A month ago I stumbled on this illustration while searching for possible donations to the silent auction at the beaver festival. It was offered by a very unfriendly sort of woman on Etsy who told me crisply to never contact her again. Bob Kobres of Georgia found other illustrations like it, but we still didn’t know their origin. Originally I assumed it was from Canada because of the wildlife, but no Canadian I asked recognized anything about it.
I checked with the library of congress and the national archives who decided they didn’t recognize it either. That made me think it wasn’t from this hemisphere after all, so I showed to our European beaver friends. Along the way I learned how to do a reverse image google search and I looked that way as well. The only place the images came up was the etsy site I originally saw them on and our website!
Except for the bat. The bat one was offered as a card also on this website.
I contacted the owner of the sight and asked her about the image. She said she had come across it in a secondhand shop the 70’s in Massachusetts, sold as a single 9×7 print with no other information but a line of text reading “At the low dark entrance to the cave she stopped”.
She loved immediately that the girl showed no sign of fear entering the cave, because she herself was interested in encouraging more young woman to go into natural sciences. She noted it was an old yellowed print already, and reproduced it as a card.
Polly Pearhouse of the Scottish beavers group didn’t recognize the artwork but thought the clothing looked Germanic (Bavarian) especially. That prompted me to ask my German beaver contacts. Our old friend Alex Hiller wrote that he didn’t recognize it, nor did Dietland Muller-Swarze when I asked. Gerhard Schroder didn’t know. Duncan Haley of Norway agreed that it could be German but suggested any Scandinavian country also.
This brave little girl who stumbled into the forest has been all around the world in such a short time now. Everywhere she has gone people fall in love with the illustration even thought they know nothing at all about its origin. I am reminded of William Golding’s book The princess bride which opens by saying “This is my favorite book in the world, though I have never read it.”
My fondness for this mystery maiden has grown over the search, and I remain committed to resurrecting her story!
In the meantime, our friends taking care of the beavers in Devon shared this on youtube after it aired recently on the BBC. I like everything about it but the part where they examine the yearling which made me squeamish. The rest is excellent. Enjoy!
