A century of children's books

by Florence V. Barry

Of the fairy world revealed in “Thomas Rymer”, the ghostly suggestion of “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” there is no trace till the close of the century. The true ballads of Elfland are more song than story, and rise by suggestion above the simplicity of fairy tales:

“O they rade on and farther on,

And they waded rivers abune the knee

And they saw neither sun nor moon,

But they heard the roaring of the sea.”

The breath of enchantment is rare in English ballads. There is nothing in print before Scott’s Minstrelsy like the magic of these lines; but Percy reprinted a sixteenth century ballad, “The Mad-Merry Prankes of Robbin Goodfellow” which Puck himself might have sung:

“From Oberon in Fairyland

The King of ghosts and shadows there,

Mad Robbin I at his command

Am sent to view the night-sports here.