A Gossamer Thread to the Past

And the Fairies & Sprites That Visited

“I do wander everywhere, / Swifter than the moon’s sphere; / And I serve the fairy queen, / To dew her orbs upon the green” (from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream).

Huge boulders marked certain points along our trails in the woods. And we wove stories about old natives placing them there before the neighboring towns were developed. Those rocks spawned taller tales upon each passing. I firmly believed that tiny fairies would sneak out on the velvety, green moss that grew on the damp surfaces. My dad told us that if we could get out to the rocks early enough, like when the sun was just offering the first glimpses of light but not yet warm enough to burn away the morning fog, we would see the fairies dancing, silently tapping their toes on the spongy moss in child-like plies and twirls, emitting sparkly dust in their wake, blowing and swirling like light, fresh snow. I know I saw them once. And it is a happy memory.

That’s a scene from My Father’s Daughter describing a time before I knew anything was amiss in our family lore. The beautiful escape from real life into nature where imagination could run wild, following the little sprites frolicking through the forest.

I had a connection to the woods in sort of an otherworldly manner.

Nature anchored me.

Stories fed me.

And by the time I got to high school, a study of Midsummer Night’s Dream awakened such a hunger for more literature and art that I knew if I ever wrote a book, I would have to give credit to that beginning in nature somehow, even though those fairies did make mischief along the way.

Some even followed me as I embarked on family research in recent years.

As a bud of fascination with newly found ancestors opened, I found myself in the archives room of the main library downtown.

[Check out a related story linked here “Sitting With A Ghost”].

My find turns out to fit well with the Tuesday Storyteller Challenge by

Robin Stewart

Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: NEWSWORTHY KNOWABLES ~Getting to know our ancestors through found news of their day. A newspaper article that tells a story about them.

With a special password, I flipped through archived newspaper articles with my grandfather’s name as he was a prominent resident of the town. I was looking for examples of his art since I learned he was an accomplished painter and photographer in the early 1900s.

What I found, instead, was a news feature from 1906 interviewing my grandfather about an upcoming exhibition.

Very interesting. Sure. An article about an ancestor. Kind of a big deal.

But as I sat and read, the strangest feeling came over me.

Like a web of ethereal threads winding around me.

Fairies, sprites & gnomes came sliding down twinkling gossamer strands all the way from the past and sat right next to me.

Not too long ago, I didn’t even know this man existed, so I could never have known that he himself was fascinated with allegorical folklore and legends of sprites and fairy queens passed down through time by great storytellers.

Castles and magic and romance.

Childhood entertainment. Stories set in the forest.

He was well-read in the genre and sought to lend his art to retell these folktales in pictures.

Art.

The kind of art that has always drawn my deep interest. Why?

Was I born connected to this sheer thread? Do these fairies travel back & forth through time?

Sadly, as of this moment, I still haven’t viewed the art to which he referred just yet. I hope to as I continue my journey of discovery.

The article itself, though, is a treasure. A piece of myself I never dreamed of finding before writing the memoir that uncovered quite a secret of the past, still unraveling today.

[If you would like to read the story that unveiled all of these family secrets, check out my memoir, linked here for you 🔗 My Father’s Daughter. You get to travel with me through the foggy woods and find light at the other side of the path.]

➡️I appreciate your ❤️s & Shares too! Thank you. ⬇️