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.
M. F. LANSING
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS