The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Pink Fairy Book, by Various

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Title: The Pink Fairy Book

Author: Various

Editor: Andrew Lang

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5615]
Posting Date: December 1, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PINK FAIRY BOOK ***

Produced by JC Byers, Carrie Lorenz, and Gaston Picard

THE PINK FAIRY BOOK

By Various

Edited by Andrew Lang

Preface

All people in the world tell nursery tales to their children. The
Japanese tell them, the Chinese, the Red Indians by their camp fires,
the Eskimo in their dark dirty winter huts. The Kaffirs of South Africa
tell them, and the modern Greeks, just as the old Egyptians did, when
Moses had not been many years rescued out of the bulrushes. The Germans,
French, Spanish, Italians, Danes, Highlanders tell them also, and the
stories are apt to be like each other everywhere. A child who has read
the Blue and Red and Yellow Fairy Books will find some old friends with
new faces in the Pink Fairy Book, if he examines and compares. But the
Japanese tales will probably be new to the young student; the Tanuki is
a creature whose acquaintance he may not have made before. He may remark
that Andersen wants to 'point a moral,' as well as to 'adorn a tale; '
that he is trying to make fun of the follies of mankind, as they exist
in civilised countries. The Danish story of 'The Princess in the Chest'
need not be read to a very nervous child, as it rather borders on a
ghost story. It has been altered, and is really much more horrid in the
language of the Danes, who, as history tells us, were not a nervous or
timid people. I am quite sure that this story is not true. The other
Danish and Swedish stories are not alarming. They are translated by
Mr. W. A. Craigie. Those from the Sicilian (through the German) are
translated, like the African tales (through the French) and the Catalan
tales, and the Japanese stories (the latter through the German), and an
old French story, by Mrs. Lang. Miss Alma Alleyne did the stories from
Andersen, out of the German. Mr. Ford, as usual, has drawn the monsters
and mermaids, the princes and gi