The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crimson Fairy Book, by Various

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Title: The Crimson Fairy Book

Author: Various

Editor: Andrew Lang

Release Date: December, 2000 [Etext #2435]
Posting Date: December 1, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK ***

Produced by J.C. Byers

THE CRIMSON FAIRY BOOK

By Various

Edited by Andrew Lang

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 that, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago, some
savage grandmother told a tale to a savage granddaughter; that the
granddaughter told it in her turn; that various tellers made changes to
suit their taste, adding or omitting features and incidents; that, as
the world grew civilised, other alterations were made, and that, at
last, Homer composed the 'Odyssey,' and somebody