Eleanor Farjeon - Writing

Writing

These days, Eleanor Farjeon's most widely known work is the popular children's hymn "Morning has Broken", written in 1931 to an old Gaelic tune associated with the Scottish village Bunessan. Her other popular hymn is the Advent carol "People, Look East!", usually sung to an old French melody, and a favourite with children's choirs. "Morning has Broken" is one of the many poems to be found in the anthology Children's Bells under its correct title "A Morning Song (For the First Day of Spring)", published by Oxford University Press in 1957 and bringing together poems from many sources, including the Martin Pippin books.

One of Farjeon's poetic talents was to make history easy and memorable. In poetry that is varied, witty and picturesque, Farjeon presents the saints, the kings, the tyrants and the notable events in forms that fixed them in the minds of the young reader. The historical subjects of her poetry range from King Priam, who in rhyming couplets begs his son's body from Achilles, and King John being forced by the relentless barons to sign the Magna Carta, to Joseph the carpenter wondering over the future of the little Christ Child that he can hold in the span of his two hands.

Farjeon's plays for children, such as those to be found in Granny Gray, were popular for school performances throughout the 1950s and '60s because they were well within the capabilities of young children to perform and of teachers to direct. Several of the plays have a very large number of small parts, facilitating performance by a class, while others have only three or four performers and appear to be designed for the children of a single family.

Eleanor Farjeon's most notable books are Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1921) and its sequel, Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field (1937). These books, which had their origins in France when Farjeon was inspired to write about a troubadour, are actually set in Sussex and include descriptions of real villages and features such as the chalk cliffs and the Long Man of Wilmington.

In Apple Orchard, the wandering minstrel Martin Pippin finds a lovelorn ploughman who begs him to visit the orchard where his beloved has been locked in the mill-house with six sworn virgins to guard her. Martin Pippin goes to the rescue and wins the confidence of the young women by telling them love stories. Although ostensibly a children's book, the six love stories, which have much the form of Perrault's fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, have a depth which is adult in sentiment, and indeed they were written not for a child but for a young soldier, Victor Haslam, who had, like Farjeon, been a close friend of Edward Thomas. Among the stories, themes include the apparent loss of a loved one, betrayal, and the yearning of a woman for whom it appears that love will never come.

The sequel, Martin Pippin in the Daisy Field concerns six little girls whom Martin entertains while they are making daisy chains. The six stories, this time written for children, include Elsie Piddock Skips in her Sleep which has been published separately and is considered the finest of all Farjeon's stories. Also unforgettable is the hilarious adventure of an outrageous liar and failed magician in Tom Cobble and Oonie.

The Little Bookroom is a collection of what she considered her best stories, published by Oxford University Press in 1955 with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. For that work Farjeon won the annual Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.