_TO THE FRIENDLY READER_

This is the third, and probably the last, of the Fairy Books of many
colours. First there was the _Blue Fairy Book_; then, children, you
asked for more, and we made up the _Red Fairy Book_; and, when you
wanted more still, the _Green Fairy Book_ was put together. The stories
in all the books are borrowed from many countries; some are French, some
German, some Russian, some Italian, some Scottish, some English, one
Chinese. However much these nations differ about trifles, they all agree
in liking fairy tales. The reason, no doubt, is that men were much like
children in their minds long ago, long, long ago, and so before they
took to writing newspapers, and sermons, and novels, and long poems,
they told each other stories, such as you read in the fairy books. They
believed that witches could turn people into beasts, that beasts could
speak, that magic rings could make their owners invisible, and all the
other wonders in the stories. Then, as the world became grown-up, the
fairy tales which were not written down would have been quite forgotten
but that the old grannies remembered them, and told them to the little
grandchildren: and when they, in their turn, became grannies, they
remembered them, and told them also. In this way these tales are older
than reading and writing, far older than printing. The oldest fairy
tales ever written down were written down in Egypt, about Joseph's time,
nearly three thousand five hundred years ago. Other fairy stories Homer
knew, in Greece, nearly three thousand years ago, and he made them all
up into a poem, the _Odyssey_, which I hope you will read some day. Here
you will find the witch who turns men into swine, and the man who bores
out the big foolish giant's eye, and the cap of darkness, and the shoes
of swiftness, that were worn later by Jack the Giant-Killer. These fairy
tales are the oldest stories in the world, and as they were first made
by men who were childlike for their own amusement, so they amuse
children still, and also grown-up people who have not forgotten how they
once were children.

Some of the stories were made, no doubt, not only to amuse, but to teach
goodness. You see, in the tales, how the boy who is kind to beasts, and
polite, and generous, and brave, always comes best through his trials,
and no doubt these tales were meant to make their hearers kind,
unselfish, courteous, and courageous. This is the moral of them. But,
after all,