When looking for Australian fairytales I used title
as my first classification method but this was not always successful. I
initially included ‘Up the Moonpath’ a story by Macdonald in Childhood in Bloom and Blossum. This
was a souvenir book of the Children's Hospital bazaar complied and edited
by Joshua Lake and published in 1900. On page three the editor suggests that ' This book is a contribution to the
Children's Hospital by the Art and Literature of Melbourne.' Image of Children's Hospital ( circa 1909)
Though fairyland is presented as being at the end
of the shimmering moonpath that ‘ran
across the lake and faded out to a faint glow in the distance, just under the
moon’ and is peopled with ‘bright
little people l’ it is not really fairyland but a book about the death
of a child and fairyland is a metaphor for heaven. Ita takes her place in
fairyland (heaven) and another little ‘King’ arrives to take her place in her
mother’s bed and soothe her parents' grief.
As this story is
included in a Benefit Book to raise money to support the Melbourne’s Children’s
Hospital it was perhaps written as an acknowledgement that not all children survived
and that some would need tenderness and soothing in their last few hours of
'patient' suffering. Link to 'A Childhood in bud and blossom' at SLV
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