“After Mana-Yood-Sushai ‘made the gods and Skarl’ Skarl made a drum and beat on it in order to lull his creator to sleep; he keeps drumming eternally, for ‘if he cease for an instant then Mana-Yood-Sushai will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more’.” Dunsany writes that: “Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they be dreams that arise in the mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is troubled by sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of Mana-Yood-Sushai, or who hath seen his drummer?”
First Publisher Elkin Mathews, 1905; Pegana Press, 1937
Appearance List Later editions: The Gods of Pegana with S. H. Sime’s photogravure plates (Pegana Press, 1911), The Gods of Pegana with Sime illustrations (1916), The Gods of Pegana (3rd ed., 1919), Beyond the Fields We Know (Ballantine, 1972) ed. Lin Carter.
Description “After Mana-Yood-Sushai ‘made the gods and Skarl’ Skarl made a drum and beat on it in order to lull his creator to sleep; he keeps drumming eternally, for ‘if he cease for an instant then Mana-Yood-Sushai will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more’.” Dunsany writes that: “Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they be dreams that arise in the mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is troubled by sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of Mana-Yood-Sushai, or who hath seen his drummer?”
