THE FAIRY QUEEN

A kindly fairy helps a group of peaceful Travellers escape imprisonment in this richly illustrated Irish tale.

As they barter for food in exchange for repairing pots and kettles in villages they pass through in their barrel-shaped wagons, the Travellers have no money to pay taxes. So when the greedy new king and queen order them to be seized for forced labor, a beautiful fairy takes pity on them and offers to shrink all who are willing into the tiny, elusive fairies known henceforth as leprechauns. The tale was originally published in the Republic of Ireland and has been transcribed largely as Donoghue Ward has told it to live audiences, with oral tics and cadences intact (“And she appeared a load of food in front of the little girl and boy and the old king of the Travellers, and she softened a bed for them with a magic wand”). Finely wrought illustrations burst with exuberantly hued vines, flowers, and sprays of leaves and petals surrounding groups of smiling, light-skinned figures in plain, loose clothing. The scowling monarchs and their mail-clad tax soldiers—all drably monochromatic, in contrast—are soon sent packing back to their original unnamed country, leaving the now-little folk and their fellows who chose to return to their original size to dance together in green meadows and fairy circles. “So that is the end of the story,” the author concludes. A closing note describes the Travellers, “a traditionally nomadic indigenous ethnic minority group from Ireland.”

Charmingly told, handsomely presented.