A Study of Fairy Tales: Chapter IV. The History of Fairy Tales

Now that we have indicated the worth of fairy tales, have observed those principles which should guide the teacher in choosing and in interpreting a tale, and have stated those rules which should govern the story-teller in the telling of the tale, we may well ask a few further questions concerning the nature of these fairy tales. What is a fairy tale and whence did it come, and how are we to find its beginning? Having found it, how are we to follow it down through the ages? How shall it be classed, what are the available types which seek to include it and show its nature? And lastly, what are the books which are to be the main practical sources of fairy tales for the teacher of little children? The remaining pages attempt to give Some help to the teacher who wishes to increase her resources with an intelligent knowledge of the material she is handling.

Many times the question, "What is a fairy tale?" has been asked. One has said: "The fairy tale is a poetic presentation of a spiritual truth." George MacDonald has answered: "Undine is a fairy tale." Mr. G. K. Chesterton has said: "A fairy tale is a tale told in a morbid age to the only remaining sane person, a child. A legend is a fairy tale told to men when men were sane." Some, scorning to reply, have treated the question as one similar to, "What poem do you consider best in the English language?" As there are many tales included here which do not contain a fairy, fairy tales here are taken to include tales which contain something fairy or extraordinary, the magic or the marvelous--fairies, elves, or trolls, speaking animals, trees, or a talkative Tin Soldier. The Myth proper and the Fable are both excluded here, while the pourquois tale, a myth development, and the Beast tale, a short-story fable development, are both included.

The origin of the word "fairy," as given by Thomas Keightley in his Fairy Mythology, and later in the Appendix of his Tales and Popular Fictions, is the Latin fatum, "to enchant." The word was derived directly from the French form of the root. The various forms of the root were:--

Latin . . . . fatum, "to enchant."

French . . . . fee, feerie, "illusion."

Italian . . . . fata.

Provencal . . . . fada.

In old French romance, fee was a "woman skilled in magic." "All those women were called Fays who had to do with enchantment and charms and knew the power and virtue of words, of stones, and of herbs, by which they were kept in youth and in great beauty and in great riches." This was true also of the Italian fata.

The word "fairy" was used in four senses. Fairy represented:--

(1) Illusion, or enchantment.

(2) Abode of the Faes, the country of the Fays.

(3) Inhabitants collectively, the people of Fairyland.

(4) The individual in Fairyland, the fairy Knight, or Elf.

The word was used in the fourth sense before the time of Chaucer. After the appearance of Spenser's Faerie Queene distinctions became confused, and the name of the real fairies was transferred to "the little beings who made the green, sour ringlets whereof the ewe not bites." The change adopted by the poets gained currency among the people. Fairies were identified with nymphs and elves. Shakespeare was the principal means of effecting this revolution, and in his Midsummer Night's Dream he has incorporated, most of the fairy lore known in England at his time. But the tales are older than their name.

The origin of fairy tales is a question which has kept many very able scholars busy and which has not yet been settled to the satisfaction of many. What has been discovered resolves itself mainly into four different origins of fairy tales:--

1. Fairy tales are detritus of myth, surviving echoes of gods and heroes

Against this theory it may be said that, when popular tales have incidents similar to Greek heroic myths, the tales are not detritus of myth, but both have a more ancient tale as their original source. There was:--

(1) A popular tale which reflected the condition of a rude people, a tale full of the monstrous and the miraculous.

(2) The same tale, a series of incidents and plot, with the monstrous element modified, which survived in the oral traditions of illiterate peasantry.

(3) The same plot and incidents, as they existed in heroic epics of cultivated people. A local and historical character was given by the introduction of known places and native heroes. Tone and manners were refined by literary workmanship, in the Rig Veda, the Persian King-book, the Homeric Epics, ctc.

The Grimms noted that the evolution of the tale was from a strongly marked, even ugly, but highly expressive form of its earlier stages, to that which possessed external beauty of mold. The origin is in the fancy of a primitive people, the survival is through Marchen of peasantry, and the transfiguration into epics is by literary artists. Therefore, one and the same tale may be the source of Perrault's Sleeping Beauty, also of a Greek myth, and also of an old tale of illiterate peasantry. This was the opinion held by Lang, who said, "For the roots of stories, we must look, not in the clouds but upon the earth, not in the various aspects of nature but in the daily occurrences and surroundings, in the current opinions and ideas of savage life."

In the savage Marchen of to-day, the ideas and incidents are the inevitable result of the mental habits and beliefs of savages. We gain an idea of the savage mind through Leviticus, in the Bible, through Herodotus, Greek and Roman geographers, Aristotle, Plutarch, Pliny, etc., through voyagers, missionaries, and travelers, and through present savage peoples. Savage existence is based on two great institutions:--

(a) The division of society into clans.--Marriage laws depend on the conception that these clans descend from certain plants, animals, or inorganic objects. There was the belief in human descent from animals and kinship and personal intercourse with them.

(b) Belief in magic and medicine-men, which resulted in powers of metamorphosis, the effect of incantation, and communion with the dead.--To the savage all nature was animated, all things were persons. The leading ideas of savage peoples have already been referred to in the list of motifs which appear-in the different fairy tales, as given by Lang, mentioned under the "Preparation of the Teacher," in The Telling of the Tale.

II. Fairy tales are myths of Sun, Dawn, Thunder, Rain, etc.

This is sometimes called the Sun-Myth Theory or the Aryan Theory, and it is the one advocated by Max Muller and by Grimm.

The fairy tales were primitive man's experience with nature in days when he could not distinguish between nature and his own personality, when there was no supernatural because everything was endowed with a personal life. They were the poetic fancies of light and dark, cloud and rain, day and night; and underneath them were the same fanciful meanings. These became changed by time, circumstances in different countries, and the fancy of the tellers, so that they became sunny and many-colored in the South, sterner and wilder in the North, and more home-like in the Middle and West. To the Bushmen the wind was a bird, and to the Egyptian fire was a living beast. Even The Song of Six-Pence has been explained as a nature-myth, the pie being the earth and sky, the birds the twenty-four hours, the king the sun, the queen the moon, and the opening of the pie, daybreak.

Every word or phrase became a new story as soon as the first meaning of the original name was lost. Andrew Lang tells how Kephalos the sun loved Prokris the dew, and slew her by his arrows. Then when the first meaning of the names for sun, dew, and rays was lost, Kephalos, a shepherd, loved Prokris, a nymph, and we have a second tale which, by a folk-etymology, became the Story of Apollo, the Wolf. Tales were told of the sun under his frog name; later people forgot that frog meant "sun," and the result was the popular tale, A Frog, He Would A-Wooing Go.

In regard to this theory, "It is well to remember," says Tylor in his Primitive Culture, "that rash inferences which, on the strength of mere resemblances, derive episodes of myth from episodes of nature, must be regarded with utter distrust; for the student who has no more stringent criterion than this for his myths of sun and sky and dawn will find them wherever it pleases him to seek them." There is a danger of being carried away by false analogies. But all scholars agree that some tales are evidently myths of sun and dawn. If we examine the natural history of savages, we do find summer feasts, winter feasts, rituals of sorrow for the going of summer and of rejoicing for its return, anxious interest in the sun, interest in the motion of the heavenly bodies, the custom of naming men and women from the phenomena of nature, and interest in making love, making war, making fun, and making dinner.

III. Fairy tales all arose in India, they are part of the common Aryan heritage and are to be traced by the remains of their language

They were first written in the Vedas, the sacred Sanskrit books of Buddhism. This theory is somewhat allied to the Sun-Myth Theory. This theory was followed by Max Muller and by Sir George Cox.

The theory of a common source in India will not answer entirely for the origin of tales because many similar tales have existed in non-Aryan countries. Old tales were current in Egypt, 2000 B.C., and were brought from there by Crusaders, Mongol missionaries, the Hebrews, and Gypsies.

The idea of connecting a number of disconnected stories, as we find in Arabian Nights, The Canterbury Tales, and the Decameron, is traced to the idea of making Buddha the central figure in the folk-literature of India. And Jacobs says that at least one-third of all the stories common to the children of Europe are derived from India, and by far the majority of the drolls. He also says that generally, so far as incidents are marvelous and of true fairy-like character, India is the probable source, because of the vitality of animism and transformation in India in all time. Moreover, as a people, the Hindus had spread among their numbers enough literary training and mental grip to invent plots.

And again, there is an accepted connection in myth and language between all Aryan languages and Sanskrit. According to Sir George Dasent, "The whole human race has sprung from one stock planted in the East, which has stretched its boughs and branches laden with the fruit of language and bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to the utmost parts of the earth." Dasent tells how the Aryans who went west, who went out to do, were distinguished from the nations of the world by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves to circumstances, by making the best of their position, by being ready to receive impressions, and by being able to develop impressions. They became the Greeks, the Latins, the Teutons, the Celts, and the Slavonians. The Aryans who stayed at home, remained to reflect, and were distinguished by their power of thought. They became a nation of philosophers and gave to the world the Sanskrit language as the basis of comparative philology. Dasent shows how legends, such as the Story of William Tell and Dog Gellert, which have appeared in many Aryan peoples were common in germ to the Aryan tribes before migration. Joseph Jacobs has more recently settled the travels of Gellert, tracing its literary route from the Indian Vinaya Pitaka, through the Fables of Bidpai, Sindibad, Seven Sages of Rome, Gesta Romanorum, and the Welsh Fables of Cottwg, until the legend became localized in Wales.

IV. Fairy tales owe their origin to the identity of early fancy

Just as an individual, after thinking along certain lines, is surprised to come upon the exact sequence of his thought in a book he had never seen, so primitive peoples in remote parts of the world, up against similar situations, would express experience in tales containing similar motifs. A limited set of experiences was presented to the inventive faculty, and the limited combinations possible would result in similar combinations. The Aryan Jackal, the Mediaeval Reynard, the Southern Brer Rabbit, and the Weasel of Africa, are near relations. Dasent said, "In all mythology and tradition there are natural resemblances, parallelisms, suggested to the senses of each race by natural objects and everyday events; and these might spring up spontaneously all over the earth as home-growths, neither derived by imitation from other tribes, nor from the tradition of a common stock."

It is probable that all four theories of the origin of fairy tales are correct and that fairy tales owe their origin not to any one cause but to all four.

II. THE TRANSMISSION OF FAIRY TALES

Oral transmission. The tale, having originated, may have been transmitted in many ways: by women compelled to marry into alien tribes; by slaves from Africa to America; by soldiers returning from the Crusades; by pilgrims returning from the Holy Land or from Mecca; by knights gathering at tournaments; by sailors and travelers; and by commercial exchange between southern Europe and the East--Venice trading with Egypt and Spain with Syria. Ancient tales of Persia spread along the Mediterranean shores. In this way the Moors of Spain learned many a tale which they transmitted to the French. Jack the Giant Killer and Thomas Thumb, according to Sir Walter Scott, landed in England from the very same keels and warships which conveyed Hengist and Horsa and Ebba the Saxon. A recent report of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution of the United States expressed the opinion that the Uncle Remus Tales have an Indian origin. Slaves had associated with Indian tribes such as the Cherokees, and had heard the story of the Rabbit who was so clever that no one could fool him. Gradually the Southern negroes had adopted the Indian tales and changed them. Joseph Jacobs claims to have found the original of the "Tar Baby" in the Jataka Tales. A tale, once having originated, could travel as easily as the wind. Certainly a good type when once hit upon was diffused widely. Sir Walter Scott has said: "A work of great interest might be compiled from the origin of popular fiction and the transmission of similar tales from age to age and from country to country. The mythology of one period would then appear to pass into the romance of the next century, and that into the nursery tales of subsequent ages. Such an investigation would show that these fictions, however wild and childish, possess such charms for the populace as to enable them to penetrate into countries unconnected by manners and language, and having no apparent intercourse to afford the means of transmission."

Thomas Keightley, in Tales and Popular Fictions, has given interesting examples of the transmission of tales. Selecting Jack the Giant-Killer, he has shown that it is the same tale as Grimm's The Brave Tailor, and Thor's Journey to Utgard in the Scandinavian Edda. Similar motifs occur also in a Persian tale, Ameen of Isfahan and the Ghool, and in the Goat and the Lion, a tale from the Panchatantra. Selecting the Story of Dick Whittington he has shown that in England it was current in the reign of Elizabeth; that two similar tales, Danish legends, were told by Thiele; that a similar Italian tale existed at the time of Amerigo Vespucci, which was a legend told by Arlotto in 1396-1483; that another similar Italian tale was connected with the origin of Venice, in 1175; and that a similar tale existed in Persia in 1300, before 1360, when Whittington of England was born. He also pointed out that the Odyssey must have traveled east as well as west, from Greece, for Sindbad's adventure with the Black Giant is similar to that of Ulysses with the Cyclops.

Another interesting set of parallels shown by him is connected with the Pentamerone tale, Peruonto. This is the Straparola Peter the Fool, the Russian Emelyan the Fool, the Esthonian tale by Laboulaye, The Fairy Craw-Fish, and the Grimm The Fisherman and his Wife. The theme of a peasant being rewarded by the fish he had thrown back into the water takes on a delightful varied form in the tale of different countries. The magic words of Emelyan, "Up and away! At the pike's command, and at my request, go home, sledge!" in each variant take an interesting new form.

Literary transmission. The travels of a tale through oral tradition are to be attempted with great difficulty and by only the most careful scholarship. One may follow the transmission of tales through literary collections with somewhat greater ease and exactness. Popular tales have a literature of their own. The following list seeks to mention the most noteworthy collections:--

No date. Vedas. Sanskrit.

No date. Zend Avesta. Persian.

Fifth century, B.C. Jatakas. Probably the oldest literature. It was written at Ceylon and has been translated into 38 languages, in 112 editions. Recently the Cambridge edition has been translated from the Pali, edited by E. B. Cowell, published by Putnam, New York, 1895-1907.

4000 B.C. Tales of Ancient Egypt. These were the tales of magicians, recorded on papyrus.

600 B.C. (about). Homeric Legends.

200 B.C. (about). Book of Esther.

Second century, A.D. The Golden Ass, Metamorphoses of Apuleius.

550 A.D. Panchatantra, the Five Books. This was a Sanskrit collection of fables, the probable source of the Fables of Bidpai.

Second century, A.D. The Hitopadesa, or Wholesome Instruction. A selection from the Panchatantra, first edited by Carey, in 1804; by Max Muller, in 1844.

550 A.D. Panchatantra. Pehlevi version.

Tenth century, A.D. Panchatantra. Arabic version.

Eleventh century, A.D. Panchatantra. Greek version.

Twelfth century, A.D. Panchatantra. Persian version.

1200 A.D. Sanskrit Tales. These tales were collected by Somadeva Bhatta, of Cashmere, and were published to amuse the Queen of Cashmere. They have been translated by Brockhaus, 1844. Somadeva's Ocean of the Streams of Story has been translated by Mr. Tawney, of Calcutta, 1880.

Tales of the West came from the East in two sources:--

1262-78. (1) Directorium Humanae Vitae, of John of Capua. This was translated from the Hebrew, from the Arabic of the eighth century, from the Pehlevi of Persia of the sixth century, from the Panchatantra, from the Sanskrit original. This is the same as the famous Persian version, The Book of Calila and Dimna, attributed to Bidpai, of India. There was a late Persian version, in 1494, and one in Paris in 1644, which was the source of La Fontaine.

Thirteenth century. (2) The Story of the Seven Sages of Rome, or The Book of Sindibad. This ap- peared in Europe as the Latin History of the Seven Sages of Rome, by Dame Jehans, a monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. There is a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version. It is believed the Persian version came from Sanskrit but the Sanskrit original has not yet been found.

Tenth century. Reynard the Fox. This was first found as a Latin product of the monks, in a cloister by the banks of the Mosel and Mass. Reynard the Fox shares with Aesop's Fables the distinction of being folk-lore raised into literature. It is a series of short stories of adventure forming a romance. These versions are known:--

  1180. German-Reinhart, an epic of twelve adventures by Heinrich Glichesare.

  1230. French-Roman de Renard, with its twenty-seven branches.

  1250. Flemish-Reinaert, part of which was composed by Willem, near Ghent.

  1148. Ysengrimus, a Latin poem written at Ghent.

  Thirteenth century. Of the Vox and of the Wolf, an English poem.

  Later date. Rainardo, Italian.

  Later date. Greek mediaval version.

  Reynard the Fox was first printed in England by Caxton in 1481, translated from a Dutch copy. A copy of Caxton's book is in the British Museum. Caxton's edition was adapted by "Felix Summerley"; and Felix Summerley's edition, with slight changes, was used by Joseph Jacobs in his Cranford edition.

  A Dutch prose romance, Historie von Reynaert de Vos was published in 1485. A German copy, written in Lower Saxony was published in 1498. A chap-book, somewhat condensed, but giving a very good account of the romance, was published in London in 1780, printed and sold in Aldermary Churchyard, Bow Lane. This chap-book is very much finer in language than many of the others in Ashton's collection. Its structure is good, arranged in nine chapters. It shows itself a real classic and would be read with pleasure to-day. Goethe's poem, Reineke Fuchs, was published in 1794. This version was more refined than previous ones but it lost in simplicity. Monographs have been written on Reynard by Grimm, Voigt, Martin, and Sudre.

  Raginhard was a man's name, meaning "strong in counsel," and was common in Germany which bordered on France. This name naturally was given to the beast who lived by his wits. Grimm considered Reynard the result of a Teutonic Beast Epic of primitive origin. Later research has exploded this theory and has decided that all versions are descended from an original French one existing between 1150 and 1170. Modern editions have come from the Flemish version. The literary artist who compiled Reynard took a nucleus of fables and added to it folk-tales which are known to have existed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and which exist to-day as tradition among some folk. The folktales included in Reynard are: Reynard and Dame Wolf,- The Iced Wolf's Tail; The Fishes in the Car; The Bear in the Cleft; The Wolf as Bell-Ringer; and The Dyed Fox. The method of giving individual names to the animals such as Reynard, Bruin, and Tibert, was current among the Folk before a literary form was given to Reynard. As this was the custom in the province of Lorraine it is supposed that the origin of these names was in Lorraine. Other names, such as Chanticleer, the Cock, and Noble, the Lion, were given because of a quality, and indicate a tendency to allegory. These names increase in the later development of the romance. In the beginning when the beasts had only personal adventures, these were told by the Folk to raise a laugh. Later there was a meaning underneath the laugh and the Beast Epic Comedy of the Folk grew into the world Beast Satire of the literary artist.

  Reynard exhibits the bare struggle for existence which was generally characteristic of Feudal life. Cunning opposes force and triumphs over it. The adventurous hero appeals because of his faculty of adjustment, his power to adapt himself to circumstances and to master them. He also appeals because of his small size when compared with the other animals. In the Middle Ages Reynard appealed because it was a satire upon the monks. Of Reynard Carlyle has said, "It comes before us with a character such as can belong only to very few; that of being a true World's Book which through centuries was everywhere at home, the spirit of which diffused itself into all languages and all minds."

About one tenth of European folk-lore is traced to collections used in the Middle Ages: Fables of Bidpai, Seven Wise Masters, Gesta Romanorum, and Barlaam and Josophat. These tales became diffused through the Exempla of the monks, used in their sermons, through the Novelle of Italy, the Decameron of Boccaccio, the Tales of Chaucer, Painter's Palace of Pleasure, and the Elizabethan Drama of England. One half of La Fontaine's Fables are of Indian sources.

1326. The Gesta Romanorum, written in Latin. This was a compilation, by the monks, of stories with a moral appended to each. It was the most popular story-book before the invention of printing. In England it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, of which edition the only known copy is at St. John's College, Cambridge. The earliest manuscript of the collection is dated 1326. Between 1600 and 1703 fifteen editions of the book prove its popularity. One English version is by Sir Frederick Madden, who lived 1801-73. The author of the Gesta Romanorum is unknown, but was likely a German. The stories included are miscellaneous and vary in different editions. Among its stories are Oriental tales, tales of the deeds of Roman Emperors, an early form of Guy of Warwick, the casket episode of The Merchant of Venice, a story of the Jew's bond, a tale of the Emperor Theodosius, being a version of King Lear, the story of the Hermit, and a tale of Aglas, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Pompey, being a version of Atalanta and her Race.

1000 A.D. (about). Shah-Nameh, or King-book of Persia, by Ferdousee, born about 940 A.D. This book is the pride and glory of Persian literature. It was written by the Persian poet at the command of the king, who wished to have preserved the old traditions and heroic glories of Persians before the Arabian conquest. Ferdousee declared that he invented none of his material, but took it from the Bostan-Nameh or Old-Book.

The King-Book is very ancient, it is the Persian Homer. It was the labor of thirty years. It consisted of 56,000 distichs or couplets, for every thousand of which the Sultan had promised the poet one thousand pieces of gold. Instead of the elephant-load of gold promised, the Sultan sent in payment 60,000 small silver coins. This so enraged the poet that he gave away one third to the man who brought them, one third to a seller of refreshments, and one third to the keeper of the bath where the. messenger found him. After the poet's death the insult was retrieved by proper payment. This was refused by his one daughter, but accepted by the other and used to erect a public dike the poet had always desired to build to protect his native town from the river. The fine character of the tales of the King-Book is shown in the tale of Roostem and Soohrab, taken from this book, which Keightley has translated in Tales and Popular Fictions. Keightley considered it superior to any Greek or Latin tale. Modern literature knows this tale through Matthew Arnold's poem.

1548 (not later than). The Thousand and One Nights, Arabian. 12 volumes. Galland's French translation appeared in 1704. This was supplemented by Chavis and Cazotte, and by Caussin de Percival. Monsieur Galland was Professor of Arabic in the Royal College of Paris. He was a master of French and a fairly good scholar of Arabic. He brought his manuscript, dated 1548, to Paris from Constantinople. He severely abbreviated the original, cutting out poetical extracts and improving the somewhat slovenly style. In his translation he gave to English the new words, genie, ogre, and vizier. His work was very popular.

Boulak and Calcutta texts are better than the Galland. They contain about two hundred and fifty stories. The Cairo edition has been admirably translated by Edward W. Lane, in 3 volumes (1839-41) published in London. This is probably the best edition. It also omits many poetical quotations. A recent edition using Lane's translation is by Frances Olcott, published by Holt in 1913. Editions which attempt to be complete versions are by John Payne (13 volumes, 1882-84), and by Sir Richard Burton (16 volumes, 1885-88). Lane and Burton give copious notes of value. The recent edition by Wiggin and Smith used the editions of Scott and Lane.

The stories in Arabian Nights are Indian, Egyptian, Arabian, and Persian. Scenes are laid principally in Bagdad and Cairo. Lane considered that the one hundred and fifteen stories, which are common to all manuscripts, are based on the Pehlevi original. The idea of the frame of the story came from India. This was the birth of the serial story. There is authority for considering the final collection to have been made in Egypt. Cairo is described most minutely and the customs are of Egypt of the thirteenth century and later. The stories must have been popular in Egypt as they were mentioned by an historian, 1400-70. Lane considered that the final Arabic collection bears to Persian tales the same relation that the Aeneid does to the Odyssey. Life depicted is Arabic, and there is an absence of the great Persian heroes. Internal evidence assists in dating the work. Coffee is mentioned only three times. As its use became popular in the East in the fourteenth century this indicates the date of the work to be earlier than the very common use of coffee. Cannon, which are mentioned, were known in Egypt in 1383. Additions to the original were probably made as late as the sixteenth century. The Arabian Nights has been the model for many literary attempts to produce the Oriental tale, of which the tales of George Meredith are notable examples.

Thomas Keightley, in Tales and Popular Fictions, considered Persia the original country of The Thousand and One Nights, and The Voyages of Sinbad, originally a separate work. He showed how some of these tales bear marks of Persian extraction and how some had made their way to Europe through oral transmission before the time of Galland's translation. He selected the tale, "Cleomedes and Claremond," and proved that it must have been learned by a certain Princess Blanche, of Castile, and transmitted by her to France about 1275. This romance must have traveled to Spain from the East. It is the, same as "The Enchanted Horse" in The Thousand and One Nights, and through Keightley's proof, is originally Persian. Keightley also selected the Straparola tale, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird, and proved it to be the same as Grimm's Three Little Birds, as a Persian Arabian Night's tale, and also as La Princesse Belle Etoile, of D'Aulnoy. But as Galland's translation appeared only the year after Madame D'Aulnoy's death, Madame D'Aulnoy must have obtained the tale elsewhere than from the first printed version of Arabian Nights.

No date. The Thousand and One Days. This is a Persian collection containing the "History of Calaf."

1550. Straparola's Nights, by Straparola. This collection of jests, riddles, and twenty-one stories was published in Venice. The stories were taken from oral tradition, from the lips of ten young women. Some were agreeable, some unfit, so that the book was forbidden in Rome, in 1605, and an abridged edition prepared. There was a complete Venetian edition in 1573, a German translation in 1679, a French one in 1611, and a good German one with valuable notes, by Schmidt, in 1817. Straparola's Nights contained stories similar to the German The Master Thief, The Little Peasant, Hans and the Hedge-Hog, Iron Hans, The Four Brothers, The Two Brothers, and Dr. Know-all.

1637. The Pentamerone, by Basile. Basile spent his early youth in Candia or Crete, which was owned by Venice. He traveled much in Italy, following.his sister, who was a noted singer, to Mantua. He probably died in 1637. There may have been an earlier edition of The Pentamerone, which sold out. It was republished in Naples in 1645, 1674, 1714, 1722, 1728, 1749, 1788, and in Rome in 1679. This was the best collection of tales formed by a nation for a long time. The traditions were complete, and the author had a special talent for collecting them, and an intimate knowledge of dialect. This collection of fifty stories may be looked upon as the basis of many others. Basile wrote independently of Straparola, though a few tales are common to both. He was very careful not to alter the tale as he took it down from the people. He told his stories with allusions to manners and customs, to old stories and mythology. He abounds in picturesque, proverbial expressions, with turns and many similes, and displays a delightful exuberance of fancy. A valuable translation, with notes, was written by Felix Liebrecht, in 1842, and an English one by John Edward Taylor, in 1848. Keightley, in Fairy Mythology, has translated three of these tales and in Tales and Popular Fictions, two tales. Keightley's were the first translations of these tales into any language other than Italian. Among the stories of Basile are the German Cinderella, How Six got on in the World, Rapunzel, Snow White, Dame Holle, Briar Rose, and Hansel and Grethel.

1697. The Tales of Mother Goose, by Charles Perrault. In France the collecting of fairy tales began in the seventeenth century. French, German, and Italian tales were all derived independently by oral tradition. In 1696, in Recueil, a magazine published by Moetjens, at The Hague, appeared The Story of Sleeping Beauty, by Perrault. In 1697 appeared seven other tales by Perrault. Eight stories were published in 12mo, under a title borrowed from a fabliau, Contes de ma Mere l'Oye. In a later edition three stories were added, The Ass's Skin, The Clever Princess, and The Foolish Wishes. The tales of Perrault were:--

1. The Fairies.

2. The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood.

3. Bluebeard.

4. Little Red Riding Hood.

5. Puss-in-Boots.

6. Cinderella.

7. Rique with the Tuft.

8. Little Thumb.

9. The Ass's Skin.

10. The Clever Princess.

11. The Foolish Wishes.

Immediately afterwards the tales appeared published at Paris in a volume entitled, Histoires on Contes du Temps Passe, avec des Moralites--Contes de ma Mere l'Oye. The earliest translation into English was in a book containing French and English, Tales of Passed Times, by Mother Goose, with Morals. Written in French by M. Charles Perrault and Englished by R. S., Gent. An English translation by Mr. Samber was advertised in the English Monthly Chronicle, March, 1729. Andrew Lang, with an introduction, has edited these tales from the original edition, published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1888. These tales made their way slowly in England, but gradually eclipsed the native English tales and legends which had been discouraged by Puritan influence. In Perrault's time, when this influence was beginning to decline, they superseded the English tales, crowding out all but Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Hickathrift, Jack and the Beanstalk, Tom Thumb, and Childe Rowland.

1650-1705. Fairy Tales, by Madame D'Aulnoy. In France there were many followers of Perrault. The most important of these was Madame D'Aulnoy. She did not copy Perrault. She was a brilliant, witty countess, and brought into her tales, entitled Contes de Fees, the graces of the court. She adhered less strictly to tradition than Perrault, and handled her material freely, making additions, amplifications, and moral reflections, to the original tale. Her weaving together of incidents is artistic and her style graceful and not unpleasing. It is marked by ornamentation, sumptuousness, and French sentimentality. It shows a lack of naivete resulting from the palace setting given to her tales, making them adapted only to children of high rank. Often her tale is founded on a beautiful tradition. The Blue-Bird, one of the finest of her tales, was found in the poems of Marie de France, in the thirteenth century. Three of her tales were borrowed from Straparola. Among her tales the most important are:--

Graciosa and Percinet. (Basile.)

The Blue-Bird. (Contains a motif similar to one in The Singing, Soaring Lark.)

The White Cat. (Similar to Three Feathers and The Miller's Boy and the Cat.)

The Hind in the Wood. (Similar to Rumpelstiltskin.)

The Good Little Mouse. (Basile.)

The Fair One with the Golden Locks. (Ferdinand the Faithful.)

The Yellow Dwarf.

Princess Belle Etoile. (Straparola.)

The careful translation of Madame D'Aulnoy's tales by Mr. Planche faithfully preserves the spirit of the original.

There were many imitators of Countess D'Aulnoy, in France, in the eighteenth century. Their work was on a much lower level and became published in the Cabinet des Fees, a collection of stories including in its forty volumes the work of many authors, of which the greater part is of little value. Of those following D'Aulnoy three deserve mention:--

1711-1780. Moral Tales, by Madame de Beaumont. These were collected while the author was in England. Of these we use Prince Cherry. Madame de Beaumont wrote a children's book in which is found a tale similar to The Singing, Soaring Lark, entitled The Maiden and the Beast. She also wrote 69 volumes of romance.

1765. Tales, by Madame Villeneuve. Of these we use Beauty and the Beast.

1692-1765. Tales, by Comte de Caylus. The author was an antiquarian and scholar. Of his tales we use Sylvain and Yocosa.

Very little attempt has been made in modern times to include in our children's literature the best of foreign literature for children, for there has been very little study of foreign books for children. Certainly the field of children's literature would be enriched to receive translations of any books worthy of the name classic. A partial list of French fairy tales is here given, indicating to children's librarians how little has been done to open up this field, and inviting their labor:--

Bibliotheque Rose, a collection. (What should be included?)

Bibliotheque des Petits Enfants, a collection. (What should be included?)

1799-1874. Fairy Tales from the French, by Madame de Segur. These tales are published by Winston. We also use her Story of a Donkey, written in 1860 and published by Heath in 1901.

1866. Fairy Tales of all Nations, by Edouard Laboulaye.

1902. Last Fairy Tales, also by Laboulaye.

Tales, by Zenaide Fleuriot. (What should be included?)

1910. Chanteeler, by Edmund Rostand. Translated by Gertrude Hall, published by Duffield.

1911. The Honey Bee, by Anatole France; translated by Mrs. Lane; published by Lane.

1911. The Blue-Bird, by Maurice Maeterlinck; published by Dodd.

In Great Britain many old tales taken from tradition were included in the Welsh Mabinogion, Irish sagas, and Cornish Mabinogion. Legends of Brittany were made known by the poems of Marie de France, who lived in the thirteenth century. These were published in Paris, in 1820. In fact, most of the early publications of fairy tales were taken from the French.

Celtic tales have been collected in modern times in a greater number than those of any nation. This has been due largely to the work of J. F. Campbell. Celtic tales are unusual in that they have been collected while the custom of story-telling is yet flourishing among the Folk. They are therefore of great literary and imaginative interest. They are especially valuable as the oldest of the European tales. The Irish tale of Connla and the Fairy Maiden has been traced to a date earlier than the fifth century and therefore ranks as the oldest tale of modern Europe. The principal Celtic collections are:--