The Project Gutenberg EBook of More English Fairy Tales, by Various

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Title: More English Fairy Tales

Author: Various

Release Date: December 2, 2004 [EBook #14241]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MORE ENGLISH FAIRY TALES ***

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[Illustration: Janet casts the Flaming Sword into the Well]

MORE ENGLISH FAIRY TALES

Collected and Edited by

JOSEPH JACOBS

Editor of "Folk-Lore"

Illustrated by

JOHN D. BATTEN

G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London

_YOU KNOW HOW
TO GET INTO THIS BOOK_

_Knock at the Knocker on the Door,
Pull the Bell at the side._

_Then, if you are_ very _quiet, you will hear
a teeny tiny voice say through the grating_
"Take down the Key." _This you will find at the
back: you cannot mistake it, for it has J. J.
in the wards. Put the Key in the Keyhole, which
it fits exactly, unlock the door, and_

_WALK IN_

Fourteenth Impression

To

MY SON SYDNEY

AETAT. XIII

Preface

This volume will come, I fancy, as a surprise both to my brother
folk-lorists and to the public in general. It might naturally have been
thought that my former volume (_English Fairy Tales_) had almost
exhausted the scanty remains of the traditional folk-tales of England.
Yet I shall be much disappointed if the present collection is not found
to surpass the former in interest and vivacity, while for the most part
it goes over hitherto untrodden ground, the majority of the tales in
this book have either never appeared before, or have never been brought
between the same boards.

In putting these tales together, I have acted on the same principles as
in the preceding volume, which has already, I am happy to say,
established itself as a kind of English Grimm. I have taken English
tales wherever I could find them, one from the United States, some from
the Lowland Scotch, and a few have been adapted from ballads, while I
have left a couple in their original metrical form. I have rewritten
most of them, and in doing so have adop