"A Shop in Go-by Street" is a short story by Lord Dunsany that first appeared in his Tales of Three Hemispheres (John W. Luce, 1919). It is a sequel to Dunsany's story "Idle Days on the Yann," and has been cited as a key inspiration for H. P. Lovecraft's conception of Cthulhu.
Synopsis[]
The narrator from "Idle Days on the Yann" wants to return to the Yann to see his friends from the ship Bird of the River. But he has
forgotten the way to those little cottages on the edge of the fields we know whose upper windows, though dim with antique cobwebs, look out on the fields we know not and are the starting-point of all adventure in all the Lands of Dream.
So he goes to "the shop of a dreamer who lives not far from the Embankment in the City"; it is on a street "that has never been seen before; it is named Go-by Street and runs out of the Strand if you look very closely." At this shop, you must ask for something that the old man who runs it doesn't have, though he stocks many unlikely things. So he asks for "Abama and Pharpah, rivers of Damascus[1].... Two and a half yards of each, to be delivered to my flat."
When the old man admits he is out of these rivers, the dreamer asks the way to those little cottages the look out upon the fields we know not. The shopkeep takes him to "a dingy lumber-room full of idols," which he calls "the heaven of the gods who sleep." "All those," he explains, "that are not worshipped now are asleep." ""Then does Time not kill the gods?" the narrator asks, and is told, "No. But for three or four thousand years a god is worshipped and for three or four he sleeps."
Asked about those "that teach us of new gods," the old man says:
"They hear the old ones stirring in their sleep being about to wake, because the dawn is breaking and the priests crow. These are the happy prophets: unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while he sleeps still being deep in slumber, and prophesy and prophesy and no dawn comes.
The shopkeep reluctantly tells the narrator the way to the cottages: "You go out by the back door and turn to the right." From the back, the shop appears to be of an incredible age, with a thatched roof; it bears an ancient sign, "Licensed to sell weasels and jade earrings." He walks down a grassy street lined with similar houses until he comes to open fields and the cottages he seeks. Flowers rise up from these gardens as he watches and burst into purple bloom, singing softly; he asks about them of a "very old witch" who comes out of one of the cottages. "Hush! Hush!" she said, "I am putting the poets to bed. These flowers are their dreams." He finds they are "singing of my own childhood and of things that happened there."
He looks out the window to see the mountains of faëry, and "the old gap in the blue-grey hills...whence one sees the Lands of Dream." He leaves the witch "knitting a splendid cloak of gold and green for a king that had been dead a thousand years." (When he asks what use a cloak is for a dead king, the witch's old black cat retorts, "What a silly question.")
He sets off for the gap; when he arrives, he sees flashes of the golden dragons "that are the triumph of the goldsmiths of Sirdoo and were given life by the ritual incantations of the conjurer Amargrarn," and the "ivory palace of Singanee that mighty elephant-hunter." Later he sees the hunter going forth wit his "terrific spear...to avenge Perdóndaris" (a city destroyed by a colossal beast in "Idle Days on the Yann").
The dreamer looks upon the lands of Dream and sees in its mists the Hills of Hap and "the city of copper, old, deserted Bethmoora," as well as Utnar Véhi, Kyph, and Mandaroon--and "the wandering leagues of Yann," the river that is the object of his quest. He discerns the Hian Min mountains and the round Acroctian hills below them that shelter Durl and Duz, where the Bird of the River's sailors come from. He sees the woods through which one comes to the Yann to meet the ship, and hurries through them for fear of the beasts who live there.
He builds a hut to wait for the ship, eating "the meat that grows on the targar-tree" and listening to the tolulu-bird. After three days, he goes down to the river and finds the wreck of the Bird of the River, rotting and buried in the mud for centuries. He realizes that "while in Ireland and London two years had barely passed over my head, ages had gone over the region of Yann."
He goes back to the witch who lives between the elfin mountains and the fields we know. He asks her to tell him about her land.
"How much do you know?" she said. "Do you know that dreams are illusion?"
"Of course I do," I said. "Every one knows that."
"Oh no they don't," she said, "the mad don't know it."
"That is true," I said.
"And do you know," she said, "that Life is illusion?"
"Of course it is not," I said. "Life is real, Life is earnest----."
At that the witch and her cat (who had not moved from her old place by the hearth) burst into laughter.
Influence[]
Noting that Lovecraft reported reading Dunsany the day that he came up with the plot for "The Call of Cthulhu," Robert M. Price argues that it must have been "A Shop in Go-by Street" that he read:
Here is the origin of the Old Ones who sleep for thousands of years, and whose faithful priests listen for the sounds of their reawakening, of the Old One Cthulhu who speaks in dreams while yet he slumbers, who "is not dead."[2]
External Link[]
"A Shop at Go-by Street" full text at Wikisource
References[]
- ↑ Bible.com, 2 Kings 5:12.
- ↑ The Cthulhu Cycle, "The Other Name of Azathoth", by Robert M. Price (Chaosium, 1996).