In which the pond takes a break from the reptiles and joins the fairies ...

The pond is eternally grateful to the street library system which operates around Newtown and elsewhere, though it's occasionally astonished at the treasures that people give away.

What soul in their right mind would willingly give up the Theosophical Society of America's classic 1966 reprint of Edward L. Gardner's classic book about fairies and the Cottingley photographs …?

Now the actual photos can be passed over quickly - the reproductions in the book are poor, but then the photos themselves are astonishingly fake …

The fakers couldn't even get the eyelines right ...

 

Anybody doing those sorts of eyelines would be drummed out of assorted directing and acting guilds …

Of course the intertubes is full of the Cogttingley fairies and photos - they have a wiki here for Greg Hunters and there are all sorts of yarns about how the hoax fooled those wanting to be fooled …some keep on wanting to be fooled, which is why the tale reminds the pond of reading the reptiles, and Donald Trump, and seemed a fitting subject for a Sunday meditation.

The pond first came to the hoax via Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man behind the sharp-witted junkie detective, a credentialed doctor, which didn't stop him writing a book, The Coming of The Fairies, and contributing a foreword to Gardner's book …

And this provided an antipodean connection …

And Gardner put a quote from Cardinal Newman at the front which managed to evoke in the pond fond memories of all the Pellist claptrap and complimentary women nonsense from the Sydney Anglicans that it had featured over the years …

Angels, fairies, whatever …

Gardner's book is a short treatise on fairy wonders, with much metaphysical speculation and many eyewitness reports helping explain the nature and meaning of the creatures … and again there's an antipodean angle …

The pond can do only a few excerpts, but see how New Zealand is a potent land of fairies …

The pond picks up the story in the letters received section with one from the Rev. Arnold J. Holmes on the Islae of Man recalling the childlike trust of Manx girls, who to that day "will not forget the bit of wood and coal put ready at the side of the fireplace in …"

At this point, the pond can sense some interjecting and saying, but this is not like reading the reptiles, and the pond will remind them of Lloydie's octopi from outer space, and will continue with the excerpt ...

Well the pond would never dare to ridicule Miss Hall of Bristol, and so felt compelled to complete her report and add the thoughts of a water diviner …

There isn't room for then endless speculation by Gardner about the nature of fairies, but these pages serve as an introduction ...

The pond must leave the technical aspects of fairy wings to another time - suffice to say that their is no articulation, no venation and the wings are not used for flying, and may indeed appear because of human thought - and hasten to the end of Gardner's tract, where there is a cosmic coming together of the human and the deva …

The pond apologises for not properly explaining the deva, but readers should simply be reassured by the coming together …

The lesson the pond drew?

Well there's a reason the pond's evolution hasn't begun, and it is left with the likes of the Donald, Dame Slap and the whole reptile crew…

The fairies at the bottom of the pond's garden took a powder, did a split, vanished in a puff of smoke, and so the world's evolution didn't begin …

… but what a relief it was to leave the reptiles aside, and do an old-fashioned Sunday meditation, with many thanks to the unknown benefactor who enriched the pond's world via the local street library …

May the fairies frolic at the bottom of your garden forever, and may you keep evolving, so that eventually the reptiles are just a distant, fragile dream of lost dinosaurs …