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Eleanor Farjeon
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664613424
Table of Contents
MARTIN PIPPIN IN THE APPLE-ORCHARD
PROUD ROSALIND AND THE HART-ROYAL
FOREWORD
I have been asked to introduce Miss Farjeon to the American public, and although I believe that introductions of this kind often do more harm than good, I have consented in this case because the instance is rare enough to justify an exception. If Miss Farjeon had been a promising young novelist either of the realistic or the romantic school, I should not have dared to express an opinion on her work, even if I had believed that she had greater gifts than the ninety-nine other promising young novelists who appear in the course of each decade. But she has a far rarer gift than any of those that go to the making of a successful novelist. She is one of the few who can conceive and tell a fairy-tale; the only one to my knowledge—with the just possible exceptions of James Stephens and Walter de la Mare—in my own generation. She has, in fact, the true gift of fancy. It has already been displayed in her verse—a form in which it is far commoner than in prose—but Martin Pippin is her first book in this kind.
I am afraid to say too much about it for fear of prejudicing both the reviewers and the general public. My taste may not be theirs and in this matter there is no opportunity for argument. Let me, therefore, do no more than tell the story of how the manuscript affected me. I was a little overworked. I had been reading a great number of manuscripts in the preceding weeks, and the mere sight of typescript was a burden to me. But before I had read five pages of Martin Pippin, I had forgotten that it was a manuscript submitted for my judgment. I had forgotten who I was and where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight, and humor. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world, until all too soon my reading was done.
My most earnest wish is that there may be many minds and imaginations among the American people who will be able to share that pleasure with me. For every one who finds delight in this book I can claim as a kindred spirit.
J. D. Beresford.
INTRODUCTION
In Adversane in Sussex they still sing the song of The Spring-Green Lady; any fine evening, in the streets or in the meadows, you may come upon a band of children playing the old game that is their heritage, though few of them know its origin, or even that it had one. It is to them as the daisies in the grass and the stars in the sky. Of these things, and such as these, they ask no questions. But there you will still find one child who takes the part of the Emperor's Daughter, and another who is the Wandering Singer, and the remaining group (there should be no more than six in it) becomes the Spring-Green Lady, the Rose-White Lady, the Apple-Gold Lady, of the three parts of the game. Often there are more than six in the group, for the true number of the damsels who guarded their fellow in her prison is as forgotten as their names: Joscelyn, Jane and Jennifer, Jessica, Joyce and Joan. Forgotten, too, the name of Gillian, the lovely captive. And the Wandering Singer is to them but the Wandering Singer, not Martin Pippin the Minstrel. Worse and worse, he is even presumed to be the captive's sweetheart, who wheedles the flower, the ring, and the prison-key out of the strict virgins for his own purposes, and flies with her at last in his shallop across the sea, to live with her happily ever after. But this is a fallacy. Martin Pippin never wheedled anything out of anybody for his own purposes—in fact, he had none of his own. On this adventure he was about the business of young Robin Rue. There are further discrepancies; for the Emperor's Daughter was not an emperor's daughter, but a farmer's; nor was the Sea the sea, but a duckpond; nor—
But let us begin with the children's version, as they sing and dance it on summer days and evenings in Adversane.
THE SINGING-GAME OF "THE SPRING-GREEN LADY"
(The Emperor's