Madeleine Rose Dobson

Early last year, I decided to delve into writing poetry. I was keen to experiment with different modes of creative writing and found myself growing inspired to explore poetic works.

As I was mulling over what to write, I found myself flipping through my collection of children’s literature, which includes many poems and nursery rhymes. In particular, a lot of those works focus on lore relating to fairy-folk. It was a thrill to re-read poems that I hadn’t looked at in years, and to re-immerse myself in such evocative imaginings of mysterious – and often monstrous – little creatures.

The monstrosity of fairy-folk soon became my point of focus, which was perfect timing, as I was hoping to submit some creative works to Limina for their special edition with the theme of ‘Monsters’. The eerie elements of the poems that I was reading seemed so resonant with that theme. Another prevailing pattern was that the poems frequently dealt with children’s experiences with fairy-folk and fairy dwellings; often, these experiences were fraught with danger and quite frightening for the children involved.

As I continued reading, reflecting, and wondering, it struck me that most of the works I had looked at placed emphasis on the fairy-folk themselves, and the experience that the child is subjected to. These poems are often written from a point of view that doesn’t belong to the child in question; often, it is the poet who serves as the narrator and who frames the narrative through an adult lens.

It was “The Fairies” by William Allingham that really ensnared me. The notion of a child being lost for such a prolonged period and returning to an unfamiliar world, bereft of their kin, is chilling to consider and really stuck under my skin.

They took her lightly back
Between the night and morrow
They thought that she was fast asleep
But she was dead with sorrow

Excerpt from “The Fairies” by William Allingham

These themes are apparent in many works about fairies and other fairy-folk; for example, in “Fairy Story”, Stevie Smith explores the experience of a child lost to the fairy realm, who returns to a similar bereavement as the child depicted in ‘The Fairies’:

I went into the wood one day
And there I walked and lost my way
When it was so dark I could not see
A little creature came to me
He said if I would sing a song
The time would not be very long
But first I must let him hold my hand tight
Or else the wood would give me a fright
I sang a song, he let me go
But now I am home again there is nobody I know.

“Fairy Story” by Stevie Smith

The same sense of peril shines through in the following piece from F. Y. Cory:

R is for ‘ring’
Where the fairies play
There is danger here
So keep away

Excerpt from ‘The Fairy Alphabet of F. Y. Cory”

What I love about these poems and others of their ilk is the pure horror of the experience. While often expressed in subtle, delicate terms, there is a pervasive sense of dread apparent. The fairies depicted may be playful, musical, and gleeful, but there is more to them than mere mischief. There is a menacing quality and a monstrosity that lingers between the lines of each of these poems, which warn of the dangers and the costs of crossing into the fairy realm and engaging with fairy-folk.

When I was reading “The Fairies“, it struck me that the dread conjured is very much centred on the reader’s understanding of what has happened and the implications of these happenings. We are left to process and grieve the time this child has lost, and along with it, her connections, her kin, and most likely, her sense of belonging within what was once her world. I found this poem immensely moving and thought-provoking, especially in terms of the child and what this might have meant to her. I was similarly moved by “Fairy Story”, but it was “The Fairies” and the character of Bridget that really captured my attention.

We don’t learn much about Bridget; predominantly, the poem speaks to what is done to her, rather than who she is. Most of what we know comes fleetingly: we know Bridget is (or was) a child as she is referred to as “little Bridget”; we learn that she dies of a broken heart after losing time and her loved ones. The verse that focuses on Bridget steps us through her journey swiftly: she is stolen, she returns somehow, she realises that she has lost time and her people, she dies, and then she becomes a possession of the fairies. She exists as an object both in their realm and their clutches, and in the poem itself. Here, her reduction to mere possession is chilling to consider:

They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake
On a bed of flag-leaves
Watching till she wake

Excerpt from “The Fairies” by William Allingham

In crafting “Little Bridget”, I wanted to illuminate what this experience was like from a “child’s-eye” view. I was especially interested in walking through the kinds of emotions that this might invoke for a child, and I wanted the piece to speak to the complexity of children and childhood.

What emerged in negotiating Bridget’s experience was a journey through fear and grief, where there are conflicting concepts apparent in how Bridget navigates the experience. There are depictions of vulnerability and strength. She attempts to reclaim agency in fleeing from the fairies, only to be toppled by the realisation of what she has lost:

I picked myself up and carried on;
I whispered a quick prayer
Then on I went, on and on, shiv’ring in the nighttime air
To a house no longer a home
To a bedroom stripped bare
Around the ruins I did roam
But nobody was there

As well as wanting to give a genuine sense of voice and perspective to Bridget, I ended up mulling over the ways in which children are often overlooked, ignored, and silenced. That Bridget is voicing her anguish but is not being taken seriously is far from a unique experience. In the same vein, Bridget’s experience is not meaningfully understood by the fairies. This begins with the emotional and psychological harm she experiences and continues with her death:

I sleep beneath the water now
Where it is always cold
Still able to see somehow
And like my mother foretold
The fairies keep watch from up above, eyes aglint like gold
They whisper lullabies; when I don’t respond they yell
They bellow rhymes across the divide; they keep me in their hold
And though there are no flames, no devils, it is a kind of hell

To craft a poem around Bridget’s experience was an important moment of reflection for me. Having devoted much of my career to focusing on children’s rights and the significance of children’s voices, I have long been conscious of the value of considering the world through a “child’s-eye view”. I feel very strongly that this ought to be a sustained focus for all adults, and especially those of us who care for and/or work with children. Reflecting on how we treat children ought to include consideration as to how we conceptualise childhood, how we think about children, and how we relate to them. Every child deserves the chance to express themselves and to speak to who they are and how they live in our world. This is something that I intend to continue devoting time to in my academic career and through my creative writing.

I thoroughly enjoyed working on this poem, especially in terms of the creative challenge of re-crafting the worlds that Bridget moves between. It was fascinating to experiment with the wording and the rhyme scheme and to get to play with language, especially since I wanted the poem to be playful and lively in parts and harrowing in how it captured what Bridget goes through. I hope you might take time to read it – to share my work brings me alive in so many wonderful ways, and to share this poem is a true joy.

“Little Bridget” was published in Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies in December 2023. Other creative works by Madeleine that were featured in Volume 28.2 of Limina include “With Consequence” and “All the Decay Below”.