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Circa 1915. "Four dancing figures." Gelatin silver print by the pioneering Washington, D.C., photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. View full size.
Wood nymphs and faeries have been extinct in my area of the world for some time. But when I was a kid my dad and uncles would go out with clubs and a sack and get as many as they could on a Saturday night.
By dawn on Sunday they'd have six or eight of them in the back of the wagon and then we'd ... wait, that was opossums. Never mind.
This looks like a lot of images of the Three Graces, I think, although they seem to have picked up an extra Grace somewhere. Here's a Botticelli version -- in which the ladies are wearing a bit more than in many other representations.
This reminds me of a Maxfield Parrish paining, but I can't think of which one it is. Someone help me out here!
I could swear I've seen somewhere a sculpture so much like this picture, but I can't put my finger on where or when.
They appear to have misplaced their undergarments.
And I can just hear Beatrice Lillie's hilarious performance of "The Fairies" (poem by Rose Fyleman set to music by the soprano Liza Lehmann). Lillie's music hall turns of the 1920s often parodied the flowery salon song styles of late Victorian singers. Here is the first verse of "The Fairies":
THERE are fairies at the bottom of our garden!
It's not so very, very far away;
You pass the gardener's shed and you just keep straight ahead --
I do so hope they've really come to stay.
There's a little wood, with moss in it and beetles,
And a little stream that quietly runs through;
You wouldn't think they'd dare to come merrymaking there--
But they do.
Bea Lillie recorded her comic version in 1934.
I can just hear Hermione Gingold shouting instructions to the society ladies of River City ...
Will you come with me, will you come and sing
(Heed not wind nor weather)
Come and join the dancing ring
(Sisters dancing together)
-- Leslie Fish sang it, Kathleen Taylor wrote it.
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