The Silver Curlew

The Silver Curlew / Eleanor Farjeon
Victoria, BC: Rare Treasure Editions, 2021, c1953.
176 p.

Another children's book this week - this one a real delight as well. I have always enjoyed Eleanor Farjeon, so was pleased to find one I hadn't yet read in my library catalogue. The Silver Curlew is a retelling of Rumpelstiltsken but with all the added charm of a Farjeon story. 

We find the Codlings, Mother and children, living in a windmill in Norfolk. Doll, who is 18, is beautiful and indolent. What she loves most is daydreaming and eating. Poll, much younger, is a lively outdoorsy kind of girl with enough get up and go for both of them. The older boys are working and not integral to the story. 

One day the spoiled king of Norfolk happens by just at the time that he's looking for a wife. Beautiful Doll catches his eye, especially when the family brags about her (non-existent) spinning prowess to cover up a more embarrassing family incident. He marries her, with the exception known to all fairy tale readers - she must spin enough thread to use up all the bundles he stuffs the house with, or off with her head. 

And a spindle imp appears to help her. Then one year later he reappears when Doll has to spin again - or he'll take her and her newborn baby too. Poll must find all her courage to save her family from ruin. 

Being Farjeon, the story is full of extras -- wry humour, caricatures such as the spoiled king, lots of rhymes and songs interspersed in the story, an extra fairy tale of the man and woman in the moon embedded in this story, and a quite scary encounter for Poll with the imp and his minions in the midst of the dark wood. 

There is real magic in this story; it has its own atmosphere and the wordplay is part of it. It's like a dream, where it doesn't matter if things make sense, you just have to deal with them as they appear. It's short enough to be read all in one go, which I would recommend as you don't want to break the spell this story weaves. I loved it.