[Editor: This poem for children, by Eva Oakley, was published in Willie Wagtail, Two Little Romances and Other Verses (1945).]
“The Fairy Baby”
A wee Fairy Baby came out once to play;
Just able to toddle she was, and so gay;
She sipped glistening dew-drops, and grew up so fast.
That soon, all her schooldays were over and past,
And she was a real, grown-up Fairy at last.
Then, when she went dancing, and started to sing,
A handsome, young Prince came, and gave her a ring,
And, down where the snow-drops grew, all in a row,
The dear, little Fairy went each day to sew,
For soon she was going to be married, you know.
Source:
Eva Oakley, Willie Wagtail, Two Little Romances and Other Verses, Melbourne: Austral Printing & Publishing Company, [1950], p. 12
Editor’s notes:
gay = happy, joyous, carefree; well-decorated, bright, attractive (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; can also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
wee = little, very small, diminutive, e.g. “the wee child” (the small child), “the wee hours of the morning” (the small hours of the morning, i.e. the early hours of the morning)
[Editor: Changed “A wee fairy Baby” to “A wee Fairy Baby” (capitalised “Fairy”, in line with the usage elsewhere in this poem and in the rest of this publication).]
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