Violet Brunton - "Green Magic" (1928) [Spirit of the Ages Collection]

Green Magic (1928) is a collection of traditional fairy and folk tales edited by Florence Roma Muir Wilson who was known

by the literary pseudonym of Romer Wilson. Those tales include: "Puss in Boots"; "Fortunatus and the Wishing Cap";

"The Round Castle of the Red Sea"; "The Wolf's Bride"; "The Musicians of Bremen"; "Rapunzel"; "The Shirt Collar";

"The Ut-Röst Cormorants"; "The Bridal March"; "The Nightingale"; "The Lake Princess"; "Ali Baba"; "The Man Who

Understood Animals' Conversations"; "The Brotherless Girl"; "The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise"; "Foolish John";

"The Golden Apple-Tree and the Nine Peahens"; "Stan Bolovan"; "The Golden Twins"; "Perseus"; "The Merry Dun of Dover";

Wilson's Introduction to Green Magic makes wonderful reading - particularly in respect of her lovely summary of

To accompany Wilson's compilation, Violet Brunton prepared a generous suite of colour and monotone illustrations - the

major colour and monotone illustrations alone number 58, with many more additional illustrations to introduce various

When presented on Greeting Cards, these images are prepared as tipped-in plates - in hommage to the hand-crafted approach

typical of prestige illustrated publications produced in the early decades of the 20th Century. Each card is hand-finished and

the images are presented on Ivory card stock with an accompanying envelope. The rear of each card carries information

about Violet Brunton, this wonderful suite and the profiled illustration - we have left the interior of the cards blank so that

Should you wish to order a Reproduction Print of one or more of these images, we have provided some options below.

Each of these large format prints is also accompanied by information about Violet Brunton, this suite and the profiled

To purchase, simply click on the appropriate "Add to Cart" button and you will be taken through to our Shopping Cart

secured through PayPal. Multiple purchases will be consolidated by that feature and shipping and handling costs to any

destination in the world are accommodated by our flat-rate fee of US$20 for every US$200 worth of purchases.

Of course, should you wish to discuss some customised options, we welcome your contact on any matter through

Puss in Boots

The Miller feared nothing

The Bridal March

He composed the Bridal March

The Nightingale

They found a poor little girl

The Water King and

Vasilissa the Wise

The Tzar mounted on the

back of the Eagle

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB GM C1 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C2 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C3 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C4 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

The Water King and

Vasilissa the Wise

The Water King pursued them

(Frontispiece)

The Golden Apple-Tree and

the Nine Peahens

Under the Apple Tree

The Golden Twins

See what your wife has given you

The Merry Dun of Dover

And there they remain on the

hill side to this day

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C5 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C6 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C7 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

Reproduction on 12x18" sheet

Code: VB SM C8 (12x18)
Price: US$60.00

I will tell you what I have heard from full-grown men and women on the subject. When I have told you what I have

heard, you can read these stories, and after that please judge for yourselves. I won't have anything to do with it one way

or another, because if I say "There are fairies," certainly elderly people might say, "Nonsense!" as will people of thirty or so,

who have reached a ripe old age, and whose memories of their fairy-tale years are long ago decayed. If I say "There are

no fairies," I might get on the wrong side of the Good Folk. You know what happened to the Sleeping Beauty because her

mother forgot to task a fairy to her christening! Something like that might happen to me if I offended their High Mightinesses,

or worse (to sleep for one hundred years is not too bad) for I might be stolen away, and only sent home after seven long

years with my toes danced off like the Woman of Hart Lake, that Mr Yeats calls to mind. Or those Small Gentry might "turn

me into an ugly worm and bid me toddle about a tree," which sad fate befell more than one young gentleman who

offended the Little People. Well, be there fairies, or be there none, I will tell you of some which have been seen. In order

to keep on the safe side, I will give you the words of people who cannot be supposed to think twice about fairies in the

ordinary course of events; curates, learned Englishmen, and persons of reputation from both England and America, people

who one might infer were born with a strong disbelief in fairies, or were certainly brought up to despise them.

These are the words of a curate, a Mr Hart, who lived at Yatten Keynel in Sussen: In the year 1633, he saw one night on

the Sussex Downs, "innumerable quantities of pigmies, dancing in a fairy ring, making all manner of small odd noises."

In 1691, the Reverend Robert Kirke, Minister of Aberfoyle, Perthshire, printed at Edinburgh a book entitled, Essay on the

Subterranean, and for the most part Invisible People, Heretofore going under the Name of Elves, Fawnes, and Fairies, or the

Like. In it he describes fairies ad "A sort of astral spirits - betwixt humanity and angels," - they have, he says, "children, nurses,

Sir Walter Scott reports that this Reverend Gentleman, from all accounts, never died, but was carried away to fairyland

Mr William Blake, the English poet, born in 1757, once saw a fairy's funeral. He says, "I was walking alone in my garden,

there was a great stillness among the branches and flowers, and a more than common sweetness in the air; I heard a low

and pleasant sound and I knew not whence it came. At last, I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw

a procession of people of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers, bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which

In a book called Hollingsworth's History of Stowmarket you may read a record of sober decent people having seen fairies

in Suffolk at a much more recent date. The fairies, on one occasion, were seen dancing in a field, "the biggest about 3ft

high, the small ones like dolls. Their dresses sparkled as if with spangles - they were moving hand in hand in a ring. No noise

In the year 1855, Mr Thomas Quiller Couch, of Cornwall, states that an old friend of his knew the fairies well, that they

were "about the height of a span, clad in green, and having little straw hats, or little red caps on their heads." He, further,

says that "Our piskies (as fairies are called in Cornwall) are little beings standing midway between the purely spiritual and

the material - they have a power of making themselves seen, heard and felt." He adds that they are governed by a king.

Now I come down to modern times, and will put down here evidence that I have gathered from living people. I promise

you that the descriptions of fairies, which I shall now relate to you, are not hearsay, but the real words of people I know

A friend of mine, Mrs Salaman, a clergyman's daughter, wrote this very charming description of fairies she has seen,

"I have always believed in Fairies, and can certainly testify to the fact of having seen them as

a child in the garden of my old Yorkshire home. It is many years ago now, but I have a vivid

recollection of the immense pleasure I had in watching them dancing and flitting in and out

of the bushes. Very dainty, lovely little creatures they were, and though so tiny quite perfect.

I used to watch with breathless interest so as not to startle them. They always seemed very,

Then Mr O'Brien, a Boston man, an American, one day saw fairies dancing on the sea at sunset. They were little flimsy

creatures. He told me himself they were neither good nor bad, nor mortal, nor angels, and took no earthly notice of

anybody but themselves. Two other grown-up people were with him who saw the fairies at the same time.

American fairies have been reported to me. They are said to wear little red caps and to be jovial little creatures.

Another man I know who often sees fairies, went on a fairy hunt with hi little girl one day. I don't mean they went out

with butterfly nets to catch them, but merely set off to try and spy them out. Now fairies don't show themselves to prying

eyes, but as my friend walked under a particular tree where they used to dance, he felt them. The air was thick with them,

I could talk a great while on this subject, but the printer will allow me no more room. He says it is time to tell proper

tales now with real princesses, dragons, giants, dwarfs, ogres, witches, and what not in them. So I will stop and give way

to his importunity, for his fingers are itching to be done with this introduction, and to set the "True and Marvellous

History of Puss in Boots," that the machine may print it for your edification. I hope that you may all be as clever as Puss,

and become in time, as he did, ornaments to your country, Prime Ministers, Presidents, or Secretaries of State at the very

least, not to mention Ambassadors and Ambassadresses, whose lives I believe are passed in splendid palaces, and who give