Sir Orfeo as being a parallel dimension to the everyday world rather than the Land of the Dead as in the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The ability to move between one world and the other distinguishes the tale as told in its various British versions such as "Sir Orfeo" and the Shetland ballad "King Orfeo" where the captors are envisaged as inhabitants of a parallel fairy domain rather than as the infernal region of the Dead ruled over by Hades as in the Greek myth. Katharine Briggs sees the tale as related in British folk narratives as being equally influenced
The Lyre of Orpheus (novel) themselves in Toronto to monitor and record the production of the opera from start to finish. As often happens in Davies' novels, all is not simple; for example, the ghost of Hoffman (ETAH), trapped in Limbo as a result of the unsatisfactory state of his artistic work, attends and comments on the ongoing proceedings. Nor is all peaceful among the characters, as they react to Powell's seduction of Maria Cornish, Dahl-Soot's seduction of Schnak, and the inevitable tensions created by the effort to mount an operatic production. The Lyre of Orpheus (novel) The Lyre of Orpheus, first published by Macmillan