THE FAIRY
Although there are many types of fairy, this is the type that most people think of most immediately. Beautiful, winged, associated with flowers and summer she is as harmless and attractive as the bumble-bee. This image appears in Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream with Titania's fairy entourage, but really gained prevalence in Victorian times, when a fear of the Little People was fading, and city life separated people from the strange country occurences.
Fairyland, in which she lives, is somewhere apart, where times moves differently. For centuries there have been stories of people going into fairyland for one or two days, and coming back to find decades have passed. Time is the key to this picture, with dandelion clocks, broken clockwork, and a watch face on the left of the picture.
All images and text Copyright © 2003 Caroline Blackburn.