[In the following review of In the Land of Youth, Rhys discusses Stephens's conception of the World's Fable.]

One uses the word “Celtic” for want of a better, writing in a Dutch train where languages and races are confused in the mid-Europa perspective. Mr. Stephens is a past-master of the Irish illusion put into amenable English; and he has full opportunity in this new book, In the Land of Youth. …

[T]he words fairly dance to the Irish pipe of James Stephens, as they did in his Crock of Gold or Demi-Gods; where the humour chases the imagination and a touch of irony lies in wait to relieve the strain of sentiment. When he tells of the Feast of Samhain (pronounced Sow'in) and All-Hallows E'en, or the Feast of Lugnasa, and confuses by art-magic the planes of real fact and faerie, we are completely in his power. We have learnt the trick of his dialect:

“Is it there, my soul?” said the blind man testily.

“It is!”

“Very well, let us get out of this, for my back is broken, so it is. Ah, it's hard to be dark, it's hard to be dark.”

The last phrase becomes a refrain in the prose setting, a prose that often turns lyrical in the neo-Celtic fantasy invented by this Irish necromancer. The Land of Youth, Tirna n'Og, has supplied him with a perfect theme for his new fairy tale; a World's Fable, one of those themes that haunt us as Alice la Belle haunted Alisander:

“I dream of her,” said Alisander,
“Dream of her night and day.”