Fairytales

Words by Anushka Shah. Artwork by Joni Brown.

This piece is based on the Cottingley Fairies Hoax, a sensationalised tale of two cousins who borrowed their dad’s camera in 1917 and took photographs of themselves playing with fairies by Cottingley Beck. The photos were divisive, with some believing them to be proof that fairies exist, and others declaring it to be a hoax from the outset. Sixty years later, one of the girls confessed they had copied the fairies from a book to produce four out of the five famous photographs. This poem is written from the perspective of Elsie, the older cousin. Through these five stanzas, the reader is invited to take a sidelong glance at truth and consider what it is that we might know or not know, and what that might mean for our interactions.

Textiles artist Joni Brown has created a series of complementary artworks to accompany Anushka’s piece. Joni shares, “In the pieces I’ve made, each stitch acts as a length of stanza, a lapse of thought. Shapes folded in calico, embroidered in thread, are manipulated by her words, building in complimentary abstraction… I hope these poems and artworks can act as a virtual exhibition, merging and building within each other as art intertwined.”

The Cottingley Cuttings

i. Square One

My nose is close to the paper
my mouth hangs slightly ajar

call it concentration
or a kind of respiration

I breathe life into my fairy
as I trace her from my book.

Square One.

Embroidered thread on Calico, 200mmx365mm, 2026.

ii. A Trick or Two

I am undertaking an activity
too easily dismissed

as ‘girlish playing’
of little or no substance

my substantive sets of figures
are deceiving a nation.

‘Deceiving’, I think, is misleading.
I am capturing truth

in fishing nets of fancy
capturing fairies on father’s film.

With some sleight of hand
I hand to idealists

a sight of their ideals
dressed in gossamer.

A Trick or Two.

Embroidered thread on Calico, 625mmx280mm, 2026.

iii. Phony as a Three-Dollar Bill

We make and make up the news
and there is an irony

in being featured on pages
other girls will cut and trace.

By ‘we’ I mean me
and Little Cousin Frances

nations are rarely at the beck
and call of two young girls

but given photographic evidence
of fairies by Cottingley Beck

a nation sits up and listens.
Her coat slips off her back

as she straightens up and
her shoulders fall back in surprise.

Some things (unlike coats)
cannot simply be shrugged off.

Some things cannot be simple.
Other things cannot be.

Phony as a Three-Dollar Bill.

Patchwork on Calico, 455mmx270mm, 2026.

iv. Breaking the Fourth Wall

Kodak and Conan Doyle
not foolish, still fooled.

Fixated on fool’s gold
or foolish fire

will-o’-the-wisp hard to catch
will-o’-the-wisp hard to keep

will-all-the-whispers
burn us in our sleep.

Frances rats.
You are right, we lied.

Breaking the Fourth Wall.

Embroidered thread and collaged patch on Calico, 625mmx280mm, 2026.

v. Taking the Fifth

Four of the five photos are lies
but what of photo number five?

Frances, partner in craft
comrade in crime

insists the last are not the paper kind
rather, they are fairies made of life

they appear in our waking dreams
and at night when we close our eyes.

Taking the Fifth.

Embroidered thread on Calico, 200mmx365mm, 2026.

This piece was also published in Unquiet Press.