Fairies hiding in Strunk and White

The other day I was helping my daughter with her homework, and since it has been a million years since I was in school, I decided to look for a little help from my old trusty copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk and White.  I had forgotten how fun it was to read Strunk and White.

We got a little side tracked when we came across this segment of a poem by William Allingham in the section on nouns and verbs.  My daughter was so intrigued by it, that we just had to look up the whole poem.

Write with nouns and verbs.

Write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs.  The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.  This is not to disparage adjectives and adverbs; they are indispensable parts of speech.  Occasionally they surprise us with their power, as in

Up the airy mountain,

Down the rushy glen,

We daren't go a-hunting

For fear of little men...

The nouns mountain and glen are accurate enough, but had the mountain not become airy, the glen rushy, William Allingham might never have got off the ground with his poem.  In general, however, it is nouns and verbs, not their assistants, that give to good writing its toughness and color.

                                                                                         - The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Here is the poem in it's entirety. 

The Fairies

by William Allingham (1824-1889)

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!

Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.

High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.

They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.

By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
Is any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!