The Fairies are as old as the Hathors of Egypt, the Moerae who came to the birth of Meleager, the Norns of Scandinavian myth. But Madame d'Aulnoy first developed them into our familiar fées of fairy tale. Her contes are brilliant little novels, gay, satirical, full of hits at courts and kings. Yet they have won a way into true popularity: translated and condensed, they circulate as penny scrap-books, and furnish themes for pantomime.[3] It is from Madame d'Aulnoy that the Rose and the Ring of Thackeray derives its illustrious lineage. The banter is only an exaggeration of her charming manner. It is a pity that Sainte-Beuve, in his long gallery of portraits, found no space for Madame d'Aulnoy. The grave Fénelon follows her in his Rosimond et Braminte, by no means the worst effort of the author of Télémaque.[4] From Madame d'Aulnoy, then, descend the many artificial stories of the Cabinet des Fées, and among these the very prolix novel out of which Beauty and the Beast has been condensed takes a high place. The tales of the Comte de Caylus have also humour, wit, and a pleasant invention.[5]
The artificial fairy tale was in the eighteenth century a regular literary genre, a vehicle, now for satire, now for moralities. The old courtly method has died out, naturally, but the modern Märchen has taken a hundred shapes, like its own enchanters. We have Kingsley's Water Babies, a fairy tale much too full of science, and of satire not very intelligible to children, and not always entertaining to older people, but rich in tenderness, poetry, and love of nature. We have the delightful Rose and the Ring, full of characters as real to us, almost, as Captain Costigan, or Becky Sharpe. Angelica is a child's Blanche Amory; Betsinda is a child's Laura Bell, Bulbo is the Foker of the nursery, and King Valoroso a potentate never to be thought of without respectful gratitude. How noble is his blank verse.
—'He laid his hands on an anointed king,
—Hedzoff! and floored me with a warming pan!'
Then we have the Phantastes of Dr. Macdonald, which the abundant mysticism does not spoil, a book of poetic adventure perhaps too unfamiliar to children. To speak of Andersen is superfluous, of Andersen so akin in imagination to the primeval popular fancy; so near the secret of the heart of childhood. The Tin Soldier, the Ugly Duckling and the rest, are true Märchen, and Andersen is the Perrault of the North, more grave, more tender, if less witty, than the kind Academician who kept open for children the gardens of the Louvre. Of other modern Märchen, the delightful, inimitable, irresponsible nonsense of Alice in Wonderland marks it the foremost. There has been, of course, a vast array of imitative failures: tales where boisterousness does duty for wit, and cheap sentiment for tenderness, and preaching for that half-conscious moral motive, which, as Perrault correctly said, does inform very many of the true primeval Märchen. As an inveterate reader of good fairy tales, I find the annual Christmas harvest of them, in general, dull, imitative—Alice is always being imitated—and, in brief, impossible. Mere vagaries of absurdity, mere floods of floral eloquence, do not make a fairy tale. We can never quite recover the old simplicity, energy, and romance, the qualities which, as Charles Nodier said, make Hop o' my Thumb, Puss in Boots, and Blue Beard 'the Ulysses, the Figaro and the Othello of children.' There may possibly be critics or rather there are certain to be critics, who will deny that the modern and literary fairy tale is a legitimate genre, or a proper theme of discussion. The Folklorist is not unnaturally jealous of what, in some degree, looks like Folk-Lore. He apprehends that purely literary stories may 'win their way,' pruned of their excrescences, 'to the fabulous,' and may confuse the speculations of later mycologists. There is very little real danger of this result. I speak, however, not without sympathy; there was a time when I regarded all contes except contes populaires as frivolous and vexatious. This, however, is the fanaticism of pedantry. The French conteurs of the last century, following in the track of Hop o' my Thumb, made and narrated many pleasing discoveries, if they also wrote much that was feeble and is faded. To admit this is but common fairness; literary fairy tales may legitimately amuse both old and young, though 'it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' The conteurs, like every one who does not always stretch the bow of Apollo till it breaks, had, of course, their severe censors. To listen to some persons, one might think that gaiety was a crime. You scribble light verses, and you are solemnly told that this is not high poetry, told it by worthy creatures whose rhymes could be uncommonly elevated, if mere owl-like solemnity could make poetry and secure elevation. You make a fairy tale, and you are told that the incidents border on the impossible, that analysis of character, and the discussion of grave social and theological problems are conspicuously absent. The old conteurs were met by those ponderous objections. Madame d'Aulnoy, in Ponce de Léon, makes one of her characters defend the literary Märchen in its place. 'I am persuaded that, in spite of serious critics, there is an art in the simplicity of the stories, and I have known persons of taste who sometimes found in them an hour's amusement. … He would be ridiculous who wanted to hear and read nothing but such legends, and he who should write them in a pompous and inflated style, would rob them of their proper character, but I am persuaded that, after some serious occupation, l'on peut badiner avec.' 'I hold,' said Melanie, 'that such stories should be neither trivial nor bombastic, that they should hold a middle course, rather gay than serious, not without a shade of moral, above all, they should be offered as trifles, which the listener alone has a right to put his price upon.'
This is very just criticism of literary fairy tales, made in an age when we read of a professional faiseur des contes des fées vieux et modernes.
Little Johannes is very modern, and, as Juana says in Ponce de Léon:
'Vous y mettrez le prix qu'il vous plaira, mais je ne peux m'empêcher de dire que celui qui le compose est capable de choses plus importantes, quand il veut s'en donner la peine.'
ANDREW LANG.
[1] Part of what follows I have already stated in a reprint of Perrault's Popular Tales, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1888.
[2] In forty-one volumes, Paris, 1785–89.
[3] There are complete English translations of the eighteenth century. Many of the stories have been retold by Miss M. Wright, in the Red and Blue Fairy Books.
[4] I am unacquainted with the date of composition of this story about a Ring more potent than that of Gyges. (It is printed in the second volume of Dialogues des Morts Paris, 1718).
[5] From one of these tales by Caylus the author, who but recently made their acquaintance, finds that he has unconsciously plagiarised an adventure of Prince Prigio's.
I
I will tell you something about little Johannes. My tale has much in it of a fairy story; but it nevertheless all really happened. As soon as you do not believe it you need read no farther, as it was not written for you. Also you must never mention the matter to little Johannes if you should chance to meet him, for that would vex him, and I should get into trouble for having told you all about it.
Johannes lived in an old house with a large garden. It was difficult to find one's way about there, for in the house there were many dark doorways and staircases, and cupboards, and lumber-lofts, and all about the garden there were sheds and hen-houses. It was a whole world