und the son's version better than the one
he had contemplated and gave that to the world instead.

These stories made their way slowly in England at first, but in the end
they nearly eclipsed the native fairy tales and legends, which, owing to
Puritan influence, had been frowned upon and discouraged until they were
remembered only in the remoter districts, and told only by the few who
had not come under its sway. Indeed, the Puritanical objection to
nursery lore of all kinds still lingers in some corners of England.

The stories of Perrault came in just when the severer manifestations of
Puritanism were beginning to decline, and they have since become as much
a part of English fairy lore as the old English folk and fairy tales
themselves. These latter, thanks to Mr. Joseph Jacob, Mr. Andrew Lang,
Mr. E.S. Hartland, and others, have been unearthed and revived, and
prove to have lost nothing of their power of taking hold upon the minds
of the little folk.

Perrault says of his collection that it is certain these stories excite
in the children who read them the desire to resemble those characters
who become happy, and at the same time they inspire them with the fear
of the consequences which happen to those who do ill deeds; and he
claims that they all contain a very distinct moral which is more or less
evident to all who read them.

Emerson says: "What Nature at one time provides for use, she afterwards
turns to ornament," and Herbert Spencer, following out this idea,
remarks that "the fairy lore, which in times past was matter of grave
belief and held sway over people's conduct, has since been transformed
into ornament for _The Midsummer Night's Dream_, _The Tempest_, _The
Fairy Queen_, and endless small tales and poems; and still affords
subjects for children's story books, amuses boys and girls, and becomes
matter for jocose allusion."

Thus, also, Sir Walter Scott, in a note to "The Lady of the Lake," says:
"The mythology of one period would appear to pass into the romance of
the next, and that into the nursery tales of subsequent ages," and Max
Mueller, in his "Chips from a German Workshop," says: "The gods of
ancient mythology were changed into the demigods and heroes of ancient
epic poetry, and these demigods again became at a later age the
principal characters of our nursery tales."

These thoughts may help to a better understanding of some of the uses of
such stories and of their proper place in children's