es, all behaving like human beings. When the nobles and other people
became rich and educated, they forgot the old stories, but the country
people did not, and handed them down, with changes at pleasure, from
generation to generation. Then learned men collected and printed
the country people's stories, and these we have translated, to amuse
children. Their tastes remain like the tastes of their naked ancestors,
thousands of years ago, and they seem to like fairy tales better than
history, poetry, geography, or arithmetic, just as grown-up people like
novels better than anything else.

This is the whole truth of the matter. I have said so before, and I
say so again. But nothing will prevent children from thinking that I
invented the stories, or some ladies from being of the same opinion.
But who really invented the stories nobody knows; it is all so long ago,
long before reading and writing were invented. The first of the stories
actually written down, were written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, or on
Babylonian cakes of clay, three or four thousand years before our time.

Of the stories in this book, Miss Blackley translated 'Dwarf Long Nose,'
'The Wonderful Beggars,' 'The Lute Player,' 'Two in a Sack,' and 'The
Fish that swam in the Air.' Mr. W. A. Craigie translated from the
Scandinavian, 'Jasper who herded the Hares.' Mrs. Lang did the rest.

Some of the most interesting are from the Roumanion, and three were
previously published in the late Dr. Steere's 'Swahili Tales.' By the
permission of his representatives these three African stories have here
been abridged and simplified for children.

CONTENTS

A Tale of the Tontlawald
The finest Liar in the World
The Story of three Wonderful Beggars
Schippeitaro
The Three Princes and their Beasts
The Goat's Ears of the Emperor Trojan
The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples
The Lute Player
The Grateful Prince
The Child who came from an Egg
Stan Bolovan
The Two Frogs
The Story of a Gazelle
How a Fish swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water
Two in a Sack
The Envious Neighbour
The Fairy of the Dawn
The Enchanted Knife
Jesper who herded the Hares
The Underground Workers
The History of Dwarf Long Nose
The Nunda, Eater of People
The Story of Hassebu
The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet
The Monkey and the Jelly-fish
The Headless Dwarfs
T