Yellow-Cap and Other Fairy-Stories For Children

A royal stocking brings an extraordinary visitor to a village washroom in Julian Hawthorne's collection of four fairy stories. The opening tale introduces Honeymead, where Rosamund runs the Brindled Cow and serves milk to her admirers. Raymond remembers a stranger wearing a golden cap who arrived when he was a small child. The visitor left him a coin, which Raymond wears around his neck as a pledge of future fame and greatness.

Rumpty-Dudget, Calladon and Theeda complete the collection. In Rumpty-Dudget, three children dream of reaching Fairyland and seeing their mother. A fairy tells them that their hopes depend on a change in the wind. Later, Tom the Cat's warnings meet the children's curiosity about a mysterious black ball. Elaborate court ceremony and comic village customs sit alongside magical rules and tests of obedience. Readers can enjoy the stories for these contrasts and for the way ordinary ambitions and temptations take shape in a fairy world.