SOURCE: The Princess and the Goblin (1872) by George MacDonald
The Princess and Curdie (1882)

DESCRIPTION: "Perhaps you will wonder how the princess could tell that the old lady was an old lady, when I inform you that not only was she beautiful, but her skin was smooth and white.  I will tell you more.  Her hair was combed back from her forehead and face, and hung loose far down and all over her back.  That is not much like an old lady - is it?  Ah! but it was white almost as snow.  And although her face was so smooth, her eyes looked so wise that you could not have helped seeing she must be old.  The princess, though she could not have told you why, did think her very old indeed - quite fifty, she said to herself.  But she was rather older than that, as you shall hear." (The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald)

NOTES: Princess Irene's great-great-grandmother (her father's mother's father's mother) who shares the name Irene, is a magical being who lives in the tower at the top of the castle where Irene lives. It is unsure if she is a faery creature or a ghost. She possesses much magic including a moon lamp, a healing ointment, a magic thread that leads the owner to safety, and the power to appear or disappear. She chooses to allow only Irene to see her, sometimes appearing as a white pigeon. She lives in the tower where she keeps pigeons and lives on their eggs. She is the force behind all of the princesses best moves (rescuing Curdie from the goblins, for instance). The miners have a garbled version of her history. They call her Old Mother Wotherwop. They believe she is evil, poisoning wells. Or that she can appear as beautiful woman of twenty-five and any man who looks at her will be struck blind. In the battle with the Borsagrassians her pigeons, at her direction, attack the knights by flying into their faces and spooking their horses.

HISTORY: The ghostly Irene is quite reminiscent of the fairy godmother in "Cinderella", supplying her ward with magic stuff, but MacDonald's Christianity reshapes her as an angelic type character. This pagan-Christian thing doesn't really work for me. MacDonald would use it again in "The Carasoyn".

Grandmother Irene appears to Curdie and his father Peter as a beautiful twenty-five year old in this illo by Nora S. Unwin