IT took a fairy to settle a jovial dispute about our village pub’s new signage. ‘I think that’s a harebell, rather than a bluebell,’ declared one patron, and the matter was cleared by examining the flower’s flared petals, familiar from The Song of the Harebell Fairy, from Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Summer, in which they chime for fairy feasts and balls.
Barker’s miniature residents of woodlands, hedgerows and flowerbeds appeared in print in 1923 and have since gone on to enjoy a global popularity that might have surprised their modest creator. The
