tion>Andrew Lang
The Crimson Fairy Book
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4057664165299
Table of Contents
The Boy Who Could Keep A Secret
The Prince Who Would Seek Immortality
Tritill, Litill, And The Birds
How the Beggar Boy Turned into Count Piro
The Death Of Abu Nowas And Of His Wife
How The Wicked Tanuki Was Punished
The Horse Gullfaxi And The Sword Gunnfoder
The Story Of The Sham Prince, Or The Ambitious Tailor
Preface
Each Fairy Book demands a preface from the Editor, and these introductions are inevitably both monotonous and unavailing. A sense of literary honesty compels the Editor to keep repeating that he is the Editor, and not the author of the Fairy Tales, just as a distinguished man of science is only the Editor, not the Author of Nature. Like nature, popular tales are too vast to be the creation of a single modern mind. The Editor’s business is to hunt for collections of these stories told by peasant or savage grandmothers in many climes, from New Caledonia to Zululand; from the frozen snows of the Polar regions to Greece, or Spain, or Italy, or far Lochaber. When the tales are found they are adapted to the needs of British children by various hands, the Editor doing little beyond guarding the interests of propriety, and toning down to mild reproofs the tortures inflicted on wicked stepmothers, and other naughty characters.
These explanations have frequently been offered already; but, as far as ladies and children are concerned, to no purpose. They still ask the Editor how he can invent so many stories—more than Shakespeare, Dumas, and Charles Dickens could have invented in a century. And the Editor still avers, in Prefaces, that he did not invent one of the stories; that nobody knows, as a rule, who invented them, or where, or when. It is only plain
