The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke: Painting, Poem, Song
- Rockestre - Battle of Evermore
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
In the history of art, there are few works that intertwine three branches of art at once. Richard Dadd’s painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, his poem of the same name, and the song written by Freddie Mercury of Queen and also titled “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke,” together form a unique trio where three different art forms—visual art, poetry, and rock music—are woven together and transformed into one unified world. These creations, whose origin lies in the boundless imagination of a painter operating within the bounds of mental illness, all depict the same scene: a timeless, magical scene that can be read, viewed, and heard simultaneously.
Richard Dadd began painting The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke in 1855, when he was already confined in the Bethlem psychiatric hospital after killing his father. He worked on the painting for nine years with meticulous and obsessive dedication, creating a composition filled with dozens of fantastic figures arranged in an environment resembling a miniature stage, where the characters seem to be preparing for some theatrical event. The painting centers on a mythical fairy, a woodman, who stands before a giant chestnut, his axe raised with the readiness to deliver a fateful stroke. Yet this action is never completed. The canvas seems to “freeze” the moment, as all the figures—maidens, dwarves, soldiers, sailors, lovers, the royal couple Oberon and Titania, and others—watch the instant intently.
To help viewers understand the painting, Dadd wrote a poem titled Elimination of a Picture & its Subject – called The Feller’s Master Stroke, in which he describes the characters and their behaviors in detail, though the interpretation of the painting remains tangled, semi-abstract, and incomplete. The poem includes these lines:
‘See – ’tis fay woodman holds aloft the axe
Whose double edge virtue now they tax
To do it single & make single double
Teatly and neatly – equal without trouble.’
Here, as in the painting, the importance of the magical act—the stroke—is emphasized, an act infused both with creativity and destruction. The axe symbolizes creative decisiveness, but also danger. This moment, like the entire poem, is filled with ambiguity. What is the goal? What is expected? What might change after the stroke?
Fascinated by this surreal theatrical scene, Freddie Mercury—a lover of art and literature—wrote the song “The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke,” which he included in Queen’s 1974 album Queen II. The song is constructed in an unusual way; it lacks a traditional verse–chorus structure and features rapid tempo and rhythmic changes, proudly blending baroque-style harpsichord melodies with driving rock rhythms. Most notably, Mercury literally sings about the characters mentioned in Dadd’s painting and poem. He sings:
‘Ploughman, ‘Waggoner Will’ and types
Politician with senatorial pipe.’
These characters are taken directly from Dadd’s poem, where it says:
‘The ploughman that is standing to him near
Shews him a coat neat made and very strong.’
And in another part:
‘The Politician next, with senatorial pipe
For argument or his opinion ripe.’
Mercury preserves not only the characters but also their spirit and ironic tone.
The song also contains the phrase “What a quaere fellow!” which some critics have mistakenly linked to Mercury’s sexual orientation. However, the band’s drummer Roger Taylor firmly rejected this interpretation. In Latin, quaere simply means “strange” or “questionable,” which also aligns with Dadd’s artistic style full of bizarre and unsettling figures. Dadd’s poetic landscapes likewise contain physically unusual beings, for example:
‘A fairy conjuror he who knows a trick
Or two at cards and in the nick –
Of time, can well deceive.’
The song’s musical structure mirrors the painting’s composition with the same density, the same lack of clear centrality, the same chaotic rhythmic confusion, depicting the movements of the painting’s figures. The harpsichord sound evokes medieval court music, accentuating the characters’ belonging to other time and space. . The vocal lines are multi-voiced just like Dadd’s scene is layered with character upon character.
Unlike paintings, which explain through color and form, or poems, which deliver direct semantic chains, Mercury creates a musical environment where meanings, references, and characters collide with one another, just as Dadd’s figures collide in the scene—without a concrete action.
It is notable that neither the painting, nor the poem, nor the song has a real ending. The painting, as accepted in art historical circles, remains unfinished; Dadd never completed the final layers, and parts of the background remain empty. The poem ends in complaint:
‘For nought as nothing it explains
And nothing from nothing nothing gains.’
And the song ends abruptly, without a chorus or final cadence—seemingly suspended in the moment, like the axe that never strikes. This is not merely an aesthetic solution in all three works but rather unites their core concept: the enchantment of uncertainty, the eternal anticipation of an action.
“The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke” is the only instance in Queen’s career where an entire song is based on a single visual and literary source. And it is not only a tribute to Dadd but also a continuation of his world, creating a realm where Dadd’s characters are heard and Mercury’s melodies take on visual form.
Together, these three works, with their mad uniqueness, create a complete world where music can be painted, poetry can be sung, and a painting can be written. As Dadd wrote:
‘To fix some dubious point to fairies only
Known to exist, or to the lonely
Thoughtful man recluse.’
That “lonely thoughtful man” could have been Dadd himself or perhaps Freddie Mercury. But their art speaks to an audience ready to see and hear what an ordinary viewer or listener might overlook. And it is there that the master stroke appears, not with an axe, but with creative imagination.
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