A Study of Fairy Tales Part 17

11. The Foolish Wishes.

Immediately afterwards the tales appeared published at Paris in a volume ent.i.tled, _Histoires ou Contes du Temps Pa.s.se, avec des Moralites--Contes de ma Mere l'Oye_. The earliest translation into English was in a book containing French and English, _Tales of Pa.s.sed 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 In Perrault's time, when this influence was beginning to decline, they superseded the English tales, crowding out all but _Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Hickathrift, Jack and the Beanstalk, Tom Thumb_, and _Childe Rowland_.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, ent.i.tled _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 navete 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_, ent.i.tled _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 cla.s.sic. 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 Pet.i.ts 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. _Chantecler_, 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 princ.i.p.al Celtic collections are:--

_Iolo M. S_., published by the Welsh M. S. Society.

_Mabinogion_, translated by Lady Guest. (Contains tales that trace back to the twelfth century.)

_Y Cymrodor_, by Professor Rhys.

1825. _Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland_, by T. Crofton Croker.

1842. _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_. Chambers.

1860-62. _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, by J.F.

Campbell.

_Tales_, collected and published with notes, by Mr. Alfred Nutt.

1866. By Patrick Kennedy, the Irish Grimm. _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts; Fireside Stories of Ireland_ (1870); and _Bardic Stories of Ireland_ (1871).

In England the publication of fairy tales may be followed more readily because the language proves no hindrance and the literature gives a.s.sistance. In England the princ.i.p.al publications of fairy tales were:--

1604. _Pasquil's Jests_. Contained a tale similar to one of Grimm's.

1635. _A Tract, A Descryption of the Kynge and Quene of Fairies, their habit, fare, abode, pomp, and state_.

Eighteenth century (early). _Madame D'Aulnoy's Tales_, a translation.

1667-1745. _Gulliver's Travels_, by Dean Swift. (One modern edition, with introduction by W.D. Howells, and more than one hundred ill.u.s.trations by Louis Rhead, is published by Harpers. Another edition, ill.u.s.trated by Arthur Rackham, is published by Dutton.)

1700-1800. _Chap-Books_. Very many of these books, especially the best ones, were published by William and Cluer Dicey, in Aldermary Church Yard, Bow Lane, London.

Rival publishers, whose editions were rougher in engraving, type, and paper, labored in Newcastle.

The chap-books were little paper books hawked by chap-men, or traveling peddlers, who went from village to village with "Almanacks, Bookes of Newes, or other trifling wares." These little books were usually from sixteen to twenty-four pages in bulk and in size from two and one half inches by three and one half inches to five and one half inches by four and one quarter inches. They sold for a penny or six-pence and became the very popular literature of the middle and lower cla.s.ses of their time. After the nineteenth century they became widely published, deteriorated, and gradually were crowded out by the _Penny Magazine_ and _Chambers's Penny Tracts and Miscellanies_. For many years before the Victorian period, folk-lore was left to the peasants and kept out of reach of the children of the higher cla.s.ses.

This was the reign of the moral tale, of Thomas Bewick's _Looking Gla.s.s of the Mind_ and Mrs. Sherwood's _Henry and His Bearer_. Among the chap-books published by William and Cluer Dicey, may be mentioned: _The Pleasant and Delightful History of Jack and the Giants_ (part second was printed and sold by J. White); _Guy, Earl of Warwick; Bevis of Hampton; The History of Reynard the Fox_, dated 1780; _The History of Fortunatus_, condensed from an edition of 1682; _The Fryer and the Boy; A True Tale of Robin Hood_ (Robin Hood Garland Blocks, from 1680, were used in the London Bridge Chap-Book edition); _The Famous History of Thomas Thumb; The History of Sir Richard Whittington_; and _The Life and Death of St.

George. Tom Hickathrift_ was printed by and for M. Angus and Son, at Newcastle-in-the-Side: _Valentine and Orson_ was printed at Lyons, France, in 1489; and in England by Wynkyn de Worde. Among the chap-books many tales not fairy tales were included. With the popularity of _Goody Two Shoes_ and the fifty little books issued by Newbery, the realistic tale of modern times made a st.u.r.dy beginning. Of these realistic chap-books one of the most popular was _The History of Little Tom Trip_, probably by Goldsmith, engraved by the famous Thomas Bewick, published by T. Saint, of Newcastle.

This was reprinted by Ed. Pearson in 1867.

Of _Jack the Giant-Killer_, in Skinner's _Folk-Lore_, David Ma.s.son has said: "Our _Jack the Giant-Killer_ is clearly the last modern trans.m.u.tation of the old British legend, told in Geoffrey of Monmouth, of Corineus the Trojan, the companion of the Trojan Brutus when he first settled in Britain; which Corineus, being a very strong man, and particularly good-humored, is satisfied with being King of Cornwall, and killing out all the aboriginal giants there, leaving to Brutus all the rest of the island, and only stipulating that, whenever there is a peculiarly difficult giant in any part of Brutus' dominions, he shall be sent for to finish the fellow."

_Tom Hickathrift_, whose history is given in an old number of _Fraser's Magazine_, is described by Thackeray as one of the publisher Cundall's books, bound in blue and gold, ill.u.s.trated by Frederick Taylor in 1847. According to Thackeray this chap-book tale was written by Fielding.