I would point out that my third selection, "Golden, golden, Light unfolding" forms part of Stanford's selection of words for the first song of his piece "Fairy Dawn."
The Andrew Lang preface appears to have been written in 1910 or thereabouts some years after Victoria had gone to her rest. He was writing about the fairy-tale writers of his own day , certainly not Allingham who had died in 1889.
The Victorian vogue for fairies (usually the diaphonous , pretty kind rather than some of the nastier creatures who inhabit the old myths from which they spring) was surprisingly active. I remember, not too long ago, going to an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts of Victorian Fairy Painting (35 artists including Richard Doyle which might explain why his nephew, Arthur, became such an advocate of the case for the Cottingley Fairies). Quite why this should have been so I cannot try to explain but it's obvious that Allingham was responding to the vogue probably in the hope of attracting young children to poetry by using a subject which would pique their interest.
I examined some other examples of Allingham's poetry available online and was delighted to see that one bore the title of "The Dirty Old Man." On reading this verse it became obvious it was meant to be read in the rhythm of an Irish-jig even though its matter, somewhat dissapointingly, was of Dirty Dick of Leadenhall Street in London. Another, Meadowsweet, attests more to Allingham's gifts although he was very far from being a great poet even though his work apparently influenced WB Yeats.
I entered this discussion primarily to try to discover why the word "Sentimental" has so often been used as a term of denigration. I still don't know. Although I suppose I could be accused of mawkish tenderness when, like Chaucer's prioress, I heave a sigh of sympathy when I find the body of a mouse which one of my cats has dispatched in the garden.
Another mystery is how this matter came to be resurrected on the opening page of the MWI message board when all posts prior to my own appear to date from 2019 a fact which I have only just noticed.... Some sort of computer glitch or have wicked fairies been at work ?
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