Wandering minstrel, Martin Pippin, encounters a lovelorn ploughman who begs him to release his beloved by entertaining the six young women sworn to guard her. This Martin Pippin does - telling beautiful tales of heartbreak, betrayal and everlasting love. But will the imprisoned Gillian ever be freed? This delightful collection will be loved by adults and children alike - a perfect introduction to sophisticated fairy tales. 'She is one of the few who can conceive and tell a fairytale . . . Before I had read five pages of Martin Pippin, I had forgotten who I was and where I lived. I was transported into a world of sunlight, of gay inconsequence, of emotional surprise, a world of poetry, delight and humour. And I lived and took my joy in that rare world, until all too soon my reading was done.' From J. D. Beresford's Foreword to the first American edition of 1922.
“But love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.”
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Context: He loved her, both for her fault and her redemption of it, more than he had ever thought that he could love her; for he had believed that in their kiss love had reached its uttermost. But love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
“Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.”
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
“For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.”
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Context: Women are so strangely constructed that they have in them darkness as well as light, though it be but a little curtain hung across the sun. And love is the hand that takes the curtain down, a stronger hand than fear, which hung it up. For all the ill that is in us comes from fear, and all the good from love.
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Context: The world never knows, and cannot for the life of it imagine, what this man sees in that maid and that maid in this man. The world cannot think why they fell in love with each other. But they have their reason, their beautiful secret, that never gets told to more than one person; and what they see in each other is what they show to each other; and it is the truth. Only they kept it hidden in their hearts until the time came. And though you and I may never know why this lane is called Shelley's, to us both it will always be the greenest lane in Sussex, because it leads to the special secret I spoke of.
“I will fight for you, yes, and you will fight for me.”
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)
Context: I will fight for you, yes, and you will fight for me. And if you have sacrificed joy and courage and beauty and wisdom for my sake, I will give them all to you again; and yet you must also give them to me, for they are things in which without you I am wanting. But together we can make them.
