lder members of families would recite the stories from memory for the
delectation of the younger fry, when all foregathered in a crescent
before the kitchen fire to wear out the long winter evenings. In this
manner, under the dim-flickering light of an "oilie cruizie," in a
straggling village in Perthshire, did I learn first of Blue Beard and
Jack the Giant Killer, and many another hero of chapbook literature. And
my experience, I am sure, was by no means singular. Rather, I feel
certain that while telling thus my own, I am expressing no less truly
the experience of many thousands of men and women now beyond middle life
who similarly were born and bred in any rural parish in Scotland. And,
oh, the weird fascination of it all! There was no doubting of Blue
Beard's reality; no hesitation in accepting as actual every
extraordinary feat of Jack the Giant Killer. Both were as real in our
innocent imagination as is now the personality of King Edward the
Seventh. It never occurred to us then, as it does now, that the story of
Blue Beard is only a gory and fantastic parody of the history of Eden--a
temptation, a fall, and a rescue. And we had no concern about
authorship. We did not know then, as we do now--and as few are yet
aware, perhaps--that _Blue Beard_, _Cinderella_, and _Little Red Riding
Hood_ were all written by Charles Perrault, a celebrated French
literateur and poet, who was born in Paris in 1628, and died there in
1703. And to have been told, as we have recently been, on authority that
Perrault's Blue Beard--the Comte Gilles de Rais--was no mere wife-killer
(though he was such) but from his youth upwards, in the fifteenth
century, a man of exquisite culture, and a soldier under Joan of Arc,
would have made for disillusionment so emphatic as to have shred the
tale of a serious amount of its blood-curdling charm. As I can still
enjoy reading them, it is a real pleasure to embrace here these old-time
examples of child literature. Such as follow--and all the more popular
will be found in the list--are printed _verbatim_ from the chapbooks now
unobtainable, except at a ransom price--and without individual
comment--none being required.

BLUE BEARD.

There was, some time ago, a gentleman who was extremely rich: he had
elegant town and country houses; his dishes and plates were of gold or
silver; his rooms were hung with damask; his chairs and sofas were
covered with the richest silks; and his carriages were all m