THE LANG FAIRY BOOKS
Crown Edition
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS. _With 4 Coloured
Plates and 63 Illustrations._
THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 128
Illustrations._
THE BOOK OF ROMANCE. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 43
Illustrations._
THE BROWN FAIRY BOOK. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 42
Illustrations._
THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 45
Illustrations._
THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 100
Illustrations._
THE GREY FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 56
Illustrations._
THE LILAC FAIRY BOOK. _With 6 Coloured Plates and 46
Illustrations._
THE OLIVE FAIRY BOOK. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 43
Illustrations._
THE ORANGE FAIRY BOOK. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 50
Illustrations._
THE PINK FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 68
Illustrations._
THE RED BOOK OF HEROES. _By Mrs. Lang. With 8 Coloured
Plates and 40 Illustrations._
THE RED FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 91
Illustrations._
THE VIOLET FAIRY BOOK. _With 8 Coloured Plates and 59
Illustrations._
THE YELLOW FAIRY BOOK. _With 4 Coloured Plates and 105
Illustrations._
[Illustration: IAN AND THE BLUE FALCON]
_PREFACE_
The children who read fairy books, or have fairy books read to them,
do not read prefaces, and the parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who
give fairy books to their daughters, nieces, and _cousines_, leave
prefaces unread. For whom, then, are prefaces written? When an author
publishes a book 'out of his own head,' he writes the preface for his
own pleasure. After reading over his book in print--to make sure that
all the 'u's' are not printed as 'n's,' and all the 'n's' as 'u's' in
the proper names--then the author says, mildly, in his preface, what
he thinks about his own book, and what he means it to prove--if he
means it to prove anything--and why it is not a better book than it
is. But, perhaps, nobody reads prefaces except other authors; and
critics, who hope that they will find enough in the preface to enable
them to do without reading any of the book.
This appears to be the philosophy of prefaces in general, and perhaps
authors might be more daring and candid than they are with advantage,
and write regular criticisms of their own books in their prefaces, for
nobody can be so good a critic of himself as the author--if he has a
sense of humour. If he has not, the less he says in his preface the
better.
These Fairy Books, however, are not written by the Editor, as he has
often explained, 'out of his own head.' The stories are taken from
those told by grannies to grandchildren in many countries and in many
languages--French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Gaelic, Icelandic,
Cherokee, African, Indian, Australian, Slavonic, Eskimo, and what not.
The stories are not literal, or word by word translations, but have
been altered in many ways to make them suitable for children. Much has
been left out in places, and the narrative has been broken up into
conversations, the characters telling each other how matters stand,
and speaking for themselves, as children, and some older people,
prefer them to do. In many tales, fairly cruel and savage deeds are
done, and these have been softened down as much as possible; though it
is impossible, even if it were desirable, to conceal the circumstance
that popular stories were never intended to be tracts and nothing
else. Though they usually take the side of courage and kindness, and
the virtues in general, the old story-tellers admire successful
cunning as much as Homer does in the Odyssey. At least, if the cunning
hero, human or animal, is the weaker, like Odysseus, Brer Rabbit, and
many others, the story-teller sees little in intellect but superior
cunning, by which tiny Jack gets the better of the giants. In the
fairy tales of no country are 'improper' incidents common, which is to
the credit of human nature, as they were obviously composed mainly for
children. It is not difficult to get rid of this element when it does
occur in popular tales.
The old puzzle remains a puzzle--why do the stories of the remotest
people so closely resemble each other? Of course, in the immeasurable
past, they have been carried about by conquering races, and learned by
conquering races from vanquished peoples. Slaves carried far from home
brought their stories with them into captivity. Wanderers, travellers,
shipwrecked men, merchants, and wives stolen from alien tribes have
diffused the stories; gipsies and Jews have peddled them about; Roman
soldiers of many different races, moved here and there about the
Empire, have trafficked in them. From the remotest days men have been
wanderers, and wherever they went their stories accompanied them. The
slave trade might take a Greek to Persia, a Persian to Greece; an
Egyptian woman to Phoenicia; a Babylonian to Egypt; a Scandinavian
child might be carried with the amber from the Baltic to the Adriatic;
or a Sidonian to Ophir, wherever Ophir may have been; while the
Portuguese may have borne their tales to South Africa, or to Asia, and
thence brought back other tales to Egypt. The stories wandered
wherever the Buddhist missionaries went, and the earliest French
_voyageurs_ told them to the Red Indians. These facts help to account
for the sameness of the stories everywhere; and the uniformity of
human fancy in early societies must be the cause of many other
resemblances.
In this volume there are stories from the natives of Rhodesia,
collected by Mr. Fairbridge, who speaks the native language, and one
is brought by Mr. Cripps from another part of Africa, Uganda. Three
tales from the Punjaub were collected and translated by Major
Campbell. Various savage tales, which needed a good deal of editing,
are derived from the learned pages of the 'Journal of the
Anthropological Institute.' With these exceptions, and 'The Magic
Book,' translated by Mrs. Pedersen, from 'Eventyr fra Jylland,' by Mr.
Ewald Tang Kristensen (Stories from Jutland), all the tales have been
done, from various sources, by Mrs. Lang, who has modified, where it
seemed desirable, all the narratives.
_CONTENTS_
PAGE
_The Story of the Hero Makoma_ 1
_The Magic Mirror_ 16
_Story of the King who Would See Paradise_ 24
_How Isuro the Rabbit Tricked Gudu_ 29
_Ian, the Soldier's Son_ 37
_The Fox and the Wolf_ 56
_How Ian Direach Got the Blue Falcon_ 63
_The Ugly Duckling_ 79
_The Two Caskets_ 90
_The Goldsmith's Fortune_ 106
_The Enchanted Wreath_ 110
_The Foolish Weaver_ 124
_The Clever Cat_ 126
_The Story of Manus_ 141
_Pinkel the Thief_ 148
_The Adventures of a Jackal_ 160
_The Adventures of the Jackal's Eldest Son_ 167
_The Adventures of the Younger Son of the Jackal_ 173
_The Three Treasures of the Giants_ 177
_The Rover of the Plain_ 190
_The White Doe_ 201
_The Girl-Fish_ 225
_The Owl and the Eagle_ 236
_The Frog and the Lion Fairy_ 241
_The Adventures of Covan the Brown-haired_ 265
_The Princess Bella-Flor_ 280
_The Bird of Truth_ 292
_The Mink and the Wolf_ 307
_Adventures of an Indian Brave_ 313
_How the Stalos Were Tricked_ 319
_Andras Baive_ 329
_The White Slipper_ 335
_The Magic Book_ 349
_ILLUSTRATIONS_