life to Crockett. Gnomes cannot reproduce them-
selves normally, so they watch for miners who stray
away and doom themselves, using magic to trans-
form these unfortunates into members of their own
species. If fairies can steal babies, then gnomes can
steal adults, particularly those who were in any
case doomed otherwise to die. There are compen-
sations, for gnomes are immortal, but there is a
down side as well, since gnomes must remain for-
ever underground and hidden from humans.
There are lots of amusing tidbits in the story.
For example, the first emperor of the gnomes was
unaccountably Podrang the Third, whose descen-
dant is Podrang the Second. Most of the humor re-
sults from reversals. The gnomes bathe in mud,
and cheating in a fight is admirable rather than
dishonorable. Crockett is put to work mining an-
thracite, and before long he is involved in organiz-
ing the other gnomes into a union. Unfortunately,
his fellow strikers would rather fight than do al-
most anything, and even more unfortunately, Po-
drang is a magician who casts spells that turn his
enemies into a variety of different creatures.
Crockett plots to submit to a spell restoring his hu-
manity, but his plans go awry. He ends up in the
form of an even more repulsive creature.
This type of lightly humorous, implausible fan-
tasy was typical of the leading fantasy magazine of
the 1940s, Unknown.Henry KUTTNERwrote several
similar stories, probably with his wife, C. L. Moore,
as an uncredited collaborator, but this is his single
best and one of his most widely known tales.
“God Grante That She Lye Still”Lady
Cynthia Asquith(1942)
Cynthia Asquith, who was for a time secretary to
J. M. BARRIE, the author of PETER PAN,is best re-
membered for the anthologies of ghost stories she
edited as well as for some of her own short tales,
which were primarily ghost stories involving some
form of possession. This particular story is not
only an unusually impressive work but one of the
most effective and convincing stories of supernat-
ural possession ever written.
The narrator is Dr. John Stone, newly arrived
in the area. One of Stone’s patients is Margaret
Clewer, a beautiful young woman whose family has
lived in the same house for many generations.
Stone, who is interested in gravestone inscriptions,
visits the family cemetery and notices the phrase
from which the title is taken on the grave of one of
Margaret’s ancestors. The motivation for the epi-
graph puzzles him, but he dismisses it until much
later.
Stone is fascinated by Clewer, whose health is
not good, and eventually falls in love with her. She
has a psychological quirk that disturbs him, for she
believes herself to be without any real personality,
as though she were an empty vessel waiting to be
filled. Margaret is also drawn to the graveyard and
has chosen a bedroom that overlooks it. She com-
plains of dreams in which she has a vision of her
own face looking at her and eventually develops a
habit of sleepwalking. More incidents follow. Her
pet birds are killed mysteriously, and her loyal dog
no longer recognizes her. Stone finds her sleeping
in the graveyard one night, lying on the same grave
he had noticed earlier.
Eventually he discovers old documents that per-
tain to the dead woman that imply that she was evil
and wished to conquer death. Although he does not
believe in the supernatural, it is clear that Margaret’s
personality is, in fact, altered at times, as though two
different people were at war within her body. She has
arguments with herself during the night, her hand-
writing is inconsistent, and her personal habits begin
to change. Ultimately, Margaret repels the invader,
her own ancestor, but the struggle is too much for
her frail constitution and she dies. As the last of her
line, presumably this precludes any further attempt
by the dead woman to return to the world of the liv-
ing. There is very little melodrama in the story, and
the gradually escalating conflict is entirely psycholog-
ical and very effectively done.Godwin, Parke(1929– )
Parke Godwin began writing fiction during the
1970s, starting with a mystery story that had super-
natural overtones, Darker Places(1973), then writ-
ing science fiction short stories and a novel in that
field with Marvin Kaye. He started to turn to fan-
tasy in earnest in 1980 with Firelord,which retells
the story of King Arthur without most of the unre-
alistic trappings of the legend, describing him as a134 “God Grante That She Lye Still”