years, the worship of Pan is returning to the small village of Wolding, overcoming the Christianity that has held sway for so long. Dunsany follows the reinstatement of Pan, step by step, from its very beginnings when the boy Tommy Duffin is inspired by listening to the sound of the wind to create pan pipes from the reeds growing in a local stream. The village vicar, Eldrick Anwrel, hears Tommy playing the pipes:

And then with a colour burning wild in the sky, and a dimness growing on earth, and a touch of cold, the sun went under Wold Hill, and there slipped down the shimmering air from the high hill over the valley, a clear wild tune so remote from the thoughts of man that it seemed to drift down from ages and of lands with which none of our race had ever had any concern. More elfin than the blackbird, more magical than all nightingales, it thrilled the clergyman's heart with awful longings, which he could no more tell of in words than he could have put words to that tune. It gripped him, it held him there. To say he stood spellbound is not to describe his stillness: he did not even breathe. And all his thoughts, all his emotions, his very consciousness, seemed carried away to far valleys, perhaps not even of earth. (p. 10)

And then, Dunsany writes of the piper himself,

And the tune was the answer to all things. What those clear notes said to him he could never put into words; perhaps no man could. But while the music thrilled from his pipes, and while the echoes haunted the air, all his longings were gathered in peace before one enormous answer, and nothing seemed strange or perplexed him any more, and all the mysteries over the ridges of hills seemed near and familiar and friendly, and he knew himself one of a fellowship to which the hush of the night, the deep of the woods, or mysteries bold in the moonlight or hidden by mist, reported all their secrets. (p. 48)

Then he put the pipes to his lips again, and the tune answered everything; but so far did it transcend any words of man that nothing remained in his reason, when the echoes had floated away, to tell him how it was that for a little while all secrets were open to him, from the purpose of the Old Stones of Wolding to the emotion that sustained the grass-hopper's call. (p. 49)

And once more he put the pipes to his lips and blew. And a tune welled up inspired by a magic he knew not, that was older than all those trees, a primæval thing crooning a tale to the sleeping valley; and it seemed so old in a knowledge of dreams that had troubled men that it almost sounded human; and yet the notes that came out of those pipes of reed were more like those of strange birds with enchanted voices than any notes of men. (p. 57)

As Tommy Duffin plays the pipes, first the young girls are drawn to follow him:

So faint was the tune that held that girls wondering, so magical and so new, that when a gust of it ceased, it seemed to have been but a dream, such as comes and passes in the moment of waking upon some radiant morning; and nothing remained to show that it had been real but the darkened pupils of the wondering eyes of the thrilled girls that had listened. (p. 106)

The young men are next, and finally the whole village is brought under the spell of the pipes. Anwrel, preaching desperately in his church, cannot compete:

Softly at first, soft as Spring coming to meadows, soft as birds heard far off by children at play, and strange as the music of ice that the noon and a wind have broken, the sound of pipes rose slowly above the words of the preacher. (p. 222)

And tears welled up in them all, salt and hot, but they saw through the gold of them that they and the distant stars, and the little lives near in the wood, and the Earth and its rocks and its flowers, were not separate as they had thought. (p. 256)

Anwrel struggles against the takeover of his congregation by Pan. Feeling his own inadequacy, he tries to enlist the aid firstly of his bishop and then of a prominent scholar who knows much about the Greek origins of Pan, both to no avail. He is left to battle the encroachment of the old nature religion with help only from the mad, visionary Perkin.

Nothing works for Anwrel. Tommy Duffin's pipes inexorably enchant the whole village, young and old alike, and even Anwrel himself is swept along. The villagers sacrifice a bull to Pan beside the Old Stones of Wolding, and it is Anwrel himself who delivers the killing blow to the bull with a paleolithic flint ax.

Dunsany never says so explicitly, but the tone of the book clearly shows where his sympathies lie. The village withdraws from the rest of the world to return to the simple ways of the ancient Britons, before Christianity and then industrialization came to those shores. That Dunsany is a believer in the value of this kind of cultural atavism is apparent in much of his other writing. I do not think that Dunsany has followed his line of thought in The Blessing of Pan purely as an academic exercise. Of course, he could never have come out as a pagan and retained his position at the pinnacle of Anglo-Irish society in the early twentieth century. However, it is clear that he yearned for the old ways, and in his secret heart, I suspect, he was an adherent of Pan himself.

The Blessing of Pan is set down in the beautiful, resonant prose that characterizes much of Dunsany's work. Perhaps it lacks some of the poetry of his earlier fantasy, but his writing nevertheless flows easily, with simplicity and clarity. The book gives a strong sense of the inspiration that guided Dunsany's early fantasy writings. Did he, too, hear the pipes of Pan drifting over the English valleys of his childhood?

[Elo-Mall Toomet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I understand I am simply not capable of giving Lord Dunsany less than five stars.

[Felipe Nobre · Rating 5 out of 5]

An engrossing and beautifully written tale of a vicar's increasingly lonesome struggle against a mysterious force creeping over his village. 

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I certainly knew the name of Lord Dunsany, I had never been given a clear recommendation for what to read of his. Thanks to Noel Perrin's A Reader's Delight for the nudge and the title.

I can now see what all the fuss is about, and why this guy was so popular. He evokes mood by mostly focusing on the ordinary. He gets one to suspend disbelief by making keen and shrewd observations of human nature, so that you don't suspect him of fiction when he strays, perhaps, from the purely real. And he lets the story creep up on you by focusing now here, now there, but only sometimes on the matter at hand.

The vicar is aware of some issues in the village. The previous tenant of his living had left town, almost disappeared, under odd circumstances. There were rumors of dealings with the supernatural, never confirmed. And there is a boy in town who has taken to playing some pipes, and the young ladies have been drifting out of the village to listen and to dance. And the adults are a bit disturbed.

The vicar interrogates one of his flock, and this is the description of his strategy: "...for in conversation as in cards there are winnings and losings, wonder and laughter and even awe in the points. She had her strange stories too; and, gently as the Arab guides his camel with the light cord only on the side of the neck, the vicar guided her reminiscences whither he wished them to go." From her he learns an unnatural detail about Mr. Davidson in the vicarage garden, the night before he left.

The vicar attempts to inform the Bishop, and is ordered to take a holiday. He is, in fact, directed to a specific set of rooms in Brighton for a specific number of days. Alas, when he returns to the village, things have grown more pagan. And gradually the village seems to be slipping out of the modern world altogether, and the Bishop no help.

I think most modern readers would find this style a bit periphrastic, sort of a low-key Poe, and the danger muted, but they would also, I believe, recognize a master. The writing reminded me of the Dr. Thorndyke novels of R. Austin Freeman from a generation before, and would be happily accessible to readers of the better Victorian popular fiction.

I knew I would respect the work, but Perrin was right, it's quite memorable.

Recommended.

[Rebecca (Medusa's Rock Garden) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never would I have believed that my first read of 2025 would be not only a classic, but a 98 year old classic by Lord Dunsany. 😱

At times the writing was stilted and the dialogue was choppy at best. But for the most part the prose in this was beautiful. If you like Tolkien, you'll probably enjoy this. And indeed, a lot of the descriptions in here had me thinking Tolkien was probably influenced by Dunsany. (Google says yes)

This next paragraph could be considered a spoiler, if not a super specific one.

My disappointment with the way The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen ended had me expecting that this would also end in a similarly disappointing way. It did not. The ending was actually everything my Pagan heart could desire.

I'm now very interested in reading more from Dunsany. Words I never expected to write in my life, and yet here we are.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pan seems to be able to do nothing more than ruffle the feathers of a stuffy vicar in this tale.
The sleepy village learns to adapt to the call of Pan with barely a ripple in the surface of its
placidity. This isn't Lord Dunsany's best work even if it's beautifully written.

[Harvey Dias · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this story a small-town English vicar struggles to get his parish on the straight-and-narrow as they return to pagan worship of Pan.

[JKR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Low four star or high three star book.

[william nilliam]

and they lived happily! ever!! after!!!

[Dan Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found it most interesting that, in the end, the vicar can only appeal to a sense of community rather than to the idea that his religion conforms to a metaphysical truth.