A folk-tale, in its primitive plainness of word and entire absence of
complexity in thought, is peculiarly sensitive and susceptible to the
touch of stranger hands; and he who has been able to acquaint himself
with the _Norske Folkeeventyr_ of Asbjörnsen and Moe (from which these
stories are selected), has an advantage over the reader of an English
rendering. Of this advantage Mr. Kay Nielsen has fully availed
himself: and the exquisite _bizarrerie_ of his drawings aptly
expresses the innermost significance of the old-world, old-wives'
fables. For to term these legends, Nursery Tales, would be to curtail
them, by nine-tenths, of their interest. They are the romances of the
childhood of Nations: they are the never-failing springs of sentiment,
of sensation, of heroic example, from which primeval peoples drank
their fill at will.
The quaintness, the tenderness, the grotesque yet realistic
intermingling of actuality with supernaturalism, by which the
original _Norske Folkeeventyr_ are characterised, will make an appeal
to all, as represented in the pictures of Kay Nielsen. And these
imperishable traditions, whose bases are among the very roots of all
antiquity, are here reincarnated in line and colour, to the delight of
all who ever knew or now shall know them.
Permission to reprint the Stories in this book, which originally
appeared in Sir G. W. Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse," has
been obtained from Messrs. George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. THE THREE
PRINCESSES IN THE BLUE MOUNTAIN is printed by arrangement with Messrs.
David Nutt; and PRINCE LINDWORM is newly translated for this volume.