From Fights to Fairies

New Zealand Listener, Volume 12, Issue 311, 8 June 1945, Page 8

From Fights to Fairies

ROFESSOR T. D. ADAMS, who has been reading to us lately from 4YA a series of poems dealing. with famous fights, forsook the bloodthirsty sphere one evening and delighted his listeners with fairy poems instead. The fact that so many poets and musicians have given thought to depicting the fairy realm may quiet the scruples of any cynical listener whose scepticism forbids enjoyment of such readings. With Mendelssohn’s "Midsummer Night’s Dream" for introduction, followed by such favourites as "Up the Airy Mountain," the Ballad of True Thomas, and a trifle by the most fey of poets, Walter de la Mare, who could help admitting to a temporary belief in elfland? Possibly the gem of this collection was the description by Michael Drayton of "Pigwigging Arming." Pigwiggin, with his coat of mail made of fishes scales, his rapier a hornet’s sting, his helmet a beetle’s head, his plume a horse’s hair, sat mounted on a fierce curvetting earwig. It seemed to me the sort of thing’ no poet could invent, however fine his frenzy; and that to give a local habitation and a name, to such a creature of the unknown, Drayton must himself have been one of those changelings left in human cradles (Professor Adams tells us) by the fairy inhabitants themselves.