The Kith of the Elf Folk

By: Lord Dunsany

Narrated by: Mike Vendetti

This is a happy, feel-good tale by Lord Dunsany aka Edward Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany. Read by award-winning narrator Mike Vendetti, the wild things take you into their world. "The wild things are somewhat human in appearance, only all brown of skin and barely two feet tall. Their ears are pointed like the squirrels, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious heights. They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes but at night they come up to dance. Each Wild Thing has over its head a Marsh light, which moves when the Wild Thing does, they have no souls and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf folk".

Public Domain (P)2015 Mike Vendetti

Sad Story with Good Descriptions

I loved the performance here and I loved the worldbuilding that went into the story, but I can't say I liked the characters very much, and I definitely didn't like the message. Basically "humans are incapable of seeing or desiring beauty unless it's shoved forcefully under their noses, and further don't care about the needs or desires of others." I loved the descriptions of the marsh land and colors and the music and the Wild Thing's longing for the ability to imagine paradise and worship God. The rest of the story (pretty much all of it) made me sad and vicariously frustrated for the Wild Thing.
#fantasy #outsider #industrial-age

The kith of the elf folk

I find this a mystical, haunting tale. The descriptions of the marsh and the factory are both good, giving a strong feeling to the lovely, natural world vs the industrial word. I don’t see why the people who found her sent her to that soulless city job. Her longing to be back in the natural word is understandable. But just because a woman interrupts a concert wouldn’t mean she had no soul. Where did her soul go? And since she had only a wild thing’s little handmade soul would she as a human, get to paradise where the wild thing had wanted to go. It’s a sad tale, but very beautiful.