EXTRA **** "An Unfortunate Lily Maid" by LM Montgomery
On today's Apple Seed Extra, "An Unfortunate Lily Maid," just a bit of Anne of Green Gables, by LM Montgomery. If you know Tennyson's “Idylls of the King” or “The Lady of Shalott” or Thomas Malory's “Le Morte d’Arthur,” you may know the story of Lancelot and Elaine -- the woman Elaine, on the Eve of a jousting tournament, entreating the night to wear her token as he fights -- which he agrees to do but only in disguise, as the lady Guinevere will also be present at the tournament; and then the disguised Knight wounded in the tournament, taken to Elaine's home to be cared for, where Elaine reveals her feelings for him -- feelings he does not share. Lancelot recovers and leaves, and Elaine, after 10 days, dies of grief is placed in a small boat with a Lily in one hand and sent down the river to Camelot. And when she is discovered in the river by King Arthur's court, Lancelot pays for a grand funeral (which some would say serves him right).
With that story of Lancelot and Elaine in your head, you’ll enjoy today's Apple Seed Extra: a readers theater presentation of a scene from LM Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, in which Anne and her friends prepare to reeneact a scene from that story – the scene in which Elaine the Lily maid floats in solemn death down the river, and though they all they have for a boat is a borrowed duck hunting flat it all seems incredibly romantic.
LM Montgomery first published Anne of Green Gables in 1908. For the inspiration as to how Anne would look, Montgomery pinned to the wall of her bedroom a magazine photo of Evelyn Nesbit,The American chorus girl and artists model idealized by graphic artist Charles Dana Gibson as a Gibson Girl, establishing the feminine ideal from 1890 to 1910. Though there are seven Anne Shirley sequels, the original Anne of Green Gables has sold more than 50,000,000 copies and has been translated into 36 languages.