Giant Goody Goody

Edwin Morgan

  • The Complete Fairytales by George MacDonald, edited by U.C. Knoepflmacher
    Penguin, 354 pp, January 2000, ISBN 0 14 043737 1
  • Ventures into Childland: Victorians, Fairytales and Femininity by U.C. Knoepflmacher
    Chicago, 444 pp, £24.50, June 2001, ISBN 0 226 44816 9

A fairytale, whatever messages may be inserted into it or teased out from it, is a tale of marvels. A cat struts past in boots. A demon swells out from a lamp like steam from a kettle. A princess cannot sleep because a pea below her twenty mattresses is hurting her. A prince is metamorphosed from a frog (the poet Norman MacCaig used to say it would be even better if a frog metamorphosed from a prince).

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