Fairy Tales (Complete‪)‬

Fairy Tales, of which this is the first volume, follows without break an earlier book, Rhymes and Stories, and is made up chiefly of Märchen, or nursery tales, with a few drolls, or comic anecdotes. The term “fairy tale” has been used in its popular sense as including “tales in which occurs something ‘fairy,’ something extraordinary,—giants, fairies, dwarfs, speaking animals. It must also be taken to cover tales in which what is extraordinary is the stupidity of the actors.”

The tales are usually romantic, with a definite plot, but without emphasis on the point of their being fact or fiction. They do not locate the hero in history or require a definite time or place, but begin with “Once upon a time, in a certain town or village,” or with some equally indefinite introduction. They deal with the supernatural, and always end well for the hero or heroine. They have usually been retold from their original traditional form by some skilled story-teller. Very few are distinctly English, though those from other lands have been adopted by English-speaking peoples.

Sagas, of which “Jack the Giant Killer” is an example, differ from the other classes in having definite localities and dates assigned to them. They have been reserved for Tales of Old England, which immediately follows in the series. We have been compelled to omit from these volumes many tales which are worthy favorites, but with at least as many fairy stories as are here collected every child should be familiar. The aim has been to give a proportionate representation to each of the great story-tellers, and to each kind of story, and to introduce the best examples of the leading motifs of folklore. The original sources have been sought out in every case,—in English chapbooks, in collections of 1696 and 1795, in German and Old French,—and these versions have been carefully and minutely compared with the best versions of later times and of the present. Besides the scholarly interest attaching to such research, the practical effect has been to simplify the stories by dropping off the fanciful additions made by successive editors and returning to the beautiful simplicity and the clear, forceful language of these wonderful products of the story-teller’s art.

The division of Fairy Tales into two volumes was rather for the sake of keeping the books small and of uniform size in the series, “The Open Road Library,” than because there was any difference in the age of children addressed. Some of the best stories have been reserved for this book.

The plan has been to gratify interest awakened in the tales of the first volume by a parallel in the second. Thus in the first we had the droll of “Hans in Luck,” to which “Clever Alice” corresponds in this. The “Frog Prince” and “Beauty and the Beast” are paralleled by the “White Cat,” in which a princess instead of a prince is restored from the spell of an animal disguise. The first volume recounts in “Doll-in-the-Grass” the story of twelve sons sent out into the world by their royal father to win their fortunes; the second tells of six sons, who later become Pleiades, sent forth to learn trades. And so the comparison might be continued. The incidents of fairy and folk lore appear in numberless combinations. Close similarity of plot has been avoided, and stories which correspond in general motif have been put in different volumes. About an equal number of tales from each of the great story-tellers—Perrault, Andersen, Grimm, etc.—is to be found in each book.

The atmosphere of these tales is healthful, and their tone, while not in most cases didactic, is distinctly moral and uplifting. In a simple and direct way right is rewarded and wrong is discountenanced; the thief among the six brothers has to be the palest star in the Pleiades. The grotesque and horrible have been introduced only where they are so exaggerated that no sane child would fail to appreciate their extravagance. Cruel stepmothers are a tradition of fairy lore, but tales of cruel brothers and sisters do not appear in these volumes.

We have discriminated between these fairy tales and stories of a more heroic nature, which lay claim to having actually happened in some stated place. Tales like “Jack the Giant Killer” and “Tom Thumb,” in which this saga element is predominant, have been carried forward into a succeeding volume, Tales of Old England. As in the last pages of the Rhymes and Stories a few of the simplest fairy tales were introduced, so this book leads from the supernatural of the fairy tale to the heroic of the saga.