The Tents of the Arabs
Aug 2015 · Simon and Schuster
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16
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About this eBook
A crown should not be worn upon the head. A sceptre should not be carried in Kings' hands. But a crown should be wrought into a golden chain, and a sceptre driven stake-wise into the ground so that a King may be chained to it by the ankle. Then he would know that he might not stray away into the beautiful desert and might never see the palm trees by the wells. O Thalanna, Thalanna, how I hate this city with its narrow, narrow ways, and evening after evening drunken men playing skabash in the scandalous gambling house of that old scoundrel Skarmi. O that I might marry the child of some unkingly house that generation to generation had never known a city, and that we might ride from here down the long track through the desert, always we two alone till we came to the tents of the Arabs. And the crown—some foolish, greedy man should be given it to his sorrow. And all this may not be, for a King is yet a King.
About the author
Though during his lifetime the Irish nobleman Lord Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron Dunsany, was perhaps regarded as a minor talent, his somber short fantasies and novels had a significant impact on the development of fantasy and horror fiction. In real life, Dunsany was as interesting and versatile as anyone about whom he wrote. He was an African big-game hunter, a soldier in both the Boer War and World War I, and was wounded in the 1916 Irish Easter Rebellion. He was also the national chess champion of Ireland. Dunsany's first short story collection, The Gods of Pegana, was published in 1905 and was soon followed by other fantasy anthologies, including Time and the Gods (1906) and The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories (1908), among others. These stories are distinguished by their elegant, fairy tale settings and Dunsany's unique, macabre sense of humor. Dunsany's novels, such as The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924) and The Charwoman's Shadow (1926), are considered fantasy classics. Although Dunsany wrote prodigiously and with great versatility throughout his life, many regard his early, highly stylized short fiction to be his best work, and his most important.
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