English Fairy Tales (Puffin Classics) - Softcover

Jacobs, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140351086 ISBN 13: 9780140351088

Publisher: Puffin, 1990

Synopsis

Who says that English folk have no fairy-tales of their own? The present volume contains only a selection out of some 140, of which I have found traces in this country. It is probable that many more exist. A quarter of the tales in this volume, have been collected during the last ten years or so, and some of them have not been hitherto published. Up to 1870 it was equally said of France and of Italy, that they possessed no folk-tales. Yet, within fifteen years from that date, over 1000 tales had been collected in each country. I am hoping that the present volume may lead to equal activity in this country, and would earnestly beg any reader of this book who knows of similar tales, to communicate them, written down as they are told, to me, care of Mr. Nutt. The only reason, I imagine, why such tales have not hitherto been brought to light, is the lamentable gap between the governing and recording classes and the dumb working classes of this country—dumb to others but eloquent among themselves. It would be no unpatriotic task to help to bridge over this gulf, by giving a common fund of nursery literature to all classes of the English people, and, in any case, it can do no harm to add to the innocent gaiety of the nation. A word or two as to our title seems necessary. We have called our stories Fairy Tales though few of them speak of fairies. [Footnote: For some recent views on fairies and tales about fairies, see Notes.] The same remark applies to the collection of the Brothers Grimm and to all the other European collections, which contain exactly the same classes of tales as ours. Yet our stories are what the little ones mean when they clamour for "Fairy Tales," and this is the only name which they give to them. One cannot imagine a child saying, "Tell us a folk-tale, nurse," or "Another nursery tale, please, grandma." As our book is intended for the little ones, we have indicated its contents by the name they use. The words "Fairy Tales" must accordingly be taken to include tales in which occurs something "fairy," something extraordinary—fairies, giants, dwarfs, speaking animals. It must be taken also to cover tales in which what is extraordinary is the stupidity of some of the actors. Many of the tales in this volume, as in similar collections for other European countries, are what the folklorists call Drolls. They serve to justify the title of Merrie England, which used to be given to this country of ours, and indicate unsuspected capacity for fun and humour among the unlettered classes. The story of Tom Tit Tot, which opens our collection, is unequalled among all other folk-tales I am acquainted with, for its combined sense of humour and dramatic power. The first adjective of our title also needs a similar extension of its meaning. I have acted on Molière's principle, and have taken what was good wherever I could find it. Thus, a couple of these stories have been found among descendants of English immigrants in America; a couple of others I tell as I heard them myself in my youth in Australia. One of the best was taken down from the mouth of an English Gipsy. I have also included some stories that have only been found in Lowland Scotch. I have felt justified in doing this, as of the twenty-one folk-tales contained in Chambers' "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," no less than sixteen are also to be found in an English form. With the Folk-tale as with the Ballad, Lowland Scotch may be regarded as simply a dialect of English, and it is a mere chance whether a tale is extant in one or other, or both. I have also rescued and re-told a few Fairy Tales that only exist now-a-days in the form of ballads. There are certain indications that the "common form" of the English Fairy Tale was the cante-fable, a mixture of narrative and verse of which the most illustrious example in literature is "Aucassin et Nicolette."

About this title

Book Description:

A classic collection of English Fairy Tales, illustrated in colour by Arthur Rackham.

About the Author:

Born in Australia in 1854, Joseph Jacobs spent most of his adult life in England where he became, with Andrew Lang, a prominent member of the English Folk Lore Society founded in 1878. He spent ten years collecting from storytellers or printed sources the fairy tales that were first published in two volumes in 1890 and 1894 and now appear here in one Everyman’s Library volume. Jacobs was a cheerful man, with a down-to-earth attitude towards fairy tales, which he regarded as “essentially colloquial” rather than romantic. Though his approach to collecting and recording material was scholarly, his telling of the tales was deliberately directed at young listeners, and he tried them out on his own three children. He died in 1916.

About this edition

• Publisher: Puffin
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0140351086
• ISBN 13: 9780140351088
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Gill Margery