DIDDILYDEEDOT'S DREAM-WORLD
FAIRY STORIES/RHYMES
WISHES
I wish I liked rice pudding, I wish I were a twin
I wish some day a real live fairy would just come walking in.
I wish when I'm at the table my feet would touch the floor,
I wish our pipes would burst next winter, just like they did next door.
I wish that I could whistle real proper grown up tunes,
I wish they'd let me sweep the chimneys on rainy afternoons.
I've got such heaps of wishes, I've only said a few;
I wish that I could wake some morning and find they'd all come true !
Written by Rose Fyleman- from Fairies and Chimneys
Rose Fyleman was born in Nottingham on 6 March 1877, the third child
of John Feilmann and his wife, Emilie, née Loewenstein, who was of
Russian extraction. Her father was in the lace trade, and his Jewish
family originated in 1860 from Jever in the historical state of Oldenburg, currently Lower Saxony, Germany
As a young girl, Fyleman was educated at a private school, and at the
age of nine first saw one of her compositions published in a local
paper. Although she entered University College, Nottingham, she failed
in the intermediate and was thus unable to pursue her ambition of
becoming a schoolteacher. Despite this, Fyleman had a good singing
voice, and therefore decided to study music. She studied singing in
Paris, Berlin and finally at the Royal College of Music in London, where
she received her diploma as associate of the Royal College of Music.
She returned to Nottingham shortly afterward, where she taught signing
and helped in her sister's school. Along with other members of her
family, she anglicised the spelling of her name at the outbreak of the
First World War in 1914.
When she was forty, Fyleman sent her verses to Punch
magazine and her first publication "There are Fairies at the Bottom of
Our Garden" appeared in May of 1917. The immense response from
publishers prompted Fyleman to submit several other fairy poems. Her
verses enjoyed tremendous success among readers and her first collection
Fairies and Chimneys (1918) was reprinted more than twenty times over
the next decade. During the 1920s and early 1930s Rose Fyleman published
multiple verse collections, wrote drama for children, and for two
years, edited the children's magazine Merry-Go-Round. Fyleman was also a
skilled linguist who translated books from German, French and Italian.
Rose Fyleman was one of the most successful children's writers of her
generation and she saw much of her earlier poetry become proverbial.
She died at a nursing home in St. Albans, Hertfordshire on 1 August, 1957.
A. Joanna.
