ke. Now I have been making a
fairy-tale book for your own self, and here it is. This time I have
told, again the fairy tales that all the mummeys of Europe have been
telling their little Peggys, Oh for ever so many years! They must have
liked them because they have spread from Germany to Russia, from Italy
to France, from Holland to Scotland, and from England to Norway, and
from every country in Europe that you will read about in your
geography to every other one. Mr. Batten, who made the pictures for
your mummey's book, has made some more for yours--isn't it good of
him when he has never seen you?

Though this book is your very, very own, you will not mind if other
little girls and boys also get copies of it from their mummeys and
papas and ganmas and ganpas, for when you meet some of them you will,
all of you, have a number of common friends like "The Cinder-Maid," or
"The Earl of Cattenborough," or "The Master-Maid," and you can talk to
one another about them so that you are old friends at once. Oh, won't
that be nice? And when one of these days you go over the Great Sea, in
whatever land you go, you will find girls and boys, as well as
grown-ups, who will know all of these tales, even if they have
different names. Won't that be nice too?

And when you tell your new friends here or abroad of these stories
that you and they will know so well, do not forget to tell them that
you have a book, all of your very own, which was made up specially for
you of these old, old stories by your old, old

GANPA.

P.S.--Do you hear me calling as I always do, "Peggy, Peggy"? Then you
must answer as usual, "Ganpa, Ganpa."

* * * * *

PREFACE

Ever since--almost exactly a hundred years ago--the Grimms produced
their Fairy Tale Book, folk-lorists have been engaged in making
similar collections for all the other countries of Europe, outside
Germany, till there is scarcely a nook or a corner in the whole
continent that has not been ransacked for these products of the
popular fancy. The Grimms themselves and most of their followers have
pointed out the similarity or, one might even say, the identity of
plot and incident of many of these tales throughout the European
Folk-Lore field. Von Hahn, when collecting the Greek and Albanian
Fairy Tales in 1864, brought together these common "formulae" of the
European Folk-Tale. These were supplemented by Mr. S. Baring-Gould in
1868, and I myself in 189