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.