Talk:Book:The Wee Free Men

I know the content pages aren't the place for literary criticism or speculation, so I'll put this note here to see who bites.

There's a link, on the Reading Suggestions page, to Irish childrens' author Pat O'Shea. Re-reading the early chapters of The Wee Free Men, it has just struck me how the scene between Tiffany and Miss Tick, when they meet for the first time, is in all aspects pure pastiche of O'Shea. The setting reflects one of the bizarre, slightly dream-like, "country fairs" of her Irish faeryscape - right down to the in-line text drawings. There is O'Shea's obligatory talking animal - not Cù Rùa the wise fox, but the "yellow, sick, toad" There is the superficially whimsical dialogue between Tiffany and Miss Tick, but which hides deeper realities.

Check out The Hounds of the Morrigan, particularly the Swapping Fair scenes, to see what I maen here...--AgProv 13:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Dromes

Like psychic spiders, dromes spin dreams out of people's images (and those of other creatures). The dreams are traps, but though there are signs, you may not realise you have passed into a such a dream. The drome likes watching dreams, and if you eat anything in the dream, you will want to stay there for ever. It will watch you eating dream food until you starve to death, then it will eat you. They appear in the dream, and can be killed there with imaginary weapons. Outside the dream they are large and pale and puffy, and can be beheaded in the ordinary way.

Dromes appear in Fairyland in The Wee Free Men. Fairyland is not their natural habitat. They are there because they have been kidnapped from some other universe by the Queen, for whom illusion is the natural order. She uses them like sheep dogs to herd dreams (and Tiffany Aching), and keeps some like guard dogs in collar and chain.

When Tiffany is taking her brother and Roland out of Fairyland, she imagines the world depicted on the packet of Jolly Sailor pipe tobacco, associated with her grandmother, Granny Aching. A drome appears in the dream which pays no attention to them. It is sitting by the sea-shore. It seems that dromes know about the sea, and this one was home-sick for it. It appears that their natural prey may be crabs.

Title

I seem to remember that there was a reason why TP changed the title from For Fear Of Little Men, but what was it? --Old Dickens (talk) 04:11, 29 October 2016 (UTC)