Fairy tale

“ We have seen here that the fairy tale must contain the child's interests and it must be able to stand the test of a true classic. It must stand the test of literature in its appeal to emotion and to imagination, in its appeal to the intellect through its basis of truth, and to the language-sense through its perfection of form; it must stand the test of the short-story and of good narration and of description. ”

“ And a fairy tale was a thing to be wondered at and spoken of in awed whispers; for no one thought of doubting its truth.
To-day the fairies are shy; for so many curious inventions of men have come into use that the wonders of Fairyland are somewhat tame beside them, and even the boys and girls can not be so easily interested or surprised as in the old days. So the sweet and gentle little immortals perform their tasks unseen and unknown, and live mostly in their own beautiful realms, where they are almost unthought of by our busy, bustling world. ”

“ A Fairy Tale is the true history of the human heart—it is a dream of youth realized! How many country-girls have fancied themselves princesses, nay, what country-girl ever was there that, some time or other, did not? A Fairy Tale is what the world would be, if every one had their wishes or their desserts, if our power 437and our passions were equal. ”

“ It must learn, from Alice in Wonderland and from A Child's Garden of Verses, that the modern fairy tale is not a Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, but the modern fairy tale is the child's mind. The real fairy world is the strangeness and beauty of the child mind's point of view. It is the duty and privilege of the modern fairy tale to interpret the child's psychology and to present the child's philosophy of life. ”

“ Can we watch the rise and growth of a fairy or popular tale in modern times, and pursue it from the time when it was no popular tale through all the vicissitudes and changes it underwent, till it became a genuine popular tale, gathered afterwards from the lips of the illiterate? If we are able to do this, then I think we may well attempt to explain in a similar way all, or nearly all, other fairy-tales, especially when the conditions are the same as those of the tale studied. ”

“ And the fairy-tale comes to life again in the Odyssey of the poor boy who wandered at random, picking up his food at hazard, facing misfortune with a stout heart, and smiling whenever he could at the poem of Nature, who always had some fresh surprise in store for him. ”

“ As such Pater would say, "For Art comes to you, proposing to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake. Not the fruit of experience, but experience, is the end." Such quality came from the art of the fairy tale into the walk of a little girl, for whom even the much-tabooed topic of the weather took on a new, fresh charm. ”

“ For fairy natures are compounded all
Of whimsies and of freaks fantastical,
And what the best of fairies loves the best
(Except pure kindness) is an artless jest.
And so wise men have argued, on the whole,
That the misguided creatures have no soul;
But as for me, if the bright fairy elf
Has none, I'll get along without, myself!
These fairies laughed and danced and sang sweet songs,
And did all else that to their craft belongs,—
All tricks and pranks of whole-souled jollity
That make life merry 'neath the greenwood tree. ”

“ There is in us all an instinctive admiration for the adventurous spirit of the fairy tale which challenges the might that is cruel and devastating, and for the good offices of the fairies which help to vindicate the cause of the noble in its conflict with the ignoble, right with wrong. ”

“ We have called our stories Fairy Tales though few of them speak of fairies. [Footnote: For some recent views on fairies and tales about fairies, see Notes.] The same remark applies to the collection of the Brothers Grimm and to all the other European collections, which contain exactly the same classes of tales as ours. Yet our stories are what the little ones mean when they clamour for “Fairy Tales,” and this is the only name which they give to them. One cannot imagine a child saying, “Tell us a folk-tale, nurse,” or “Another nursery tale, please, grandma.” ”

“ The play, The Light Bird, and the tale, The Bremen Town Musicians, both offer an opportunity for the child to express that pursuit of a light afar off, a theme which appeals to childhood. The fairy tale, because it presents an organized form of human experience, helps to organize the mind and gives to play the values of human life. By contributing so largely to the play spirit, fairy tales contribute to that joy of activity, of achievement, of coöperation, and of judgment, which is the joy of all work. ”

“ I am of the opinion that a certain distinction should be made between fairy tales and narratives which are commonly called stories. When I tell you that I will relate a fairy tale, you would at the outset count upon its treating of events outside of the usual course of life and of its being located in a kingdom entirely different from any thing on earth. ”

“ We began with a fairy tale. Have I any right to take advantage of that fairy tale? Has not that fairy tale really and truly come to an end?
Patricia. Yes. That fairy tale has really and truly come to an end. [Looks at him a little in the old mystical manner.] It is very hard for a fairy tale to come to an end. If you leave it alone it lingers everlastingly. Our fairy tale has come to an end in the only way a fairy tale can come to an end. The only way a fairy tale can leave off being a fairy tale.
Conjurer. ”

“ Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. ”

“ In the average fairy tale these three concomitants are so blended that the dominating character is the fairy, who eventually prevails over the machinations of the wicked witch and the brutal giant. As the fairy represents love and kindness, a most important lesson is impressed upon the mind of the child. There is also a good reason for the witch and the giant. ”

“ In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone. ”

“ Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: ”

“ 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:—
I. 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. ”

“ And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For ‘happy summer days’ gone by,
And vanish’d summer glory—
It shall not touch with breath of bale
The pleasance of our fairy-tale. ”

“ Thy loving smile will surely hail
The love-gift of a fairy-tale. ”

“ The fairy tale in its original form was probably suggested by the changing seasons. In Winter the earth, the fairy princess, begins her long sleep. In the Springtime comes the sun, the fairy prince, and at the touch of his kiss the earth awakes to new life and beauty.
From the poem as here given, The Prologue, L’Envoi and The Epilogue are omitted. In The Prologue the poet tells his companion, Lady Flora, that the sight of her beauty as she lay asleep had called to his mind an image of The Sleeping Beauty, and that in his “day dream” he had recalled the old legend. ”

“ I ventured to say, "if both church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either. ”

“ 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 few stories about fairies that I have been able to collect are given in these pages, and are very much the same as those related in other countries. Of the more elaborate fairy tale—that which recounts the adventures of a life-time, and in which a supernatural being—commonly called a fairy, but who has little or nothing in common with the fays who dance on the green sward by the light of the moon—is the directing influence either for good or bad,—I have been able to discover only the very slightest trace. ”

“ If one keeps this aim in mind, instructive material is abundant. The fairy tale introduces various employments and callings, from the king to the farmer, tailor, and shoemaker. Many passages in life, such as betrothal, marriage, and burial, are presented. Labors in the house, yard, and field, and numerous animals, plants, and inanimate things are touched upon. For the observation of animals and for the relation between them and children, it is fortunate that the fairy tale presents them as talking and feeling. ”

“ Of the manifold, concentrated, accumulated symbolisms of the fairy-tale fragment, especially the comparison with the fruitfulness of the earth which is repeatedly found in mythology, I will only note that in dreams the same theme is quite as commonly treated in various forms. ”

“ The kindergarten and first-grade teacher must therefore look to find her material anywhere in the whole field and intimately related with the whole. Special attention has been placed upon the English fairy tale as the tale of our language. As we claim an American literature since the days of Washington Irving, the gradual growth of the American fairy tale has been included, for which we gratefully acknowledge the courtesy of the Librarian of the United States Bureau of Education and the Bibliographer of the Library of Congress. ”

“ But this saying is traceable at least to the third story of the fourth night in Straparola, translated by Keightley, The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Beautiful Green Bird, in which the bird tells the King that his three guests are his own children. "Even a cat may look at a king," is probably traceable to some fairy tale if not to Puss-in-Boots. The philosophy in the fairy tales and the proverbs that have arisen in them, are subjects which offer to the adult much pleasure and fruitfulness. ”

“ The child is interested, too, in the strange people he meets in the fairy tales: the clever little elves who lived in the groves and danced on the grass; the dwarfs who inhabited the earth-rocks and the hills; the trolls who dwelt in the wild pine forest or the rocky spurs, who ate men or porridge, and who fled at the noise of bells; the fairies who pleased with their red caps, green jackets, and sprightly ways; the beautiful fairy godmother who waved her wonderful wand ”

“ Their wishes drew down from heaven the wonder-bird, Phantasy, most brilliant of plumage although intermingled with its feathers, were some of [8] the deepest black: the egg deposited by this bright bird, contained the Golden Fairy Tales: and as the affection of the children for Fairy Lore grew stronger from day to day, enlivening and making happy the time of their childhood, the stories themselves wandered forth, and were welcomed alike in hall and palace, castle and cottage, ever growing in charms and novelty, till they at length received the mission of pleasing manhood also. ”

“ Through its repeated impression of the idea of fairyhood it may implant in the child a desire which may fructify into that pure, generous, disinterested kindness and love of the grown-up, which aims to play fairy to another, with sincere altruism to make appear before his eyes his heart's desire, or in a twinkling to cause what hitherto seemed impossible. Fairy tales thus are harbingers of that helpfulness which would make a new earth, and as such afford a contribution to the religion of life. ”

“ The illustrations now take on a mysterious, unreal, esthetic quality, in harmony with the world of fairy lore, and train the imagination as much as the direct words of the author. The child realizes that the forest scenes which furnish the background for so many of his favorite fairy tales have a subtle beauty which has never been seen by him. Gradually through such pictures he is led to seek an ideal beauty in the real world. ”

“ But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple blossoms: ‘Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.’ These fairies try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. ”