“The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there shoreless seas and stars uncounted beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.” ― J.R.R. What is magical and fairy-like to children, is dark and witch-like to parents. Adult readers, however, are skeptical and uneasy with this mysterious creature. Irene immediately loves the old woman and trusts her. In the opening lines of Princess and the Goblin, MacDonald tells us that Princess Irene is eight years old but will become “much older.” On a rainy day, Irene sneaks out of her royal rooms and explores her old country castle only to discover a really old grandmother in a hidden room. This makes them accessible to us in a guise that we can tolerate. It would be terrifying for us mere mortals to look on real angels and demons, and so, in the world of Faerie, they are disguised as goblins, fairies, elves, dwarfs, princesses and godmothers. In his own writing and in Lewis’s treatment of him, I think that MacDonald has a gift for drawing back the veil between the spiritual world and the material world. In The Great Divorce, Lewis wrote MacDonald in as the ambassador from heaven. Lewis said that George MacDonald baptized his imagination. Even when she seems unsafe… remember, Aslan is not a tame lion and Gandalf afflicted the comfortable hobbits to awaken their desire for what is the true good.Ĭ.S. In this fairy tale, childish wonder and awe are absolutely requisite for us to really “see” Grandmother. In Princess and the Goblin, this is especially true, for us and for Princess Irene. When Jesus said to let the little children come to Him, I believe that one of His meanings was that we must shed our worldly prejudices and return to child-like faith and innocence. “…a little princess living in a castle in the mountains which is perpetually undermined, so to speak, by subterranean demons who sometimes come up through the cellars.” – GK Chesterton, George MacDonald 1929Īs adults, we have learned too much to really understand the magic of true fairy tales.

The princess and the goblin macdonald