The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Romance, by Various

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Title: The Book of Romance

Author: Various

Editor: Andrew Lang

Illustrator: H. J. Ford

Release Date: September 17, 2008 [EBook #26646]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: LANCELOT BEARS OFF GUENEVERE (p. 153)]

THE

BOOK OF ROMANCE

EDITED BY

ANDREW LANG

_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. J. FORD_

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK AND BOMBAY

1902

Copyright 1902

BY

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

* * * * *

_PREFACE_

It is to be supposed that children do not read Prefaces; these are
Bluebeard's rooms, which they are not curious to unlock. A few words
may therefore be said about the Romances contained in this book. In
the editor's opinion, romances are only fairy tales grown up. The
whole mass of the plot and incident of romance was invented by nobody
knows who, nobody knows when, nobody knows where. Almost every people
has the Cinderella story, with all sorts of variations: a boy hero in
place of a girl heroine, a beast in place of a fairy godmother, and so
on. The Zunis, an agricultural tribe of New Mexico, have a version in
which the moral turns out to be against poor Cinderella, who comes to
an ill end. The Red Indians have the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice,
told in a very touching shape, but without the music. On the other
hand, the negroes in the States have the Orpheus tale, adapted to
plantation life, in a form which is certainly borrowed from Europeans.
This version was sent to me some years ago, by Mr. Barnet Phill