About Some of Our Older Books
All people in the world tell fairytales to their children. The Japanese tell them, the
Chinese, the American Indians and the Eskimos to pass the long wintry nights. Native
South Africans tell them, Greeks, as did the old Egyptians, when Moses had not long
been rescued out of the bulrushes. The Germans, French, Spanish, Italians, Danes,
Koryaks and Kalmykians tell them, and the stories are apt to be like each other every-
where. However much nations and politicians differ over policy and ideology, all their
children agree to liking fairy tales. Maybe there’s a lesson for adults in this somewhere?
EXACTLY what is a FAIRY TALE or why call them FAIRY STORIES? One cannot imagine
a child saying, 'Tell me a folk-tale', or 'Another nursery tale, please, grandma'. Fairy
tales are stories in which something 'fairy' occurs, something extraordinary–fairies,
giants, dwarfs, speaking animals, or the remarkable stupidity of some of the characters.
Many of the Folk-Lorists of the day, Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Lang, John Campbell (better
known as “John of Islay”) and others, flouted the Florklorist’s creed, choosing to present
stories that would fill children's imaginations “with bright trains of images”. Vividly painted
princesses, Pied Pipers, pots of gold, giants, speaking cats, Kings, Hoybahs, wise men,
Knights in Shining Armour, washerwomen, fools and their follies and more overflow from
these the tales in these books, all bound by the common threads of basic moral lessons.
Many of the tales were recorded verbatim from storytellers. They are by no means in an
authorised form, and even touch on the “vulgar” using archaic and colloquial English. In
the times , the literary establishment objected to the use of such archaic colloquialisms.
These tales were told for generations in a form that used these dialects and ”vulgar”
words for effect. However, we believe the traditional form makes these stories all the
richer in a modern setting.
On this site, you will find these classic tales re-published in their original form with the
same vibrancy and vividity (if there is such a word) that captured the imaginations of
thousands of children almost century ago.