till
about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and
Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des Fes, a
collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of
them into 'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up
himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when
they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send
them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to
write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is
impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale; you can only mix up and
dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new dresses,
as Miss Thackeray did so well in 'Five Old Friends.' If any big girl
of fourteen reads this preface, let her insist on being presented with
'Five Old Friends.'

But the three hundred and sixty-five authors who try to write new fairy
tales are very tiresome. They always begin with a little boy or girl who
goes out and meets the fairies of polyanthuses and gardenias and apple
blossoms: 'Flowers and fruits, and other winged things.' These fairies
try to be funny, and fail; or they try to preach, and succeed. Real
fairies never preach or talk slang. At the end, the little boy or girl
wakes up and finds that he has been dreaming.

Such are the new fairy stories. May we be preserved from all the sort of
them!

Our stories are almost all old, some from Ireland, before that island
was as celebrated for her wrongs as for her verdure; some from Asia,
made, I dare say, before the Aryan invasion; some from Moydart,
Knoydart, Morar and Ardnamurchan, where the sea streams run like great
clear rivers and the saw-edged hills are blue, and men remember Prince
Charlie. Some are from Portugal, where the golden fruits grow in the
Garden of the Hesperides; and some are from wild Wales, and were told at
Arthur's Court; and others come from the firesides of the kinsmen of
the Welsh, the Bretons. There are also modern tales by a learned
Scandinavian named Topelius.

All the stories were translated or adapted by Mrs. Lang, except 'The
Jogi's Punishment' and 'Moti,' done by Major Campbell out of the Pushtoo
language; 'How Brave Walter hunted Wolves,' which, with 'Little Lasse'
and 'The Raspberry Worm,' was done from Topelius by Miss Harding; and
'The Sea King's Gift,' by Miss Christie, from the same author.

It has been suggested to the Editor that childr