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Fairy Story Books
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Fairy story books.
This folder Contains.
The Blue Fairy Book.
The Brown Fairy Book.
The Crimson Fairy Book.
The Grey Fairy Book.
The Lilac Fairy Book.
The Orange Fairy Book.
The Pink Fairy Book.
The Red Fairy Book.
The Violet Fairy Book.
The Yellow Fairy Book.
Important: Please read the preface.
Each of these books contain a collection of stories from around the world.
Preface
Each Fairy Book demands a preface from the Editor,
and these introductions are inevitably both monotonous and unavailing.
A sense of literary honesty compels the Editor to keep repeating
that he is the Editor, and not the author of the Fairy Tales, just as a
distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature.
Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a single
modern mind. The Editor's business is to hunt for collections of these
stories told by peasant or savage grandmothers in many climes,
from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snows of the Polar
regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales
are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by
various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding the interests
of propriety, and toning down to mild reproofs the tortures inflicted on
wicked stepmothers, and other naughty characters.
These explanations have frequently been offered already; but,
as far as ladies and children are concerned, to no purpose.
They still ask the Editor how he can invent so many stories--more
than Shakespeare, Dumas, and Charles Dickens could have
invented in a century. And the Editor still avers, in Prefaces, that he
did not invent one of the stories; that nobody knows, as a rule, who
invented them, or where, or when. It is only plain that, perhaps a
hundred thousand years ago, some savage grandmother told a tale
to a savage granddaughter; that the granddaughter told it in her turn;
that various tellers made changes to suit their taste, adding or omitting
features and incidents; that, as the world grew civilised, other alterations
were made, and that, at last, Homer composed the 'Odyssey,' and
somebody else composed the Story of Jason and the Fleece of Gold,
and the enchantress Medea, out of a set of wandering popular tales,
which are still told among Samoyeds and Samoans, Hindoos and Japanese.
All this has been known to the wise and learned for centuries, and especially
since the brothers Grimm wrote in the early years of the Nineteenth Century.
But children remain unaware of the facts, and so do their dear mothers;
whence the Editor infers that they do not read his prefaces, and are
not members of the FolkLore Society, or students of Herr Kohler and
M. Cosquin, and M. Henri Guidoz and Professor Child, and Mr. Max Muller.
Though these explanations are not attended to by the Editor's customers,
he makes them once more, for the relief of his conscience.
Many tales in this book are translated, or adapted, from those told by
mothers and nurses in Hungary; others are familiar to Russian nurseries;
the Servians are responsible for some; a rather peculiarly fanciful set of
stories are adapted from the Roumanians; others are from the Baltic shores;
others from sunny Sicily; a few are from Finland, and Iceland, and Japan,
and Tunis, and Portugal. No doubt many children will like to look out these
places on the map, and study their mountains, rivers, soil, products,
and fiscal policies, in the geography books. The peoples who tell the
stories differ in colour; language, religion, and almost everything else;
but they all love a nursery tale. The stories have mainly been adapted
or translated by Mrs. Lang, a few by Miss Lang and Miss Blackley.
