The X Factor

If any letter in the English language has the X Factor then it is X. It is used in all sorts of ways and can even be pronounced differently. It can be used on its own or as part of a word or even as part of mathematical equations.

For some reason when I saw the X in the subject my mind went back a few years to a girlfriend (let’s call her Ms X) who used to end her messages with xxxx or xxx or xx or x. No x meant I was in trouble.

But why would she have used the symbol as a kiss anyway? Well that goes back to the times when literacy was low and people who couldn’t write would sign documents with an ‘X’ instead of their name. When people signed with an X it wasn’t merely a mark; it was a symbol that carried the weight of an oath. To make it even more significant some people would kiss the X.

I suppose that the use of an X in a voting booth in an election follows on from that.

There doesn’t seem to be any agreement between linguists about when that oath was transferred to being a romantic gesture but my favourite dates back to 1878 when in Florence Montgomery's novel Seaforth, she describes letters ending with “the inevitable row of kisses; sometimes expressed by x x x x x, and sometimes by o o o o o.”

One explanation I came across several times is that X could simply be the shape of the letter — that it looks like a pair of puckered lips. I’m not going with that one.

Talking about old books reminds me (with great affection) of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Where can they find the gold? Where X marks the spot on the map left by Captain Billy Bones.

Luckily, as far as I know, there has never been an X rated film of Treasure Island.

If I’m wrong about that fact then please feel free to use an X (in red ink) to indicate my error.

I still remember the feeling in one particular problem, but not the question or answer, way back when I was a student and spending ages over solving the equation and the response from the Lecturer being a big red cross through it.

Whatever the problem was it would have included something like this:
2x - 5 = 17 or 2 x 4 = 8.
On graphs, the x-axis is the horizontal line on the bottom, while the y-axis is the vertical line on the left side.

One of the weirdest uses of X also relates to mathematics in a way and that is when the Romans used X as one of their numerals. Try thinking about CXVI times XXXII.

I mentioned that X is pronounced differently depending on its position in a word. Normally, it sounds like ks, like in ‘fox,’ ‘complex’ or ‘experience’. However, there are some words that begin with X, and in these cases it's pronounced like a Z as in xenon or xylophone.

Then, of course, there is the use of the X Factor in relation to that certain something that a person, place or thing has that separates them from the norm. 

Some of the above information is from the Engoo website.

The X Factor

you’ve got it
or you haven’t

I had it
for a couple of hours
on the 3rd June
1996

unfortunately
no one was there
to notice

Terry Quinn, his mark..

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Brambles

I had a conversation once with a dear friend about whether brambles and blackberries are different fruits. My friend sought to assure me they are - but I've done research for today's blog and it turns out they are alternative names for the same thing. The bramble/blackberry is Rubus fruticosus - to give its official Latin binomial.

Geological evidence suggests the bramble originated in North America some time in the Eocene age, approximately 34 million years ago, before spreading - as brambles do - to the rest of the world. (Note to self: to read up on the fascinating origins of plant species when I have time).

brambles (or blackberries)

The bramble is fast-growing and tenacious. One can almost see its spiny tendrils reaching out to find new rooting sites, to bind onto whatever else it happens to encounter on the way. I have some brambles in my back garden. The flowers are pretty and bees seem to love them. I manage to collect about a saucepan full of juicy blackberries each year before the birds help themselves,

When I was a child living in Peterborough in the early 1960s, my parents used to take us brambling on Saturday afternoons in late summer in the local Huntingdonshire countryside. It was very rural, lots of quiet country lanes, wide grass verges, with huge stretches of tall brambly thickets around the edges of arable fields. We would go armed with step-ladders, walking sticks and buckets plus a picnic tea and would pick loads of fruit in an afternoon. One time my mother fell off the step-ladder into the brambles. We were shocked, but she'd never laughed so much. Our father untangled her with no harm done, save a few scratches. We all looked forward to bramble jelly and blackberry and apple pies.

Such bramble thickets and hedges can still be found in rural areas, but they are nowhere as numerous as they used to be and the grass verges have disappeared as road-widening schemes were introduced.  Sadly there are fewer places to park, to pick and to picnic than there were sixty years ago. 

As a curious aside, there is a bird called a brambling, but we never saw one when we were out foraging for  blackberries . And its name has nothing to do with brambles, being derived from the old English 'bram' and 'lyng' meaning loud lungs, for it is a mellifluous finch, and very pretty too. 

brambling

You're getting two poems, you lucky people. How could I not share Seamus Heaney's fabulous piece on theme?

Blackberry-Picking

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

                                                                   Seamus Heaney

My own latest by contrast has nothing to do with brambles, but is written in reaction to what has been going on in the Middle East in recent weeks, with Trump's 'war of choice' against  Iranians who've lived their whole lives under a kind of religious tyranny. I've shaped it as a concrete poem. (I hope it retains its shape in your browser.)  

      Revenge Pawn

                 I am
              merely a  
            piece on this
           shell shocked, 

           pock marked
                board.

       My every move is
 constrained by convention.
   Trapped between oil and
       ideology, my lamp
        no longer burns,
          my heart no
         longer yearns.
          I have never
           truly found
      life. The light was
    elsewhere. So wrap me
 round in a suicide vest and
point me towards your pearly
king. I’ll willingly do the rest.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Bramble

So the question is:
What was established in Torquay, UK on the 24 February 1951 by 7 founding members Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom? The first President was Mr Bill Tarling from the UK, followed George Baker the next year, then by George Sieve of Switzerland, Pietro Grandi of Italy, and Kurt Sorensen of Denmark.

If you managed to get (guess) the International Bartenders Association (IBA) then well done and make yourself a Bramble.

I came across that when looking up what sort of fruit or plant a bramble is but most of the information that came up on Google related to the fact that ‘The Bramble’ was created in London, in 1984, by Dick Bradsell and apparently it’s the most famous cocktail ever. 

Dick Bradsell

At the time, Bradsell worked at a bar in Soho called Fred's Club, and he wanted to create a British cocktail. Memories of going blackberrying in his childhood on the Isle of Wight provided the inspiration for The Bramble. The name of the drink comes from the fact that blackberry bushes are called brambles.

Actually if it wasn’t about The Bramble then all the other sites were about other cocktails. (ok, there were a few about the fruit) but by then I had found the IBA website and was fascinated. Here is some information:

What we are
The IBA is a community of bartender associations engaging in sharing knowledge and innovations. We give our community equal opportunities for personal and career advancement. The IBA is a global non-profit organization of passionate individuals who cherish the traditions and heritage of our trade.

What we do
The IBA connects the beverage industry professionals together. We raise the high standards of service and bartending skills through our partnerships, Academy, resources and international competitions. These activities bring our diverse family of national associations together.

Our Mission
To connect, educate and inspire bartenders of the world.

Our Vision
To keep raising the standards and knowledge of bartenders’ internationally.

Our Core Values
Passion – Unity – Legacy

They have created an Academy to raise the bartenders' knowledge and to prepare both the new and established bartenders and prepare them for all aspects of the bar industry with different courses depending on needs and have created an all encompassing textbook to hand in hand with the courses or for students to learn on their own.

The website does actually give recipes for dozens of named cocktails. My favourite name is Last Word.

Nowadays, and to give an idea of how widespread the Association is, the President is from Macau and Vice Presidents are from Ecuador, Switzerland, Albania, Portugal and Belgium. And the registered office is in Singapore.

For the poem I’m going to use a recipe for The Bramble made by Dick Bradsell.

The Bramble

Ingredients

Serving: 1

2 ounces gin
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup (1:1, sugar:water)
1/2 ounce crème de mûre
Garnish: blackberries and lemon wheel

Directions
Add gin, lemon juice and simple syrup to a cocktail shaker.
Add ice and shake until chilled.
Strain over crushed ice into a rocks glass.
Drizzle crème de mûre over top, and garnish with blackberries and lemon wheel.

Thanks for reading. Sip slowly. Terry Q.

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Bramble

From a Railway Carriage

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

Robert Louis Stevenson, (1850 – 1894)

from A Child’s Garden of Verses.

 

If anyone knows how to get rid of rogue bramble, please tell me. Meanwhile, I’ll keep snipping it at ground level.

They will be back soon. Pale green thorny stalks as thick as rhubarb will conquer the concrete plinth at the base of the fence panels to invade my garden. I call it a garden, but it is just a big yard with a couple of raised beds and a few plant pots. It is enough for me to look after and the spring flowers are pretty at the moment. I can sit out to read on a nice day, so it will do, apart from the horrid bramble.

A bramble bush – Rubus fruticosus – must be indestructible. I’ve done all sorts of things, but the roots are deep, beneath the fencing, which will be staying put.

It began next door, many years ago. The two ladies, mother and daughter, had a beautiful back garden. Borders were stuffed with roses and every bedding plant in summer. They were always out there, tending to the blooms and sweeping the path. At the far end, where some shrubs grew taller than the fence to offer privacy from the alley, the bramble crept in and took root. The ladies made it welcome and enjoyed the blackberries. One would go out with a dish to collect the ripe ones, but the dish returned indoors empty. The harvest eaten as fast as it was picked. Time marched on. The ladies had gone. The house was sold to property developers. The original building was ruined in the interests of modernising, but that’s another story. That beautiful, lovingly cared for garden was dug up and disposed of, replaced by stone chips. One thing survived.

Next door is occupied. The back garden is ‘easy care’, like mine, but they don’t have any plants. Not even bramble.

Two poems, one from Robert Louis Stevenson, a favourite from childhood, and Sylvia Plath, a recent interest.

  

Blackberrying

 

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,

Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,

A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea

Somewhere at the end of it, heaving.

Blackberries

Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes

Ebon in the hedges, fat

With blue-red juices.

These they squander on my fingers.

I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.

They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

 

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks –

Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.

Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.

I do not think the sea will appear at all.

The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.

I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,

Hanging their blue-green bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.

The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.

One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

 

The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them.

A last hook brings me

To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space

Of white and pewter lights, and din like silversmiths

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

 

Sylvia Plath  (1932 – 1963)

 

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Dismembering Enjambment

Prejamble.

From the French enjamber, innit. Literally means to encroach or straddle (the lines) - see helpful illustration below, but don't try this on your local railway tracks as the results are not pleasant. It's also worth knowing that jambe is the French word for leg.

enjambment personified - sense the tension

How and why it works. 

As a poetic device, it's well famous. When reading a poem with an enjambed (rather than an end-stopped) line, the sense of that line of verse is not self-contained, meaning the syntax is not complete and the meaning runs over into the following line without punctuation, thus giving rise to a tension that is only resolved by the rejet, (more French, dudes), the word or phrase on the subsequent line that completes the syntax.

Dismembering Enjambment.

If that's not clear, let me break it down for you, with reference to the illustration above. The width of rails in Canada, also known as the track gauge, is  4 ft  8 1⁄2 in (or 1.435 metres). If a person is taller than that, say 6ft (or 1.829 metres) and is tied to the rails in the path of an oncoming locomotive, his head and his lower legs enjamb the lines and will get chopped off by the passing train. That will  leave a neat 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in body section, the standard width of the lines, plus two or three other separated body parts (head and legs) further down the track. The true identity of the poet (did I not mention that bit? someone couldn't abide his rhymes or so I guess), will only be resolved when all the bits are taken in conjunction, jammed together without punctuation. 

A very short history.

Homer was doing it 2,500 years ago - even before French was a thing. Clever geezer, that one. Some of the Biblical dudes followed suit, though that's probably gained in translation during Stuart times. Those clever Metaphysicals loved it. And Shakespeare, the GOAT, was well into his enjambments, wasn't he. Take his words for it, not mine.

Hamlet by the GOAT, performed by the RSC at Blackpool Grand Theatre

We went to see Hamlet, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Blackpool Grand Theatre earlier this evening, and it was brilliant. Best play of all time. I studied it for A-level English and at university. It's a good job Blackpool FC managed a win this afternoon, because I would have struggled with two tragedies in one day.

Anyway, here's one of Hamlet's soliloquys. It's from Act IV scene iv and it's full of enjambment...

How all occasions do inform against me

And spur my dull revenge! What is a man

If his chief good and market of his time

Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

Sure he that made us with such large discourse

Looking before and after gave us not

That capability and god-like reason

To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be

Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple

Of thinking too precisely on th'event -

A thought which quartered hath but one part 

Wisdom and ever three parts coward - I do not know

Why yet I live to say "This thing's to do",

Sith I have cause and will and strength and means

To do't...Examples gross as earth exhort me.

Witness this army of such mass and charge

Led by a delicate and tender prince

Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed

Makes mouths at the invisible event,

Exposing what is mortal and unsure 

To all that fortune, death and danger dare

Even for an eggshell... Rightly to be great

Is not to stir without great argument

But greatly to find quarrel in a straw

When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,

That have a father killed, a mother stained,

Excitements of my reason and my blood

And let all sleep? while to my shame I see

The imminent death of twenty thousand men

That for a fantasy and trick of fame

Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot

Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause

Which is not tomb enough and continent

to hide the slain? O, from this time forth

My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth.

            

Thanks for reading. Mind how you go, S ;-)

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Lancashire Dead Good Poets' April Open Mic Night

Our April online open mic night follows hot on the heels of April Fools' Day.

Cap and bells optional and comic theme not compulsory. Come and do your thing.

Steve ;-)

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Enjambment

I was surprised when looking into the history of enjambment to discover that its use went back much further than I had expected. I was getting prepared for a bit of a rant about contemporary poets cutting lines and rolling them over to the start of the next line for no apparent reason. However it seems, for instance, that Homer used the technique and it is used in the 32nd Psalm of the Hebrew Bible.

I’d better explain what the technique is before going any further:

‘Enjambment is when a sentence or phrase spans over more than one line of poetry. Because of this, a thought or idea carries on from one line to the next without a pause or punctuation mark at the end of the line’.

And thanks to Kassiani Nikolopoulou at QuillBot for that simple but clear definition. So many of the other definitions I looked at included words like syntax or couplets which can mean that someone then has to go and look up their meanings.

After finding that definition I was going to go on to my original idea but got stopped in my tracks by references to scholars such as Goswin König and A. C. Bradley who have estimated approximate dates of undated works of Shakespeare by studying the frequency of enjambment. How on earth does that work?

An example quoted is this from Romeo and Juliet from around 1595:

A glooming peace this morning with it brings.
The sun for sorrow will not show his head.
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things.
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punishèd.

Each line is complete in itself and the argument goes that this is an example of his early works.

Then there are these lines from The Winter's Tale, from about 1611, which use enjambment comprehensively:

I am not prone to weeping, as our sex
Commonly are; the want of which vain dew
Perchance shall dry your pities; but I have
That honourable grief lodged here which burns
Worse than tears drown.

The point is that the reader's eye is forced to go on to the next sentence. It can also make the reader feel uncomfortable or the poem feel like ‘flow-of-thought’ with a sensation of urgency or disorder. It is said that this is a measure of Shakespeare’s development as a writer.

I should mention that the use of computer technology has confirmed this analysis. And how does that work? I got this from the AI overview to the question ‘How Computer-Aided Analysis Works’.

Stylometry & Machine Learning: Scholars use machine-learning algorithms to "train" a computer on a known, chronologically arranged corpus of Shakespeare's work (e.g., training on Coriolanus and The Tempest to analyse Henry VIII).

Quantifying Enjambment: Computers allow for rapid, precise counting of enjambed lines, pause patterns, and "weak" endings (endings that cannot pause) across thousands of lines, which would be labour-intensive to do manually.

Pause Patterns: Analysis shows that the distribution of pauses within iambic pentameter lines serves as a reliable chronological marker, allowing computers to place plays in a chronological sequence that largely matches the established scholarly consensus.

I found confirmation of the points in articles such as in MIT Technology Review.

But instead of a play let’s choose a sonnet.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
  If this be error and upon me proved,
  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

                                                      William Shakespeare

                         

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Illustrating Fairies

Two words: Arthur Rackham. He was probably the pre-eminent illustrator of children's books in Edwardian and Georgian England, during the golden age of British book illustration. His instantly recognisable pen-and-ink with watercolour fantasy artwork was reproduced in glossy plates in a host of the most popular titles of the era. 

The quintet of 'Rip van Winkle ' (1905), 'Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens ' (1906), 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ' (1907), 'A Midsummer Night's Dream ' (1908) and 'Gulliver's Travels ' (1909) got Rackham's illustrious career off to a flying start, no puns intended, a fabulous streak which continued right through to 'The Wind in the Willows ', which set of illustrations he actually completed in 1939 just before his death, though the book didn't get published until 1950, because of wartime paper rationing. 

detail from 'The Serpentine' in Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens, Arthur Rackham, 1906

Rackham's illustrations for Kenneth Graham's 'Wind in the Willows ' was my introduction to his work, when I was given a copy for my seventh birthday. The 'Peter Pan...' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream ' volumes followed.

Rackham was born in Vauxhall, London in 1867, one of twelve children. (Just imagine that!) Aged seventeen, he got a job as an insurance clerk while also studying part time at Lambeth School of Art. Within a few years he had changed jobs and was working for a Westminster newspaper as a reporter and illustrator. As his skill as an artist developed, so did demands for his somewhat gothic fantasy artwork. By the turn of the century, when his illustrations graced an edition of 'Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm ', his reputation was firmly established. He was able to buy his own studio property in a gated artists' community in Belsize Park (one such recently sold for £7 million) and he married his neighbour, the Irish-born portrait painter Edyth Starkie.

His fanciful depictions of fairy folk in particular seem to have seized the public imagination, both children and adults alike, and in addition to those titles already mentioned (and as illustrated above and below) Rackham also accepted commissions to produce colour plates and black and white drawings for 'The Allies' Fairy Book ' (1916), 'English Fairy Tales ' (1918), 'Irish Fairy Tales ' (1920), 'The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Anderson ' (1932), Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market  ' (1933) and his own 'The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book ' (1933). He must have drawn and painted hundreds of fairy scenes.

detail from 'Titania' in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Arthur Rackham, 1908

Many children wrote to him via the publishers after reading books with his illustrations in. They were delighted by his work and wanted to express their appreciation or ask him questions and he always responded courteously to their letters and queries.

Recently, some Freudian analyses have remarked that his male fairy folk (including pixies, goblins and their like) are often swarthy, even ugly, quite often small of stature and usually dressed in quasi-medieval attire, whereas his female fairies are slender and graceful nymphs wearing diaphanous robes or sometimes nothing at all. They seek to destroy the magic of innocence by suggesting something improper in Rackham's depictions of female fairy folk, almost as if they were a form of child pornography. But his own daughter Barbara was his model for many of them, and by all accounts she was his best friend and keenest critic, so I think we should just accept that he genuinely liked children, and liked illustrating the classics for them. He is after all on record as saying "I firmly believe in the greatest stimulating and educative power of imaginative, fantastic, and playful pictures and writings for children in their most impressionable years".

It worked for me. By the by, my very first acting part (aged eleven) was as Mustardseed, one of the fairies in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream '.

There's no poem this week. I've just got back from a long day-trip to Cardiff to see Blackpool play (up at 4.30am, home by 9.30pm). It was no fairy tale, but at least we secured a point in a very watchable 0-0 draw in our attempt to avoid relegation. Keep believing, Seasiders.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Fairies

By way of YouTube I’ve just had a look at Cottingley Beck as it still flows over rocks and is overshadowed by trees. Back in 1917 it was the favourite spot of two cousins, who regularly got into trouble for returning home wet and untidy after playing in and around the stream. Most kids would make some sort of excuse but the one made by 9 year old Frances Griffiths and her cousin 16 year old Elsie Wright was an absolute belter.

Cottingley Beck

When told off they said they went there ‘to see the fairies’. I’d loved to have seen the expressions on the faces of the families. I think I may have been quite impressed by such a tale. Anyway, Elsie borrowed her father’s camera and went in search of proof. It didn’t take long.

Elsie’s father Arthur was a keen amateur photographer with his own darkroom and all the equipment required to develop the image which shows Frances in front of several winged fairy figures. Elsie was interested in photography with a talent for art and experience in retouching photographs. Arthur Wright was suspicious. Even when the girls came back months later with a plate showing Elsie holding out her hand to a small winged figure, Arthur was unconvinced. He knew the girls had been up to something, he just wasn’t sure how they’d done it.

the Cottingley Fairies (i) 1917

Elsie’s mother Polly took the photographs along to a meeting of the Theosophical Society in nearby Bradford and the images appear to have caught the imagination and the enthusiasm of the society’s supporters, and of one of its leading members, Edward Gardner. The photographs were examined by photographic expert Harold Snelling, who confirmed them as authentic images of ‘what was in front of the camera’, a smart move. Gardner used the images in his lectures. Copies appeared in a spiritualist magazine where they caught the eye of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle, a believer in spiritualism himself. He was about to write a piece on fairies for the Christmas edition of the Strand magazine, and asked Arthur and Elsie for permission to use the images.

The Strand Magazine, March 1921

It seems incredible now to think that such a person would be taken in by such a trick because the Cottingley fairies were fakes, probably created by Elsie and staged and photographed by both girls. They had been copied from images in “Princess Mary’s Gift Book”, published in 1914, and then had wings added to them. Three more fairy images were taken, the final one, “Fairies and their Sunbath”, in 1920.

Unbelievably, a debate on the authenticity of the Cottingley fairies continued until well into the 1960s. However, they were not entirely debunked until the 1980s, when Geoffrey Crawley, the editor of the ‘British Journal of Photography’, undertook a major investigation, concluding they were fakes. Extraordinary.

the Cottingley Fairies (ii) 1917

Elsie actually admitted to the trick in 1983. The cousins themselves were astonished at how readily people like Conan-Doyle had accepted the images. Perhaps not wholly wanting to relinquish the story, Frances maintained all her life that “Fairies and their Sunbath”, the fifth and last image, showed real fairies, not fakes.

Some of the information above is from Miriam Bibby (Historic UK) and from Meg Warlow (National Science and Media Museum).

As for a poem to suit the theme how could it not be this:

Fairies

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead --
I do so hope they've really come to stay.
There's a little wood, with moss in it and beetles,
And a little stream that quietly runs through;
You wouldn't think they'd dare to come merrymaking there--
     Well, they do.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
They often have a dance on summer nights;
The butterflies and bees make a lovely little breeze,
And the rabbits stand about and hold the lights.
Did you know that they could sit upon the moonbeams
And pick a little star to make a fan,
And dance away up there in the middle of the air?
     Well, they can.

There are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
You cannot think how beautiful they are;
They all stand up and sing when the Fairy Queen and King
Come gently floating down upon their car.
The King is very proud and very handsome;

The Queen--now you can guess who that could be
(She's a little girl all day, but at night she steals away)?
     Well -- it's Me!

                            Rose Fyleman, Punch Magazine, May 1917

            

Thanks for reading, Terry Q,

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Fairies - Tinker Bell v Titania

Long before I’d ever heard of Shakespeare, I was introduced to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ through excerpts in story board style in an annual for girls. I was only about eight and thought the illustrations peculiar – who would go about wearing a donkey’s head? That was just one oddity. I wish I still had that book and I wish I knew the proper title. It contained a wealth of information and subjects more interesting at the time, than ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. I did like the fairies, though.

I’m not alone. My sister-in-law collects all manner of fairies made in various materials. Some live outside, some indoors. I think Tinker Bell was in charge, certainly in the dining-room, until I gave my sister-in-law a special gift. At the time, I was still able to do cross stitch and it was usually big projects that would take forever and a day. When I saw a pattern for Titania, I was compelled to make her. I collected everything she needed and couldn’t wait to start. It was a learning experience, too. I hadn’t included sequins or seed beads on anything I’d done before, so I was excited to see those take shape in enhancing Titania. Another new thing, I was working on linen instead of familiar aida. It took many hours to complete and I enjoyed every minute. The end result was stunning. This photo is all I have and it doesn’t do it justice. Titania lives in Scotland with my sister-in-law, pride of place on a wall where she is loved and admired. As Queen of the Fairies, she is in charge, pushing Tinker Bell into second place.

Fairies live at the bottom of my garden and I wish they would tidy it up. When my children, and later on, grandchildren came along, I would send them outside to see if they could find any. I would tell them that the fairies sometimes disguised themselves as pixies or even squirrels, so look out for monkey nuts. I don’t think they believed me.

A fairy they definitely believed in, or didn’t dare deny in case they missed out, was Peggy, the Tooth Fairy. Not only did Peggy leave a generous reward under the pillow, but also a letter of thanks for a perfect, well-cared for tooth.

My chosen poem,

Fairy Song

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen;
Newts and blindworms, do no wrong;
Come not near our Fairy Queen.

Philomel with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; ulla, lulla, lullaby.
Never harm nor spell nor charm
Come our lovely lady nigh,
So good night, with lullaby.

Weaving spiders come not here;
Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence;
Beetles black, approach not near;
Worm nor snail do no offence.

Philomel with melody,
Sing in our sweet lullaby;
Lulla, lulla, lullaby; ulla, lulla, lullaby.
Never harm nor spell nor charm
Come our lovely lady nigh,
So good night, with lullaby.

                             William Shakespeare 1564 – 1616

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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