The Reverberatory: [Response to Heap's "Troll" essay in previous issue]

[page 8] Here's a footnote on your article "A Share for a Poor Old Troll," I was surprised, though I @shoudn't@ have been, when the "Anderson" you cited turned out to be Poul - he of course has described some noteworthy trolls. But my first thought when I encountered an Anderson in an article on trolls was Hans Christian -- several of this earlier one's stories refer to trolls, and spookily imaginative @cratures@ they are, too. These trolls look like ordinary humans from in front, but at the rear are seen to be open and hollow like masks, from head to foot. (Y'know, if Hans Christian Anderson had written in our time he'd never be thought of as exclusively a children' s author, but as the earlier Bradbury he is. Some of his grimmer fantasies would have fitted perfectly into _Weird Tales_ or _Unknown Worlds_.) Trolls are @Scandanavian@ in origin, and another author from that part of the world has made use of them. Ibsen celebrates trollish goings-on in _Peer Gynt_, and Grieg's familiar musical composition "In the Hall of The Mountain King" is a troll dance. A story I still remember fondly from my misspent youth is Oliver Beaupre Miller's _The Red Troll_. A great story about a red forest troll (no commie orc, but a charming character) who teaches the people of a medieval kingdom, where wood is the only known fuel, the use of coal. And this reminds me that George MacDonald's goblins (of _The Princess and The_) greatly resemble Tolkien's trolls. HAL LYNCH McBurney YMCA 215 W. 23rd St. New York 11, N.Y.