It is interesting to consider this illustration in relation to the text it accompanies. It is faithful to the letter of the text, but Dalziel and Hughes’s joyful representation of the witch totally undermines the spirit of Macdonald’s writing:
‘She was a sour, spiteful creature. The wrinkles of contempt crossed the wrinkles of peevishness, and made her face as full of wrinkles as a pat of butter. […] She looked very odd, too. Her forehead was as large as all the rest of her face, and projected over it like a precipice. When she was angry, her little eyes flashed blue. When she hated anybody, they shone yellow and green. What they looked like when she loved anybody, I do not know; for I never heard of her loving anybody but herself, and I do not think she could have managed that if she had not somehow got used to herself.’
Dalziel after Arthur Hughes, ‘The Christening’, illustration for George Macdonald, Dealings with the Fairies (London: Alexander Strahan, 1867). Dalziel Archive Vol. XXI (1866), British Museum reg. no. 1913,0415.182, print no. 871.
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