The title 3


Opal Whiteley
Opal Whiteley, born in 1897 in the USA, wrote an extraordinary book in 1920 which continues to be a mystery. In 1962 the book was reprinted with a lengthy commentary from the British point of view of her exotic adventures, while she was in a British asylum, where she died in 1992. Her gravestone bears the inscription 'I spake as a child.' Her saga is one of the most notorious whimsical stories of the century.
It’s a story of innocence and wonder, of a young girl in a young land. It’s a story also of loneliness, tragedy and death, of mental illness and the hard life in rural Oregon at the nineteenth century’s turn. But more than that, it’s a story of faith, of what we believe and perceive to be true. And every time the name of Opal Whiteley surfaces again, more and more people discover what many have quietly felt for some time: Her diary just might be an American classic.
— Steve McQuiddy
To see similarities between Opal and Syd Barrett, we can look at her style and her use of something "grey", perhaps due to her interest in nature writing at an early age:
It calls to me to come go exploring. It sings of the things that are to be found under leaves. It whispers the dreams of the tall fir trees. It does pipe the gentle song the forest sings on gray days. I hear all the voices calling me. I listen but I cannot go. …
THE waters of the brook lap and lap. They come in little ripples over gray stones. They are rippling a song. It is a gentle song.
— Opal Whiteley, The Story of Opal

McQuiddy, Steve. The Fantastic Tale of Opal Whiteley. Web. http://www.intangible.org/Features/Opal/Opal1.html
Whiteley, Opal. The story of Opal: The Journal of An Understanding Heart. Boston: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1920. 57, 242. Print. http://archive.org/stream/storyofopaljourn00whit#page/56/mode/2up [#page/n283/mode/2up]