exceptions, known in every nursery. What I have PREFACE
done is to rewrite some of them—I may say most
of them—simply, and to eliminate the grandiloquent
language which has clung to some of them, and
has not been shaken off.

Madame D’Aulnoy sinned greatly in style, but
nothing like the degree to which others sinned.
The original ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is intolerable
in the dress in which it was sent into the world.
What Perrault did was to take traditional tales
and clothe them in the language that was adapted
to children of the end of the seventeenth century.
The tales were not original; what he did was to
print them undisfigured by fine language. His
great merit consists in having thought them worthy
to be published. Perhaps the stories want telling
a little differently to children at the close of the
nineteenth century.

I have thought so—and have so dealt with some,
but not all, of these tales.

If I have made a mistake, I am quite sure of one
thing, that the printer has made none in using
such a beautiful type as can try no eyes; and the
artist has made none in supplying such delightful
illustrations.

If I have made a mistake, then I appeal to the
tender hearts of the little people in the nursery—
and I know they will pardon me, not only because I
promise to make them up a set of really delightful
old, old English Fairy Tales, but mainly because
the childish heart is ever generous and forgiving.

S. BARING-GOULD.

vii