THE
YELLOW FAIRY BOOK
London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.
New York: 15 East 16th Street.
THE
Yellow Fairy Book
EDITED BY
ANDREW LANG
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1894
All rights reserved
Dedication
TO
JOAN, TODDLES, AND TINY
All true, or just as good as true,
And here's the Yellow Book for you!
And puzzling to a curly head,
Yet leads to Books—Green, Blue, and Red
That letters from the first were planned
To guide us into Fairy Land
For by that learning shall you get
To lands where Fairies may be met.
You too, at last, may find, who knows?
The Garden of the Singing Rose.
PREFACE
The Editor thinks that children will readily forgive him for publishing another Fairy Book. We have had the Blue, the Red, the Green, and here is the Yellow. If children are pleased, and they are so kind as to say that they are pleased, the Editor does not care very much for what other people may say. Now, there is one gentleman who seems to think that it is not quite right to print so many fairy tales, with pictures, and to publish them in red and blue covers. He is named Mr. G. Laurence Gomme, and he is president of a learned body called the Folk Lore Society. Once a year he makes his address to his subjects, of whom the Editor is one, and Mr. Joseph Jacobs (who has published many delightful fairy tales with pretty pictures)[1] is another. Fancy, then, the dismay of Mr. Jacobs, and of the Editor, when they heard their president say that he did not think it very nice in them to publish fairy books, above all, red, green, and blue fairy books! They said that they did not see any harm in it, and they were ready to 'put themselves on their country,' and be tried by a jury of children. And, indeed, they still see no harm in what they have done; nay, like Father William in the poem, they are ready 'to do it again and again.'
Where is the harm? The truth is that the Folk Lore Society—made up of the most clever, learned, and beautiful men and women of the country—is fond of studying the history and geography of Fairy Land. This is contained in very old tales, such as country people tell, and savages:
Little frosty Eskimo.'
These people are thought to know most about fairyland and its inhabitants. But, in the Yellow Fairy Book, and the rest, are many tales by persons who are neither savages nor rustics, such as Madame
As to whether there are really any fairies or not, that is a difficult question. Professor Huxley thinks there are none. The Editor never saw any himself, but he knows several people who have seen them—in the Highlands—and heard their music. If ever you are in Nether Lochaber, go to the Fairy Hill, and you may hear the music yourself, as grown-up people have done, but you must go on a fine day. Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them? The Rev. Mr. Baring-Gould saw several fairies when he was a boy, and was travelling in the land of the Troubadours. For these reasons, the Editor thinks that there are certainly fairies, but they never do anyone any harm; and, in England, they have been frightened away by smoke and schoolmasters. As to Giants, they have died out, but real Dwarfs are common in the forests of Africa. Probably a good many stories not perfectly true have been told about fairies, but such stories have also been told about Napoleon, Claverhouse, Julius Cæsar, and Joan of Arc, all of whom certainly existed. A wise child will, therefore, remember that, if he grows up and becomes a member of the Folk Lore Society, all the tales in this book were not offered to him as absolutely truthful, but were printed merely for his entertainment. The exact facts he can learn later, or he can leave them alone.
There are Russian, German, French, Icelandic, Red Indian, and other stories here. They were translated by Miss Cheape, Miss Alma, and Miss Thyra Alleyne, Miss Sellar, Mr. Craigie (he did the Icelandic tales), Miss Blackley, Mrs. Dent, and Mrs. Lang, but the Red Indian stories are copied from English versions published by the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology, in America. Mr. Ford did the pictures, and it is hoped that children will find the book not less pleasing than those which have already been submitted to their consideration. The Editor cannot say 'good-bye' without advising them, as they pursue their studies, to read The Rose and the Ring, by the late Mr. Thackeray, with pictures by the author. This book he thinks quite indispensable in every child's library, and parents should be urged to purchase it at the first opportunity, as without it no education is complete.
A. LANG.
CONTENTS
page The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership 1 The Six Swans 4 The Dragon of the North 9 Story of the Emperor's New Clothes 21 The Golden Crab 26 The Iron Stove 32 The Dragon and his Grandmother 38 The Donkey Cabbage 42 The Little Green Frog 50 The Seven-headed Serpent 60 The Grateful Beasts 64 The Giants and the Herd-boy 75 The Invisible Prince 78 The Crow 92 How Six Men travelled through the Wide World 95 The Wizard King 100 The Nixy 108 The Glass Mountain 114 Alphege, or the Green Monkey 119 Fairer-than-a-Fairy 126 The Three Brothers
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
The Swineherd takes the Ten Kisses Frontispiece The Six Brothers changed into Swans by their Stepmother To face page 8 The Witch-maiden sees the Young Man under a Tree " 12 'Here you shall remain chained up until you die' " 20 The Prince throws the Apple to the Princess " 30 The Iron StoveWOODCUTS IN TEXT
page The Partnership 1 At Home in the Church 2 Protestation 3 The Way of the World 3 'And then her dress' 7 The Youth secures the Dragon 17 The Emperor comes to see his New Clothes 24 'Let down, let down thy petticoat that lets thy feet be seen' 27 The Fisherman brings the Crab on the Golden Cushion 28 'Then she reached the three cutting swords, and got on her plough-wheel and rolled over them' 35 The Dragon carries off the Three Soldiers 39 The Fiend defeated 41 The Maiden obtains the Bird-heart 44 The Hunter is transformed into a Donkey 46 The Young Man gives the Donkeys to the Miller 48