Felines and fairies

Illustration for ‘Blue Beard’ by Arthur Rackham (1933).

Of Cats and Elfins:
Short Tales and Fantasies,
including The Cat’s Cradle Book (1940)
by Sylvia Townsend Warner,
introduced by Greer Gilman, with notes by Kate Macdonald.
Handheld Press, 2020.

What he felt was more than a whim; it was an earnest desire, a mental craving somehow to recreate a bright image that Time had once timelessly given, and then by course of time effaced. — ‘Stay, Corydon, Thou Swain’.

This volume of short stories is a collection in two halves which may vary in theme but not so much in style. The first contains an essay by Sylvia Townsend Warner and some tales that weren’t part of her story compilation Kingdoms of Elfin, first published in 1977, the year before she died; the second part was published as The Cat’s Cradle Book in 1940 as a selection of fables purporting to be related by the worldwide community of cats.

Despite the gap in years and the seemingly different subjects the tales have much in common: they’re subtly satirical at times, often upend traditional tropes at their conclusions, and contain some beautiful nature writing while confirming the endless contradictions in human – and even elfin – nature. When the tales in The Cat’s Cradle Book have non-human characters they’re clearly anthropomorphised, whereas the occasional elfin in the first part can almost feel zoomorphised.

This anthology of fairy tales and fables comes over as both tantalisingly ephemeral yet solidly permanent, like parallel worlds that one catches glimpses of that must surely exist in some reality even as they fade away from view. From the author of the haunting Lolly Willowes one can hardly expect otherwise.

‘Cats have chosen to live among us, they have to reckon with us, analyse our motives, trace our weaknesses and peculiarities. The proper study of catkins is man.’

The sequence of feline fables resembles Aesop’s tales, and though somewhat expanded shorn of any moralistic mottos. The fictional William Farthing tells the author in the Introduction to The Cat’s Cradle Book that one of his pets was “an exquisite story-teller, in the purest, most classical tradition of narrative. It was as though she were dictating to Perrault.’ However the French storyteller didn’t shy away from moralising in his own fairytale retellings either, a feature thankfully absent here.

So, what tales have been collected here, selected by humans who – like William and his visitor – can “cat talk”? Drawing themes from Scottish ballads, myth, medieval beast fables and folk tales, the sixteen offerings throw in anachronisms, mixed cultural references, humour and personal tragedies. For example, we’re told a sickly child is also inclined to be intelligent, as though that might be surprising; meanwhile, Apollo Smintheus – the mouse-god – is troubled by a persistent human petitioner who complains about mice affecting his trade; the promoter of a fairground sideshow reaps the results of mistreating the one and only phoenix; the ballad of ‘The Twa Corbies’ becomes more complex and confusing when the protagonists are shown to be Odin’s garrulous ravens.

Some of the pieces naturally involve cats. The heir to the Castle of Carabas is long kept ignorant of the species and, we assume, the legend of Puss-in-Boots; a cat commiserates with a fellow traveller, an Englishman, about their both having “come to grief by loving astray”; and Djamileh, the daughter of Bluebeard, comes across a locked room, the door of which conceals a parchment in Sanskrit inscribed CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT. All the tales lead the reader down unexpected byways, often littered with non sequiturs, much as R L Stevenson’s Fables did in their way. Each is unique and – dare I say it? – purrfect.

The Elfin stories, which tend to be longer than the fables, are preceded by a short essay, ‘The Kingdom of Elfin’; first published in 1927 it assumes fairies are real and gives a brief account of instances cited by William Blake, the medieval poet Robert Wace and traditional lore. Then it’s on to four tales written in the 1970s before finishing with a final story from the 1930s, all with titles that promise mystery: Narrative of Events Preceding the Death of Queen Ermine; Queen Mousie; An Improbable Story; The Duke of Orkney’s Leonardo, and Stay, Corydon, Thou Swain.

Some are set in various Elfin kingdoms – Deuce in the Pennines, Elfhame in Scotland and Elfwick in Caithness – while others refer to Dreiviertelstein in Styria, Tishk in the Urals, the Northern Kingdoms of Thule and Blokula, and of course Broceliande in Brittany. Wherever and whenever the narratives are set the lives of Elfins often intersect with those of short-lived mortals, to whom they might appear in ordinary guise – or else winged and invisible. All are characterised, as with the feline fables, by their magical ability to meld the familiarity of everyday life with unforeseen weirdness that somehow makes sense.

Of Cats and Elfins also displays a delight in arts like painting and music and in wild nature: as Mr Mulready, a Somerset draper in the final Elfin story, believes, ‘Music has a different meaning, a different beauty, out of doors.’ But I’m attempting to avoid further details because these are tales that are best encountered fresh, without gauche spoilers by the likes of me.

It won’t hurt though to suggest they look forward to the uncanny fairytale retellings in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and the original stories in Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, collections that also hint at temptations, transgressions and transformations. Like music heard out of doors Of Cats and Elfins too is replete with different meanings and different beauties; these are tales likely to burrow into one’s subconscious, rather like the cats that slyly insinuate themselves onto your lap.

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#ReadingTheMeow.

The fourth of my 20 Books of Summer, it’s chosen for Mallika’s Reading the Meow, and as part of my Library of Brief Narratives.

Library of Brief Narratives 2020+

Some bittersweet news: Handheld Press has been publishing “forgotten fiction, lost authors, biographies, letters and memoirs since October 2017. After 48 books,” the firm informs us, “it’s time to bring this wild and exciting ride to an end. We’ll be publishing our last books in June and July 2024, and a year later we’ll pay the bills, send out the final royalties and close the accounts.” https://www.handheldpress.co.uk/