Fairy Bread Lyrics
An invitation in eight lines: dusty-footed children are asked to come and eat fairy bread, which turns out to be the golden smell of broom flowers and the shade of a pine. When they have eaten, there are fairy stories to hear and tell.
Fairy Bread
Come up here, O dusty feet!
Here is fairy bread to eat.
Here in my retiring room,
Children, you may dine
On the golden smell of broom
And the shade of pine;
And when you have eaten well,
Fairy stories hear and tell.
Printed from https://nurseryrhymes.co/fairy-bread/
- Type
- Poems for Children
- Written by
- Robert Louis Stevenson
- Tune
- Read it as a warm invitation, slowly and with a small smile at 'the golden smell of broom'
- Best for ages
- 3 to 8 years
What Does Fairy Bread Mean?
Someone calls to children who have been playing outdoors: "Come up here, O dusty feet!" The meal on offer is "fairy bread", and the menu is the surprise. The children may dine on "the golden smell of broom" and "the shade of pine". Broom is a shrub with bright yellow flowers, and a sunny patch of it does have a sweet smell. So the meal is made of air and shade, and nothing is actually eaten.
The place is the speaker's retiring room, an old way of saying a private room to rest in. Here it means a shady spot out of doors. The poem ends with what happens after the meal: when the children have "eaten well", they can hear and tell fairy stories.
This is not the Australian party snack of the same name, which is white bread with butter and coloured sprinkles. The bread in the poem is imaginary.
History and Origin
"Fairy Bread" is one of the poems in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1885 collection. In the following year, 1886, he published the adventure novel Kidnapped. The little poem comes from the other side of his work, when he wrote simply, with a child's eye.
Learning Activities
- Pretend picnic: spread a blanket in a shady spot and serve 'fairy bread' made of smells: a flower, a pine needle, a sprig of herbs.
- Smell walk: walk round a garden or park and let each child choose the nicest smell, then describe it as a colour, like the golden smell of broom.
- Story circle: after reading, tell a short fairy story together, one sentence each.
- Dusty-feet song: invent a tune for the first two lines and sing it as an invitation to come to the table.