Reviews

The Blessing of Pan by Lord Dunsany

kerry_handscomb's review against another edition

inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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?

medusasrockgarden's review against another edition

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No

4.0

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.

dragonantlers's review

mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

bookscatsandjazz's review against another edition

5.0

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

dancarey_404's review against another edition

3.0

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.