Preface, Acknowledgements and Dedication

You need to have read Joseph Rodman Drake's The Culprit Fay, also posted here, fully to understand the context of this poem and a few of the references in it - and, indeed, why it starts at 'Canto' xxxvii. Katya introduced me to Mr Drake's long poem, and I think it's delightful (albeit, one might say, somewhat in the 'Victorian' 'teeny-weeny' or 'buttercup' mode.) However, I suggested to Katya that The Cuplrit Fay didn't really end as a Fairy Tale should: what about the 'unresolved' love affair between the 'Ouph' and the 'Earthly Maid'? Katya 'counter-suggested' I should try 'finishing' the story myself.

A moon or so later, here is my attempt to follow that suggestion. I believe it may be longer than the original! You can skip the rest of this preface at this point, if you like, decide whether you are going to read Mr Drake's poem if you haven't done so already, and then read on. I hope you enjoy it. I had great fun writing it.

A couple of linguistic notes may or may or not be helpful. 'Ouph,' (also 'Ouphe') seemed a strange word to me. I checked Mr Drake's usage, though: it is an (aberrant) Shakespearean variant of 'Elf' - not a single letter shared with its cognate - which appears twice in The Merry Wives of Windsor. There is also the question of 'Fay' or 'Fae.' Katya likes to spell it 'Fae,' and, when I challenged her on this score, was able promptly to produce an impeccable pedigree - in 17th Century French ( see eg. M. Charles Perrault (1628 - 1703), I gather.) Whether or not this represents sufficient authority for that form in English, I have acknowledged Katyan spelling in the word 'Faedom.'

My aim in writing Anster Revisited was to seek both to please and to tease Katya, and her young daughter Caitlin, by way of a somewhat elaborate private joke. It was certainly never intended for publication, anywhere. Pantomime pastiche poetry, I call it, but Katya has chosen to be kinder about it than that, and I feel very honoured that she wishes to post it here, at her splendid web site. As author of the site and editor of this contribution, she has helped me in a slightly hurried attempt to tidy up the verse for public exposure. All remaining spelling and typographical mistakes, grammatical errors, illogicalities and metrical infelicities, are, of course, entirely my own.

I have never had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Katya in 'real life' - only through this strange, twilight (Fay?) medium of the net. I hope fate will one day permit me to say otherwise, although we live several thousands of miles apart. In the meanwhile, you may nevertheless care to note that Katya stands about five foot nothing in her socks, (or bare feet, more likely, because that is what she prefers), really does have the red hair she usually 'wears' on the net, and owns that type of skin which so often goes with strong red hair: very pale and apt to sprout freckles as soon as a sunbeam rests on it! You will see why I mention these details if you are not exhausted by this preface and actually read the poem. That Katya is a helpless 'True-Love' Romantic scarcely needs remark: just look at the rest of this enchanting site!

There is shameless plagiarism in Anster Revisited. I acknowledge Mr Shelley in Canto xxxix ('sweetest song' etc, from To A Skylark ) and also in the Fairy Queen's warning to the flying Ouph at the end of Canto xlvii (see Ode to the West Wind ). The 'Beware, Beware' etc in Canto xlv is, of course, lifted bodily from Mr Coleridge's Kubla Khan. There is also the line stolen (and 'horridly' parodied) from Antony's famous speech in Julius Caesar. There may well be more purloining of which I am not even fully conscious. 'Thematically', I guess Romeo and Juliet and Mr Keats' The Eve of St Agnes aren't far away, and the notion of Fire as a 'dual' symbol of Love and Death, of Pain and Redemption, and so forth, is very much Mr Eliot's province in Four Quartets.

The origin of this poem is as recited above, but whilst writing it I also came to think of it as a belated attempt at atonement for something I did, or rather did not do, as a child. There was a boy, four or five years old, who, quite a few years ago, was taken by his parents to see Peter Pan in London - first the statue in Kensington Gardens, and then Mr Barrie's play. The drama reached the well-known moment when the children in the audience are invited to clap - to show that they believe in Fairies, and thus to save Tinkerbell's life. The boy refused! He was an observant and thoughtful child, and the family party had been sitting high up in the theatre - near the projectionist who had been 'lighting' Tinkerbell throughout the play......Alas, I was an Unbeliever then; I make no comment as to now.

This poem is dedicated to Katya and Caitlin. Perhaps they won't mind the very remote possibilty of sharing that dedication with someone else.This poem is also dedicated to anyone who reads it who was a child in a certain central London theatre in the early 1960's and was upset by seeing a small boy with a frown on his face and his hands firmly under his armpits after the appeal was made to save Tinkerbell. And may all children who believe in Fairies - and indeed in True Love - go on believing for as long as it so pleases them. Perhaps forever, like Katya.