Upon hearing this, the woman knew at once that the babes were not her own. She took hold of them and threw them into the river, just as the wise man had told her. Immediately the elves in their blue trousers appeared and jumped into the water to rescue their offspring, and once they had done so off they scuttled, back to their homes, spitting, and cursing the woman for what she had done.

When the woman returned to the cottage, her own true babes lay in the cradle, and all was well.

Lauren read the final line again and again, tears streaming. She rocked back and forth on the bed, cradling the book, repeating it in a whisper, over and over. “All was well, all was well, all was well.”

Epigraph Citations

EPIGRAPH CITATIONS

Chapter 1

James Russell Lowell, The Poetical Works (Cambridge: Riverside, 1904), vol. 1 (The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell, vol. 9)

Chapter 3

Yeats, William Butler, The Wanderings of Oisin, and other poems, (Paul, Trench & Co, 1889)

Chapter 7

John Greenleaf Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works, Cambridge edition (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1894)

Chapter 10

W. B Yeats, Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland, (A.L. Burt, 1900)

Chapter 12

Jacob Grimm, Stallybrass (tr.) Deutsche Mythologie, 4th ed. (George Bell & Sons, 1877), v. 3

Chapter 15

Oral retelling of Irish folklore

Chapter 16

Keeping Watch Over Children, Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm, Das Schauen auf die Kinder, Deutsche Sagen, (1816) no. 89

Chapter 17

A. Kuhn and W. Schwartz, Norddeutsche Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1848)

Chapter 30

Oral retelling of Jamaican folklore

Chapter 36

Hartland, Edwin Sidney: The Science of Fairy Tales: An Enquiry Into Fairy Mythology (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1891)

Chapter 43

Hollingworth, Rev A. G, The History of Stowmarket the Ancient County Town of Suffolk, (1844)

Author Biography

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Melanie Golding grew up in a village in Leicestershire. She has been employed in many occupations including farm hand, factory worker, childminder and music teacher. Throughout all this, because and in spite of it, there was always the writing. In recent years she has won and been shortlisted in several local and national short story competitions. In 2016, she graduated from the MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, with distinction. Little Darlings is her first novel.