“There passed a child of four, a small girl on a footpath over the fields, going home in the evening to Erl. They looked at each other with round eyes. "Hullo," said the child. "Hullo, child of men," said the troll. . . . "What are you?" said the child. "A troll of Elfland," answered the troll. "So I thought," said the child. "Where are you going, child of men?" the troll asked. "To the houses," the child replied. "We don't want to go there," said the troll. "N-no," said the child. "Come to Elfland," the troll said. The child thought for a while. Other children had gone, and the elves always sent a changeling in their place, so that nobody quite missed them and nobody really knew. She thought awhile of the wonder and wildness of Elfland, and then of her own house. "N-no," said the child. "Why not?" said the troll. "Mother made a jam roll this morning," said the child. And she walked on gravely home. Had it not been for that chance jam roll she had gone to Elfland. "Jam!" said the troll contemptuously and thought of the tarns of Elfland, the great lily-leaves lying flat upon their solemn waters, the huge blue lilies towering into the elf-light above the green deep tarns: for jam this child had forsaken them!” ChildrenChoicesElfland Book:The King of Elfland's Daughter Source: The King of Elfland's Daughter
“And then he went in the evening up to the nursery and told the boy how his mother was gone for a while to Elfland, to her father's palace (which may only be told of in song). And, unheeding any words of Orion then, he held on with the brief tale that he had come to tell, and told how Elfland was gone. "But that cannot be," said Orion, "for I hear the horns of Elfland every day." "You can hear them?" Alveric said. And the boy replied, "I hear them blowing at evening.” LossEveningHornsElfland Book:The King of Elfland's Daughter Source: The King of Elfland's Daughter
“So he sat and listened to pigeons talking, till it seemed to him they were trying to lull the restlessness of Earth, and thought that they might by drowsy incantation be putting some spell against time, through which it could not come to harm their nests; for the power of time was not made clear to him yet and he knew not yet that nothing in our fields has the strength to hold out against time.” TimeElfland Book:The King of Elfland's Daughter Source: The King of Elfland's Daughter
“To those who may have wisely kept their fancies within the boundary of the fields we know it is difficult for me to tell of the land to which Alveric had come, so that in their minds they can see that plain with its scattered trees and far off the dark wood out of which the palace of Elfland lifted those glittering spires, and above them and beyond them that serene range of mountains whose pinnacles took no colour from any light we see. Yet it is for this very purpose that our fancies travel far, and if my reader through fault of mine fail to picture the peaks of Elfland my fancy had better have stayed in the fields we know. Know then that in Elfland are colours more deep than are in our fields, and the very air there glows with so deep a lucency that all things seen there have something of the look of our trees and flowers in June reflected in water. And the colour of Elfland, of which I despaired to tell, may yet be told, for we have hints of it here; the deep blue of the night in Summer just as the gloaming has gone, the pale blue of Venus flooding the evening with light, the deeps of lakes in the twilight, all these are hints of that colour. And while our sunflowers carefully turned to the sun, some forefather of the rhododendrons must have turned a little towards Elfland, so that some of that glory dwells with them to this day.” ColorDescriptionElfland Book:The King of Elfland's Daughter Source: The King of Elfland's Daughter
