Rossetti’s first published illustration was made for this volume to accompany the poem The Maids of Elfin-mere. Characteristically, the image focuses on a vision of three maidens who appear nightly to spin and chant, entrancing a pastor’s son who, “listening to their gentle singing, felt his heart go from him clinging, round these maids of Elfen-Mere.” Allingham, who wrote the related ballad, was an Irish poet known for fairy subjects. The stiff drapery and repeated poses in the image derive from late Gothic art, while the girls resemble Rossetti’s beloved Elizabeth Siddal. Edward Burne-Jones, a close friend of Rossetti's, called the related design “the most beautiful drawing for an illustration I have ever seen.”
... Burne-Jones wrote of this in The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine (no. 6): 'it is I think the most beautiful drawing for an illustration I have ever seen, the weird faces of the maids of Elfinmere, the musical timed movement of their arms together as they sing, the face of the man, above all, are such as only a great artist could conceive'.
