If nothing else, these lines bring out the sister solidarity of the pair- their self-contained and self sufficient nature living without family or other evident links within their community. Lizzie goes to confront the goblins- and because she refuses to sit and eat with them, she is maltreated: She is left ‘elf-addled,’ weeping, wasting away, her hair becoming thin and grey. Once Laura has tasted faery food and faery pleasures, she cannot rest easy in this world: she longs to return to fairyland, but finds herself cruelly excluded. Rossetti handles this in a unique manner, with the faes becoming invisible and inaudible once they have seduced a human soul, but the idea of seeking to capture our spirits and the profound physical and psychological toll that faery contact can take will be familiar to many readers by now. As I’ve said, the author was not concerned with producing a folklore document, so these elements are not prominent, but they are there, not wholly overwhelmed by her message of Christian self-sacrifice and familial love.įirstly, there’s the central concept of the fairy temptation and its damaging impact upon the victim. What I’d like to do now is to pick out a handful of the more authentic fairy themes that run through Rossetti’s verse. Laura & Lizzie by Hilda Koe (active 1895-1901) Now, though, she finds it bitter, the goblin spell is broken and she is saved. Lizzie returns home and her sister is able to lick the juice of her face. In anger they smear her face with the juice, trying to get her to give in and taste it, but she is resolute and, by defying them, manages to drive the goblins off.
Lizzie realises there is only one way to save her sister: she goes one evening to meet the goblins, pays for their fruit but refuses to eat it. However, once Laura has tasted the forbidden fruit, she cannot hear or see the goblin men again, and she begins to pine away just like Jeanie. She is reminded by Lizzie of the fate of Jeanie, who partook of the fairy food and then faded away and died, but she succumbs to their temptations and meets the goblins with their juicy, perfumed fruit- melons, cherries, pears and grapes. Sensible sister Lizzie knows that the goblins must be ignored her sister Laura is weak and wants to taste the fruit. Where their parents or relatives are, we never learn the two girls are self-sufficient and independent.Įvery evening the goblin men pass near their cottage, crying out their wares in tempting tones. Two young sisters live together, supporting themselves by farming a smallholding. The plot of the poem is quite easily summarised.
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