Bird Cages For Sale

Recovery (which includes return and renewal of health) is a re-gaining—regaining of a clear
view. I do not say “seeing things as they are” and involve myself with the philosophers,
though I might venture to say “seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them”—as
things apart from ourselves. We need, in any case, to clean our windows; so that the things
seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity—from possessiveness.
Of all faces those of our familiares are the ones both most difficult to play fantastic tricks
with, and most difficult really to see with fresh attention, perceiving their likeness and
unlikeness: that they are faces, and yet unique faces. This triteness is really the penalty of
“appropriation”: the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we
have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the
things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid
hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to
look at them.
Of course, fairy-stories are not the only means of recovery, or prophylactic against loss.
Humility is enough. And there is (especially for the humble) Mooreeffoc, or Chestertonian
Fantasy. Mooreeffoc is a fantastic word, but it could be seen written up in every town in this
land. It is Coffee-room, viewed from the inside through a glass door, as it was seen by
Dickens on a dark London day; and it was used by Chesterton to denote the queerness of
things that have become trite, when they are seen suddenly from a new angle. That kind of
“fantasy” most people would allow to be wholesome enough; and it can never lack for
material. But it has, I think, only a limited power; for the reason that recovery of freshness
of vision is its only virtue. The word Mooreeffoc may cause you suddenly to realize that
England is an utterly alien land, lost either in some remote past age glimpsed by history, or in
some strange dim future to be reached only by a time-machine; to see the amazing oddity
and interest of its inhabitants and their customs and feeding-habits; but it cannot do more
than that: act as a time-telescope focused on one spot. Creative fantasy, because it is mainly
trying to do something else (make something new), may open your hoard and let all the
locked things fly away like cage-birds. The gems all turn into flowers or flames, and you will
be warned that all you had (or knew) was dangerous and potent, not really effectively
chained, free and wild; no more yours than they were you.
The “fantastic” elements in verse and prose of other kinds, even when only decorative or
occasional, help in this release. But not so thoroughly as a fairy-story, a thing built on or
about Fantasy, of which Fantasy is the core. Fantasy is made out of the Primary World, but a
good craftsman loves his material, and has a knowledge and feeling for clay, stone and wood
which only the art of making can give. By the forging of Gram cold iron was revealed; by
Readings
On Fairy Stories
20
the making of Pegasus horses were ennobled; in the Trees of the Sun and Moon root and
stock, flower and fruit are manifested in glory.
And actually fairy-stories deal largely, or (the better ones) mainly, with simple or
fundamental things, untouched by Fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more
luminous by their setting. For the story-maker who allows himself to be “free with” Nature
can be her lover not her slave. It was in fairy-stories that I first divined the potency of the
words, and the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron; tree and grass; house
and fire; bread and wine.

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